[flagged]
I would love to read some compelling analysis of why online public spaces are increasingly filled by cynical losers with crabs in a bucket mentality.
Googler... ex-Googler
591–600 of 1001 posts
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#592I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity. Your managers, or your managers managers, or their managers don't care about you. At all. If you ask them on the weekend, they'll decry that the things they are asked to do are horrible. but they'll still do it. Some gladly. They are themselves cogs in the machine. A machine that goes all the way to the executive c…
I feel like this is a very dramatic view of things. Have you ever been in a management position?
I think his statement could have benefited from and/or implicitly in the list of titles.
I certainly care very deeply about my people, and letting someone go is a last resort after trying to work things out. My boss cares that I care.. their boss.. we're numbers.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#593No one complains when TComp just 500k+
Only when laid off.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#594[flagged]
I am of two minds about this. As a matter of human disappointment, I totally get it. They liked working there. Now they don't. It's not their choice. And it sucks. This is extremely relatable.
But the naïveté and confusion on display in the post are extremely not relatable. What do you think a company is? What do you think a job is? What is it that you think you're doing there? And what is it that you believe you are owed?
On this front, this person talks like an alien -- or, more condescendingly, a child. I can't relate to it at all, nor do I think it's polite or kind to play along and pretend that their worldview is understandable.
Maybe -- maybe -- you could say something like, "look, these companies lie to their employees. They tell them that they're family, that they should bring their whole selves to work, that they are changing the world, that they matter to the company as an individual. You can't blame them for believing it."
But I do. Those are such ridiculous lies that I somehow have more contempt for anybody who believes them than I do the liars, who I view mostly to be playing out a kind of benign social fiction that's transparently fake to everybody involved.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#595Earlier quoted context omitted.
While possibly a traumatic experience for Adam, I fail to see the significance of this beyond anecdotal level. And I find it rather odd to argue that after all Google did and didn't do that this is what is causing disillusionment with Google. By now Chrome is basically just a Trojan Horse with advertisement and surveillance for this purpose hidden in the inside.
I think the OP explained the broader significance very well: If Google is firing one of the most successful and active web developer relations people they have, it suggests a strategic downgrade of the Chrome, the web, and engagement in human developers. That's bad news for anyone who builds for the web or who relies on it as an open platform for the dissemination of information and software. I think the position you…
> it suggests a strategic downgrade of the Chrome
Hadn’t thought of it this way, but if there is (say) a 50% chance of being forced to divest Chrome, then the EV on your investments in the future are substantially lower.
Strategic downgrade sounds right.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else. Layoffs here are always done in conjunction with the unions. People are moved to different jobs, helped with training etc... Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.
that’s very business hostile tbh. I wouldn’t start a company there.
You're not starting a business anywhere, so no one cares.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#597[flagged]
No one complains when paid 500k+
Only when laid off.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#598[flagged]
I think the more salient observation is that the author is completely detached from reality. Him writing:
"shoulder to shoulder with incredible engineers, planning ways to make web developers life's easier while raising the quality level of the web."
when Google is primarily responsible for flooding us with ad capitalism and ruining the web, portrays not only a profound ignorance of how corporations work, but a total dissociation from the -very damaging- effects of his work-seen-holistically on the real world. You don't get a free pass working for Google just because you can rationalize your particular niche as "educating users" and "raising the quality level of the web".
Towards the end, it seems to dawn on him that yeah, he "was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp". Let's hope he carries that understanding forward and distills it into a moral and ethical framework that can make the world better.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt the tech workers making three to four times EU wages in the US feel “exploited”. My job is purely transactional. I’ve worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years. I gave them labor and they gave me money. Whenever one side decided the arrangement wasn’t working, I moved on to another job.
Tech is always boom/bust. We’re lucky to have had a long boom. I’m personally well acquainted with many people in tech, especially big tech. Many of them are doing little or nothing, certainly not justifying $300k+ salaries. What you do has risk but is fundamentally more honest - your skills are around technology and output, not navigating corporate bureaucracy.
During the first “bust” in 2000 I had four years of experience and living and working in Atlanta - far away from a tech hub. Boring old enterprise dev jobs at banks, insurance companies, etc weren’t affected and I was easily able to get offers.
I worked at a company where utility companies sent us data files and we created, printed and mailed bills.
In 2008 during the financial crisis the next time I looked for a job (my third), I had two offers relatively quickly - one programming point of sales systems and the other that I accepted programming ruggedized Windows CE devices for field service workers.
Fast forward to 2020 at the height of COVID, I got my one and only BigTech job working at AWS (my 8th job).
Unlike the author of the submitted article, when I got Amazoned 3.5 years later, I shrugged, my $40K severance was deposited in my account and I reached out to my network and targeted outreach to some recruiters in my niche and had four interviews and 3 offers within 3 weeks. Why would I waste time getting emotional about a company knowing that the CEO is 6-7 positions up on the career ladder and I’m just a random number to most of the organization?
A year later in 2024 around 9:00 PM I had a “1-1” with my manager invite for the next morning. I already had my suspicions and told my wife that I am probably going to be laid off in the morning. She said let her know how it goes and we went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning, was notified about my layoff asked when I would get my severance and responded to a recruiter that reached out to me about a week prior.
I started the interview process and three weeks later I had a job making the same as I was making at AWS.
I don’t need to “justify” what I’m making. I have a skillset and experience that are in demand and companies are willing to pay me for it because by employing me they get a positive ROI.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#600[flagged]
I’ve been seeing more of this classist rhetoric on HN and I honestly don’t get it. If you truly care about workers, focus your energy on the corporations and politicians that are producing the system you are unhappy with. Belittling other, higher paid workers doesn’t advance anyone’s cause. And FWIW, the jobless rate in tech is higher than most blue collar jobs and the national average. This guy seems good, but he fa…
> I’ve been seeing more of this classist rhetoric on HN
It has always been there. It usually gets downvoted away but it takes time. Inflammatory takes like this one are usually more popular when stories are fresh and then get downvoted as the story ages on. My theory is that these shallow, ragebait-ey takes appeal to people who are skimming stories for a chance to rage a bit, but then they get bored and move on to the next thing. It takes a while for people to read the story and come up with good discussion, which gets upvoted later.