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Googler... ex-Googler

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#581

Post by anarticle »

They would sell you for meat if they could.

I had my access hard cut off and laptop locked, a cold reminder that your relationship goes as far as the business will allow.

Always, ALWAYS build your homey network at your job, because that is your door to walking on to the next job.

Be sure to try to get the best severance possible, take time off, explore opportunities. You often won't have that kind of pressure off moment if you're serious about your career so take advantage.

I'm a hired gun for now for academia and a small startup and I've probably never been happier career wise. I work with non-fake employees, and solve problems that make money. No 401k for now, but my sanity is more valuable to me after the circus of the last year at my old place. (Fake employees in VP position, director position, both fired 1y after I left.)

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#582

Post by dkarl »

ldom66 wrote: post #455
weatherlite wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably just didn't have enough economic value for the company, from your explanation of the role I'm not sure I see the value either. The guy probably earned enough money in a few years that would take me 15 years of work, I'm not sure this as a "personal tragedy".

Completely agree. What is a tragedy though, is that if Google treats their most hardworking engineers like this they are creating a culture of minimal effort. If this is "just a job" as you can expect to be laid off at a moment's notice with no care for the value of your contributions, then what is the point in doing anything more than what the job description entails. It's just incentivizing people to treat their jo…

> if Google treats their most hardworking engineers like this they are creating a culture of minimal effort

This is bizarre to me because my impression from three years ago was that they were trying to correct from that, and it sounds like they overcorrected right back to it. I spoke with a Google engineer I think in 2022, he had heard rumors there were going to be layoffs on his team, and he had sent a message to a more senior team member that he hadn't heard from in months to let her know that she should, to put it delicately, maybe manage her visibility better. And she responded that she had lost interest in the job anyway, hadn't done anything except respond to emails and messages in over a year, and had 99% transitioned to managing a collection of properties she had been accumulating over the years, so if he heard she got laid off, he shouldn't feel bad for her. I'm pretty sure that was in 2022.

To see Google go from tolerating being ghosted by highly compensated senior+ engineers in 2022 to laying off people who were doing excellent and high-profile work in 2025 must be surreal for people inside Google. If this is all accurate, they swung the pendulum from one zone of encouraging laxity and disloyalty right through the healthy zone and into another zone of encouraging laxity and disloyalty with dizzying speed.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#583

Post by amalcon »

apwell23 wrote: post #379
hnlmorg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this type of comment a lot but in my experience there isn't any shortage of tech companies in the EU. What EU regulations hamper isn't job creation, it's employee and customer exploitation. The distinction between "job creation" and "employee exploitation" is important. What the former means in practice is that there is a massive contractor market in the UK and EU. So if companies need temporary staff, the…

this doesn't make sense. so why do usa companies hire contractors then? I worked as a contractor for decades and made 150% what perm employees made.

There are more regulations around employees than contractors here also, which often makes it not worthwhile for short term workers. Those regulations just mostly aren't around when you may terminate employment.

E.g. the entire I-9 thing and other IRS paperwork, who (if anyone) is responsible for various insurances (unemployment insurance, workers comp, liability insurance, etc), minimum wage and overtime for hourly employees, etc. Many things depend on this distinction.

I can't speak to differences from Europe as I am not familiar with that side of the Atlantic.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#584

Post by Herring »

windward wrote: post #296
xyst wrote: post #89

In this neoclassical/neoliberal economy where the only thing that matters is "delivering value for the shareholders" and profits for the billionaire class. I am not surprised. A bit jaded, honestly. I have only started my career in the past 10 years and have seen this story unfold time and time again across many companies. Big, small, or medium company. It doesn't matter. You. Are. Expendable. I will say the problem…

>Our industry needs a trade union to protect our interests. Ding dong. There's no grindsetting yourself out of the path of an uncaring locomotive.

Yeah well this comment thread is right at the bottom of the page, so it's not gonna happen anytime soon.

Top of the page indicates they're more interested in infighting (calling him spoiled).

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#585

Post by Tainnor »

palata wrote: post #395
underdeserver wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. I try them from time to time, they weren't better.

I didn't say they were better. Just that without Google Translate, I doubt you would have had a much harder time in your recent trip to Japan because you could have used them, and they aren't particularly worse :-).

It's not just about whether you yourself use Google Translate, it's that - much more than anywhere else I've ever travelled - Japanese people will regularly use Google Translate to communicate with you, usually by typing or speaking into their tablet and then showing you the machine translation.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#586

Post by gnfargbl »

jonp888 wrote: post #483
gnfargbl wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, but unless the US company is willing to set up an EU subsidiary and employ you via that then you'll be working as an independent contractor. That status gives you zero employment rights, because you're explicitly not an employee.

That's usually illegal, unless you're a genuine independent contractor that completes work packages for multiple clients. If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.

I'm only familiar with UK rules on the topic, and of course the UK is no longer in the EU, but here at least the standard for determining employment status is quite complicated. The ability to work for multiple clients is one of the factors, as it speaks to the control and mutuality-of-obligation tests set by IR35, but it would probably not (alone) be enough to determine employment status either way.

> If it was legal to work in the office of your only "client" 40 hours a week on a permanent basis, then any EU company could ignore the entire employment legislation of their real country by setting up a shell subsidiary in the US.

That wouldn't work because it would be an obvious sham designed mainly to avoid the EU company's responsibilities under employment law. Courts see through those shams very quickly.

Technical people -- including me -- like to try and reduce the law to a series of digital if/then/else tests, but reality is much more analogue. If you're one of a small number of highly-experienced remote contractors engaged by a US-based client with no local subsidiary, the authorities are likely to accept the arrangement, or at least not to spend significant amounts of time investigating it. If you're one of very many Uber-driver-like "contractors" working for a company that is obviously dodging its local employment law obligations, then they're much more likely to be interested.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#587

Post by wrs »

thatguysaguy wrote: post #530
noosphr wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What does this say about Google's commitment to developer excellence? Look inside the tensorflow code base for your answer. I had the Kafkaesque experience of reporting a bug, being told there is no bug by a help desk employee, while the bug was throwing up errors in the official docs. To top it off I got a message by one of the onshore team months later that they were going to solve it only for the person to be fir…

The user love/passion on the JAX team is super high. Interacting with them is whatever the opposite of Kafkaesque is.

Well, right up until they get suddenly laid off.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#588

Post by cab11150904 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #580
cab11150904 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This would be a shocking opinion, if we weren't in unprecedented times. I wish we had more empathy and be kinder to people going through rough times, regardless of their wealth or position, or the duopoly they work for even, but it's also hard to completely ignore when the effect and impact is so huge. Now, if you it makes you physically ill, I also wish you either find help or can get out of the situation you're in.…

Well fear not for me. It is just hyperbole. Now it's a haiku.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#589

Post by dani__german »

asadalt wrote: post #182
BlobberSnobber wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always someone with a horrible opinion to give in this hellsite

i have had to avoid hiring excellent candidate(s) from EU, just because they would become unflushable if it comes to that.

people are getting quite snippy about this comment, but hating this mindset means you lock yourself away from so much actual wealth. It means you confine and condemn people to significantly worse economic conditions by limiting people's ability to freely associate and disassociate.

just to hammer this point home: Every mandatory employee benefit has a huge cost, and adding enough of them kills your economy. It makes it more expensive to have an employee than X many jobs can justify. That X grows every year, and that's X people who cant do that job and get paid money for it.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#590

Post by sweezyjeezy »

cab11150904 wrote: post #527

[flagged]

I agree that it's a little hard to care about this author's situation as much as other stories I've heard in the past couple of years. But that said, losing a job like this is never a nice place to be, and I don't hate this person for having those emotions. People are allowed to feel things, shaming them for that is not nice.

But I would caution people against writing public statements like this when they are still in shock, you might regret them later, better to try and regain some balance first.

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