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Yep. Another perk is that Google always seems to lease the best/coolest office real estate anywhere. Most of my time here I feel vaguely gross about how nice everything is.
Not a googler, but their office in Toronto is in pretty meh area tbh
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
In practice that rarely happens, as higher-pay => better-retention => becomes-most-knowledgeable-person-over-time.
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
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To the average person working at NASA feels the same. Most professional achievements are being a part of a cog and society functions by people working together as cogs to make a system function.
This sounds so old school - people today don’t think NASA is an impressive or prestigious job.
The "red badge" thing was very real. It was really weird having TVCs on your team. You'd all work hard together to launch a thing, and then everybody except the red badge would get a celebratory team tchotchke or a team lunch or something. If you asked about it, the manager would say "we can't give Jim things directly because that might be like compensation and they'd be like an employee." There'd be all-hands meetin…
i was a red badge. it was fucking demeaning. i have a lot of stories, but my favorite was when everyone on my floor got an earthquake safety kit except me. literally google didn't care if i lived or died.
the expectation was that if i sucked up enough ("demonstrated my value") they MIGHT make me a real boy, like some bizarre Velveteen Rabbit fetish game.
i loved watching how Google would continuously pat themselves on the back about how good they are to "their employees," and then openly shit on the people who worked full time at the company but technically weren't FTEs.
it's a caste system. a company that behaves this way should be run out of town with extreme prejudice. but instead they somehow took over San Francisco.
The second passport thing is definitely true. When I'm abroad--even, recently, Buenos Aires--I have access to office space, free food, a gym, and even a music room where I can practice guitar and piano.
TIL google has an office in Buenos Aires, wonder how that works with the current inflation, do engineers get paid in pesos? do they have to re-adjust their salaries every few weeks?
The second passport thing is definitely true. When I'm abroad--even, recently, Buenos Aires--I have access to office space, free food, a gym, and even a music room where I can practice guitar and piano.
It's common for Google offices to have gyms and pianos?!
Because the buildings are usually located in very central city locations - I've often used the offices as a way to kill time til' check-in opens for hotels after a long-haul flight (grab food, caffeinate, have a shower, etc)
Recently I took a night train between Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Showered in the Stockholm office, walked 5 minutes to the train station, slept, woke up in Copenhagen, grabbed a hearty breakfast in the CPH office.
It's a little perk that is honestly vastly underestimated
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> help-over-gchat idea isn't really a product space any more Couldn’t disagree more, most web presences in B2C have a chat box where you can talk to someone or something on the other end. Usually they’re horrible but when they’re good they’re fucking great. I think the other problems you outline, plus the fact that google went through this process with gchat itself (anyone remember Allo?) are probably the main contri…
help-over-gchat and B2C chat are two different things. help-over-gchat was a matching system that allowed you to either ask a question about a topic, or declare that you know about a topic, and the system would match question-askers with question-answerers, all through gChat.
In my eyes it’s a PMF problem and an issue with their product team that Google couldn’t pivot. I know in 2023 a major CRM vendor has been rolling out the same idea as part of their SaaS. They’re trying to match individual customer service reps with depth of expertise across a broad product range. Not sure how much success they’re having but the idea is solid and requires an interesting combinatorial solver to figure out “good” matches within various constraints beyond expertise like individual workload, time zones, etc. with the goal to drive down case resolution time. Google is terrible at product and terrible at taking the long view, despite having known for decades that they’re going to struggle with innovators dilemma.