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Googler... ex-Googler

nerdy.dev

701–710 of 1001 posts

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

exactly, as a startup founder i wouldn’t commit to a yearly reserved ec2 instance for a year let alone an employee.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is bad at a lot of things but has a “we’re number one why try harder?” attitude. Or rather you can’t benchmark the performance of anyone there against industry peers because they are protected by a two-sided market. Bazel, Kubernetes and other startup killing tools are developed there because with monopoly services they can hire 3x the number of developers at 3x the rate of other firms and shackle them with to…

Funny how they're bad at this from start to end. Most of these comments talk about the "end" part, but don't forget: Google has a notoriously laggy hiring process with extreme delays and an unacceptably high level of silence on important issues from recruiters. I have been ghosted so heavily from recruiters TWICE at Google when I was literally telling them "Hey I have offers from $x and $y and I need to decide in 2 w…

+1, it's been a while since I interviewed with Google, but this brought me back to how annoying it was. I've never had a good interview experience with Google. I only interviewed during college for internship and then a full-time new-grad role and got a consistent "we're doing you a favour by even talking to you" attitude from them— the delays, the impersonality, the delays to the general vibe of the emails, etc.

They became significantly more attentive when I got an internship offer from a competing big-tech company, but as much as my recruiter seemed to try, the process just seem to be deficient beyond their capacity to do anything about it. It had to go through many steps, and be reviewed by many people who seemingly had better things to do.

Eventually they reached to the right people to tell me my decision before my other deadline. I _was_ going to get an offer. They couldn't get me the actual offer letter, or tell me if I had guaranteed host-matching though. I happened to know Google can send intern offers that don't guarantee you'll be matched to a team, and if you're not, the internship just doesn't happen. In my book that's not only as good as no offer really, it's also just disrespectful. I knew people who had this type of offers and didn't get teams.

I took the other offer. "You will get an offer, the details are just taking a while" is not enough to decide on, and the whole process didn't particularly warm me up to Google. For comparison, and to give credit where credit is due, the other company was Meta (then FB). My recruiter was very response, understanding, and personable, which is especially appreciated as an college student— you're nervous, unexperienced and have a lot going on beyond interviewing. They sent me pictures of their dog to lighten the mood. I had told them I'd appreciate quickness, and by the time I was eating dinner after my on-site, I had the offer letter in my inbox.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#703
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone here has only worked in the EU and wants to see what the US layoff process is supposed to be on a good day, just watch the movie Margin Call and the scene where Eric Dale is called into the office by HR to be fired. There's a scene where they put a folder in front of him with a brightly-coloured sailboat on the cover labelled "LOOKING AHEAD." It's exactly as grim as it sounds.

also, the pacing of: "I hope, considering your [pause to check personnel file] over nineteen years of service to the firm you will understand that these measures are in no way a reflection of the firm's feelings towards your performance or your character"

[deleted]

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#704
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If your business is contingent on the behaviour of one employee then you have failed to hire properly or build a resilient business... In many cases problematic employees can and are removed from EU companies.

many cases isn’t competitive when i can find equal talent with no such restrictions.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#705
post #647

Getting laid off sucks, but this comment isn't about that. What I noticed when I read the post is that the website isn't very good. It's laggy, as in slow to load, scroll, and for the mouse-hover stuff to respond, and this is on a fancy modern macbook. It seems to focus on pretty modern web aesthetic over presenting content. This is exactly the kind of website that makes me bemoan the tendency to prioritize looking b…

The website works smoothly on my Pixel 6A. Not sure if it's JavaScript or some other software issues taking up your Mac's hardware resources.

Scroll perf on that site is terrible in Chrome on my S23 Ultra. It's much smoother (but still kinda laggy) in Firefox. Weird.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is bad at a lot of things but has a “we’re number one why try harder?” attitude. Or rather you can’t benchmark the performance of anyone there against industry peers because they are protected by a two-sided market. Bazel, Kubernetes and other startup killing tools are developed there because with monopoly services they can hire 3x the number of developers at 3x the rate of other firms and shackle them with to…

Funny how they're bad at this from start to end. Most of these comments talk about the "end" part, but don't forget: Google has a notoriously laggy hiring process with extreme delays and an unacceptably high level of silence on important issues from recruiters. I have been ghosted so heavily from recruiters TWICE at Google when I was literally telling them "Hey I have offers from $x and $y and I need to decide in 2 w…

I remember at the time being frustrated that, after in person interviewing, they left me hanging for four months. I had a NSF grant that had been approved and if Google X had offered me a role I would have turned down the grant, but after months of silence I had to tell Google that I needed an answer or the decision would be made for me.

It was incredibly inconsiderate, the only thing I could guess is that they're intentionally horrible to applicants in order to filter out the ones that won't tolerate it.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating people with dignity is “business hostile”… welcome to Hacker News comment section.

It's more like "welcome to US mindset" IMHO

This mindset is what moves us forward. Union of soft nations don’t add much these days.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#710
>I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp.

This article could have been interesting if they talked about why they ever thought they weren't just a cog. Like what cognitive blinders did they have on? Does Google have a unusually effective "we're all a family" type of internal propaganda?

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