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Googler... ex-Googler

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#951

Post by ErigmolCt »

citizenpaul wrote: post #773
ErigmolCt wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies will always remind you it's "just business" when it suits them - so it's healthy to keep that same energy in return

Ah yes. I got to do that once after a layoff. The manager tried to guilt me or something into working after I was layed off. "Because they were given me severance so I should be ok with doing the work" I told them. No you are wrong. I was given severance to sign an NDA and non-disparagement agreement. That is what the severance bought the company, but I'll be glad to discuss a consultant role on an hourly basis.

Companies love to frame severance as some kind of favor when really it’s a transaction. You handled it exactly how more people should!

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#952

Post by ErigmolCt »

qntmfred wrote: post #499
ErigmolCt wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies will always remind you it's "just business" when it suits them - so it's healthy to keep that same energy in return

yup. embrace being a cog. enjoy your cog work as much as you can, but recognize it for what it is. don't tie your identity to it.

Exactly. There's freedom in that mindset too

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#953

Post by bdolgov »

tharkun__ wrote: post #949
SR2Z wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photos was brand new in 2015. Search is from 1998. I'm not a mathematician but that means that search is about three times older than it... If the point you're trying to make is that Google needs to bring every service they offer up to a billion users within five years of launching it, I don't know if there's much of a point to me trying to convince you

That's not what they said. They said, if Photos is currently recent (aka 2025-2015 = 10 years = recent) then Search was recent when Photos came out (aka 2015-1998 = 12 years = recent). Which given the overall timeframes, I'd say that's close enough to say 10 years ~= 12 years. And they said they'd actually count the non-Photos time of Photos as Photos, so add some to the 10 years.

2015-1998 = 17, not 12.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#954

Post by lazide »

int_19h wrote: post #862
lazide wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only fair system is a random lottery - which is also the most terrifying for everyone.

Then again, if we did have a random lottery that required all employees (up to and including the CEO) to participate, then perhaps we'd see fewer layoffs...

why would the company want that?

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#955

Post by fragmede »

phtrivier wrote: post #924
fragmede wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need to make it a freedom of speech issue? can't it be recognized as a human as a pile of shit to rug pull someone like that and not let them at least cancel their own talk?

Sorry, sarcasm intended (I was riffing on the idea that anything ugly and unacceptable gets defended as "saving free speech", those days.)

Poe's law strikes again!

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#956

Post by rahimnathwani »

burningChrome wrote: post #764
neltnerb wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

>> 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. I had two friends within the span of 18 months have this experience where they've run the gauntlet of pre-screening, get invited out to Google offices. Run through two days of grueling interviews, all the while getting a lot of great positive feedback about their performance. Th…

This doesn't pass the sniff test.

Why would the candidate be on the hook for the flight change and extra night at a hotel?

When I interviewed with Google ~10 years ago, they booked and paid for my my flights (from China to the US), hotel and car hire. I didn't have to book, pay and then ask for reimbursement, let alone foot the bill myself.

The 'two days' sounds weird to me as well. In my experience (on both sides of the table) face to face interviews were scheduled to be on a single day.

Perhaps things have changed or your friends were interviewing for very specialist roles?

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#957

Post by milesrout »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #837
milesrout wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of human history we were hunter-gatherers. Even assuming you mean post-industrial history this isn't true though.

The person you're replying to is correct in a technical sense I think? The hunter-gatherer phase would be considered prehistory since it pre-dates the development of writing, which is what enabled humans to record history.

"Human history" includes prehistory.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#958

Post by saagarjha »

asadalt wrote: post #706
rwmj wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please post the name of your company so we can be sure to avoid it.

done

I take it that this was posted in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"?

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#959

Post by saagarjha »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #795
DannyBee wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this. It's sad since there is no excuse for it - plenty of companies conduct regular layoffs and role eliminations in more compassionate ways, it would not take much to survey and learn from their practices. Hell, IBM was often more compassionate about layoffs than Google. Some of it they've tried to become more formal about in ways that actually m…

> Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this. That is a very charitable way to look at it, when I worked their I started from that point as well. "Hey, this thing you just did, you did it really badly, can we workshop some ways to not do this so badly in the future?" And yet, again and again they would do something similar again and still do it badly. As the examples piled up, I was ab…

Recruiting is quite expensive, and employees naturally lose to the market rate by staying at one company for a while. I don't think this really matches what you're suggesting.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#960

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bsimpson wrote: post #770
skybrian wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn’t used to be quite so bad at this. Back when they closed the Atlanta office, people there got a lot of notice and opportunity to find another role. The complaints were about not being allowed to go full-time remote. I wonder what changed?

Ruth and Fiona aren't Patrick and Laszlo. It feels like there was leadership turnover in the late 2010s where "conventional company" people assumed the reins of power and started managing it like one. The founders are complicit too. People like to think "before Larry and Sergey stepped down…" but the founders still control the board (tacitly or explicitly approving of the company's current behavior). Plus, there's Se…

Yeah, this is really common at Big Tech, I saw it happen at FB, and it's only gotten worse since then.

The issue is that if you keep hiring leadership/people from the rest of the corporate world (which is basically unavoidable if you are growing) then you'll end up trending towards the median of corporate behaviour over time.

It's mostly unavoidable, unless you never hire external managers (which would be very very difficult to do).

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