
My Google job was tedious and pointless - pm24601
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/10/17/my-google-job-was-tedious-and-pointless/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na&utm_term=.fc2705c5456a
======
ogre_magi
I worked at Google in a more technical role but I sympathize with this guy.
The culture was awful and empty. It was sugar-coated candies and colors and
happy, happy, happy like it was meant for a kindergartener.

The politics were thick and covered everything. Executives got on stage at a
company meeting and cried about the election. It was a cult, and not in the
good way that a startup can sometimes be, but in a stale way that felt like
death.

~~~
cromwellian
To be fair, a lot of people were upset over the election, and given what's
happened over the last ten months, those feelings seem to have been justified.

But yeah, god damn a company for having a culture where people don't go around
acting like jerks towards one another. God forbid we grow out of Kindergarten
and get back to the real world where people are unhappy and take out their
frustrations by raking their coworkers verbally over the coals.

~~~
maxxxxx
I don't think an executive should ever complain about an election. They should
focus on making their company successful and a good work place.

~~~
untog
What if the result of an election hinders their ability to be successful and
create a good work place?

I think there is a fair debate to be had about where the line should be drawn,
but pretending that politics doesn't exist if you don't talk about it is
deluded.

For example, Google employs a good number of immigrants. After the election
many of them would have been worried about their future in the country.
Wouldn't a good workplace try to address those concerns?

~~~
alexanat
It is still not appropriate to complain (or rather cry...) about in a
professional setting, imo. How can you expect to have confidence in an
executive when they put on an act like that? Nothing says "I don't know what
to do" more.

Yes, you are now facing some additional hardships in your job of creating a
good workplace where employees can succeed. Those concerns should be addressed
within the scope of what the company can or cannot do.

It seems like priorities would shift into protecting immigrant employees and
that's okay - that is a hardship that the position entails and is something
that should've been addressed long in advance as immigration reform was and
probably always will be a controversial topic in the USA.

~~~
cycrutchfield
That's just your uninformed opinion then. Showing empathy is also a great
quality in a leader. You weren't there, so how can you judge?

------
tclancy
The headline is a bit deceptive given it's written by an internal recruiter; I
imagine anyone not working as part of a business' main thrust could find the
same problem. That said, it does sound horribly tedious and pointless. Of my
two interactions with Google hiring (both failures on my part, both pre-2006),
one was enjoyable but messy and the second was brusque and confusing.

~~~
waegawegawe
This was my reaction too. Mike Rowe would probably look dimly upon the
author's complaints. Sometimes, companies hire people to do unpleasant jobs,
and convince them to do these jobs by paying them.

But, it's tough to have that conversation from the position of privilege one
sits in when one gets paid even more to do an interesting job, because of the
scarcity of people capable of performing in that role. Presumably the kid
understands this harsh reality, and the complaint is more reflective of a
general disillusionment that the situation is as it is, rather than an
aversion to the particularities of this role at Google.

~~~
fortythirteen
> Sometimes, companies hire people to do unpleasant jobs, and convince them to
> do these jobs by paying them.

What I got was that the requirement for overt enthusiasm over a mundane job
became too much. I don't think Mike Row would see it the same way if a sewage
technician was forced to pretend their job was "making a better world one
bowel movement at a time" or face being ostracized.

~~~
waegawegawe
I did not get the sense that the author was ostracized. Rather, they were put
off by other people's enthusiasm. "Am I the only one here who can see this job
is crap?" I can totally understand that feeling being crazy-making, but it's
different than being ostracized.

------
dkobran
While the job doesn't sound like it involves "cool things that matter" and
paints a pretty believable picture of working at a large corporation, I do
find it interesting that this was published by thr Washington Post. Being
owned by Amazon, a direct competitor to Google on many fronts (the war for
cloud computing market share is/will continue to be huge), it seems suspicious
that this is truly unbiased coverage. It strikes me as a possible next
iteration of native advertising. This is not an attack on WP -- just something
I thought might be worth discussing. The tech giants are becoming increasingly
more powerful and this could be a new frontier to assert that power.

~~~
fortenforge
The Washington Post is not owned by Amazon. It is owned by Jeff Bezos, who
also is CEO of Amazon.

~~~
dhimes
Distinction without a difference maybe?

------
jldugger
I've been interviewing with Google, and by my count I've interacted with about
5 different recruiters for two roles. It's strange how specialized they are,
and the communication overhead seems high.

> Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates
> with salutations, job description links and questions.

If it's any consolation, gmail's reply suggestions were frequently sufficient
on the candidate's side.

------
bistro
Wouldn't working as a recruiter be tedious at any company?

~~~
johan_larson
If the recruiter is given specific hiring criteria that are hard but not
impossible to satisfy, I could imagine looking for people who fit those
requirements and persuading them to sign up would be a satisfying job of
search, selection and salesmanship.

But that's not what these Google recruiters are doing. They are trying to find
any vaguely qualified people they can who are willing to dive head-first into
the meat-grinder that is the Google interview process. And their job is mostly
futile because that process will ultimately reject 90-95% of the candidates.

~~~
Asooka
Sounds like these recruiters could be replaced by a simple google search...

~~~
johan_larson
It's kind of weird they need recruiters at all. There is no more famous tech
company than Google. You'd think they would get enough applicants just through
their main website.

------
ithilglin909
To be fair to Google (can’t believe I said that), sounds about as painful as
similar role at another large company would probably be. Most expect their
employees to drink some Kool-Aid (one of the side benefits to being a
contractor/mercenary is being able to exist somewhat outside that world).

~~~
jxramos
I have family that works at Google and I remember a group of their friends
reporting they very much preferred the switch to consultant for Google rather
than Google employee. They wanted to be outside the internal political bubble.
From what I recall the distaste surrounded a lot of the performance review
song and dance and promotional squabbles.

------
foobaw
Most of the responsibility, minus the technical interview, seems like it could
be done by an AI sometime in the future anyway. No more complaints afterwards!

~~~
snorkel
I found Google's dev interview to be especially difficult, I personally hate
doing hours of whiteboard coding (sorry, I tend to code on computers instead,
silly me) ... So I wasn't hired, but those who worked as devs there told me
that's a blessing because after all the rigorous interviewing bluster they'll
assign devs to remedial code refactoring anyway. I'm not a rockstar coder
above doing the housekeeping work but doesn't sound fun either. Why hire top
coders then assign them intern busy work? I wonder if the strategy was to just
drain the local talent pool of top coders so competitors had less of a
candidate pool. Just odd to set the interview bar so high, and for what
purpose?

~~~
nradov
I don't work at Google, but code refactoring is critically important in the
real world. It's not intern work.

~~~
away2017throw
Why not, like, test refactoring skills? Mind blown!

------
johndoe489
I've been coding for 20 years but some random fresh face out of university
goes into HR and looks over my CV and decides whether I'm suitable for an
employer or not. Neverlmind that they can barely tell the difference between
Java and Javascript. I mean what the fuck, you've got a university diploma,
which I don't even have, and THAT's your job? What a waste.

Your job is tedious and pointless, end of story.

------
komali2
>Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates with
salutations, job description links and questions. All we have to do is press
two keys (mine are semicolon followed by the letter “C”). There’s also space
for fill-in-the-blanks: one for the candidate’s name (“Hey Mark”) and another
at the end for the day of the week (“Enjoy your Thursday!”), so the message is
personal.

This step should have been 100% automated and I don't understand why it
wasn't. As a recruiter this shit was my least favorite part of the job. The
next step - the candidate calls - was my favorite part.

~~~
s73ver_
Automated emails are pretty shit, and easy to spot. They also tend to turn off
most people, making recruiting more difficult.

~~~
DarronWyke
Yep. Any time I see a recruiter try to automate initial contact using a tool
like Jobdiva or some such, it's an instant disqualification. Most of the time
it's just plain shotgunned out and I never hear anything beyond the initial
email. I had one recruiter, after doing that, call me and inquire -- I told
him no, and explained to him that I don't do business with those who willingly
use spamming tools.

~~~
komali2
I get why it's frustrating, but one way or the other the job has to get
filled. When I was a recruiter I'd blast out emails as well, but only to
candidates I actually thought were qualified.

Knowing that of 20 people the recruiter knows that are a good fit, only 2
might be available, what would _your_ preferred method be of them going about
their job?

~~~
DarronWyke
Don't use a blast. It lacks the personalization. If it looks like a form
letter, I assume you did keyword matching (which is the case 90+% of the time)
and you're just playing a recruiter game of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Be upfront and honest is another one. I see lots of recruiters try and be
sneaky and play phishing games. There's a reason why my current employer isn't
listed by name on my resume. Plenty of times recruiters have contacted me,
promising a job, but it's only to grill me about my current position to find
other people there they can hit up, or contacts within HR, etc. Or it's just a
plain ol' resume-sending event and they want nothing more than me to bulk up
their database.

With that upfront and honesty in place, be willing to provide key information
to the candidate upon initial contact -- it'll save you and them a lot of
time. I want, as a minimum (and usually no more), the client, the location
(may need specifics depending upon the city, for example "Dallas" isn't very
descriptive as Dallas is huge), and the employment type/term.

------
zippergz
I'm not sure it's exactly breaking news that the most entry-level basic role
in a department is boring and repetitive. The only reason this article is even
getting run is because it has "Google" in the headline.

------
carlmcqueen
As someone who has worked at a large corp. for a bunch of years I can say the
job you have may feel awful but you're at a company where you can network with
people who do anything you are curious about.

The same could be said to the person writing this article. You work at
Google.. your recruiting job might be awful but get your earbuds out during
lunch and see if you might work at another team internally that is more in
line with what you wanted to do.

Take some ownership of what you'd like to do.

------
cromwellian
Recruiting is outsourced at many companies. I'm not sure why this person
thought it would be a hugely interesting job. Perhaps if they were an
engineering major and were working on ways to automate recruiting searches, or
improve the false positive/false negative rates, it would have been
interesting, but it doesn't sound like this person was hired for anything but
to man the phones.

From that standpoint, it seems like #firstworldproblems. Someone who lacks the
skills to be a SWE gets hired at one of the most prestigious companies, most
likely has awesome benefits and a comfortable job, but boring and
unfulfilling. Contrast that with the millions of people in who work for far
less salary and benefits, in low end service sector jobs, and it just seems
tone deaf to me.

I understand the feelings of not having a good fit for your work and wanting
to do other things, but there's a huge difference between "I need a change
cause I find what I'm doing boring, even if the pay and benefits is good" and
"This is the WORST! Clearly, I was owed an interesting job at a candy unicorn
factory, and since I didn't get the toys I thought I would, I'm suffering
worse than a Soviet gulag here."

~~~
s73ver_
This narrative that only engineers deserve to have interesting and fulfilling
jobs needs to end. It's nothing but elitism, and adding the
"#firstworldproblems" doesn't do anything to help your cause.

~~~
fav_collector
I read the OP post as "not everyone deserves an interesting and fulfilling
job" rather than "only engineers deserve an interesting job"

~~~
s73ver_
Me too, but they definitely skewed toward "those that deserve an interesting
and fulfilling job are engineers".

~~~
cromwellian
It's impossible for every job task that needs to be done to always be
interesting and fulfilling, even engineering jobs. Sometimes there's dirty
work that had to be done that just sucks, and someone has to be paid to do it.
My point is, if I advertise a job to clean toilets, don't show up and complain
that cleaning toilets is boring. I know its boring, but I have to paid someone
to do it, or buy self-cleaning Japanese toilets. I've had coding jobs before
that were metaphorical equivalent of toilet cleaning, and I hated them, but
sometimes you need to make rent. I did the work, hated it, and then went on to
other more interesting things (founded a startup). I didn't bother submitting
an editorial to a newspaper on the experience. It just seems self indulgent to
me.

~~~
s73ver_
Right, but you specifically called out someone as "not having the skills as a
SWE."

~~~
cromwellian
I didn't mean it in the sense "he is inferior to SWEs", I mean it from the
sense that Google is a tech company, and at tech companies, the interesting
jobs where new product development happens generally goes to engineers, PMs,
product and UI designers.

It would be no different than if I went to work at a Hospital, I'd end up in
claims processing or administration probably, and someone could say "he's not
a doctor or nurse or medically trained, so of course, he's pushing paper"

To some extent, it's up to you to make your job interesting and fulfilling. If
this guy spent 2 years doing HR and it was a grind, then he knew all the pain
points and probably how to improve the workflow. Why didn't he take the
initiative, get some coworkers together, and try to design a better system
rather than wear earplugs eating alone in the cafe?

Google expects and depends on people to take initiative. If my project is not
interesting, either I find another team that has a more interesting project,
or I invent a project for myself and shop it to cosigners. I'm not supposed to
sit here stewing in unhappiness for years waiting for my manager to say "oh, I
noticed you aren't being fulfilled. Here's a new project to fulfill you."

It's not that only SWEs matter. Most startups have a technical founder and a
non-technical founder. Non-technical skills often matter more than technical
ones.

~~~
s73ver_
"I didn't mean it in the sense "he is inferior to SWEs","

That may not have been your intent, but that was how it came across.

------
Animats
So that's where those calls come from. I used to get cold calls from Google
recruiters who seemed clueless. I finally told them to put me on their do-not-
call list.

------
macspoofing
Maybe this person can try working a factory line and see how empowering other
jobs can be.

But Ok, I'll buy the author's point that the job sucked. What's the news here?
The cynic in me says this is Bezos using WaPo as proxy for the Amazon/Google
fight.

------
komali2
I really hope this article doesn't take off.

I understand the pain of this person, but this has literally nothing to do
with Google, and everything to do with: Recruitment Sucks.

It's a fucking annoying, mind boggling job. If you're external, there's a
couple highs when you negotiate a salary or are selling a candidate on a
position or in a business development meeting with some bigshot at an
engineering firm. But _mostly_ , it's calling 10 candidates a day (at least)
even if you have nothing to pitch, because you're fishing for information but
really because your boss told you you have to make 10 candidate calls a day or
you're fired.

It's 5 business development calls a day, even if there really isn't anybody
new to talk to, and if you already contacted you entire network that month,
because... reasons? Because your boss said so. Hit your numbers, 5am hit the
phones! Coffee is for closers ABC ALWAYS BE CLOSING

"I gotta stay late and make these calls," he says as he sucks the
recruitment/sales koolaid, despite knowing that extra calls will literally
lead to no extra money for himself or the company.

"I make 25 candidate calls a day because you never know what juicy tidbits of
information a candidate might have," she says despite the fact that we all in
the city know the same story - the oil and gas market is dead, everybody's
losing their job, and any new project already has 5,000 applicants before the
recruiters can touch "9" to dial out.

Browsing linkedin - copy paste name into the name field of Bullhorn, then
email, hmm do they have a resume? Download, upload to Bullhorn. Skip the
"create candidate from resume" option because it sucks. Do this 20 times a day
- "we need to build out our system with good candidates so we're ready when a
position opens," despite the fact that linkedin and oilandgasjobsearch.com
search function are 10x better than Bullhorn's so I'll just be using that
anyway.

God, sorry, rant, but this kid joined a job where you feel useless, where you
_know_ you'll be automated away, where you barely understand the field you're
working in ("oh you're static tank mech E uh this position is looking for
rotating"), where that super weird American/British "sales" culture has
totally infiltrated and everyone gets their rocks off to Wolf of Wallstreet
and glengarry glen ross.

So, long story short, I was in this kid's shoes a little over 2 years ago, and
I fucked off to San Francisco, went to a bootcamp, now I'm frontend and it
rates among the top 3 decisions I have ever made in my life, and I'm sure that
so far it's the most significant and far-reaching decision in terms of
longterm happiness.

In the bootcamp, I saw 2 projects come out from 3-month-trained frontend devs
automate a large portion of my recruitment job. It's going.

------
Kyragem
It doesn’t say anything about what it is to actually work at Google. Maybe
rephrase to working in HR sucks. I doubt this person even worked at MTV. I
worked at Google and it is an amazing place to work at (beercart Friday!) the
only reason I left is because living in the Bay Area sucks.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
So, the single example that you reach for when describing google as an amazing
place to work is "beercart Friday?"

~~~
Kyragem
Yes the bar at Google is very high and after busting my ass all week solving
ridiculously hard problems having someone drop a cold beer and nachos on my
desk on a Friday afternoon shows that Google takes employee satisfaction very
seriously

~~~
drharby
Cant tell if sarcasm

~~~
jstewartmobile
Kyragem is channeling Ken M

------
aresant
While the fluffy headline promises a revelation about Google, this article is
actually a poignant lament on the future of work automation.

The piece's author holds a humanities degree in Psych/Neuroscience.

I point that out because while we've accepted that blue collar jobs are/were
"going to be automated" or "going overseas", there's still a pervasive trope
that an undergraduate degree provides some protection and is of value unto
itself in the workforce.

But - as evidenced by his systematic experience of key-pressing - his position
@ Google is a stop gap, in the same way that the humans in Uber's vehicles are
a tolerated inconvenience.

This while the people the company ACTUALLY values, at present, are the
engineers - tasked with devising new ways to automate, regulate, and
systematically eliminate human fallibility from the equation.

Solving the problem of what to do with the millions of us that take steps to
educate ourselves, want to contribute, but realize that we're a poor facsimile
of the machine that will eventually eliminate our jobs, is the central
question of our generation.

~~~
bllguo
Don't know about "poignant" \- this reads like "I chose the wrong career and
it's Google's fault" \- but 100% yes, this is one of the biggest societal
issues we face.

The author may have realized a bit late that he doesn't enjoy HR, but he still
deserves a chance to pivot. That's getting harder in our economic system and
with automation and outsourcing.

~~~
briandear
I remember looking at Hacker News in 1895 and remember the fear of automation
was just as noteworthy then. Weird how increasing automation over the past 200
years has led to record low poverty and a higher standard sign living that
would have unimaginable.

~~~
bllguo
Once we resolve the issue of people being automated out of their careers then
of course automation will be a net positive on society. You don't have to tell
me - I work in machine learning and data. These are basically growing pains
that require a societal paradigm shift.

------
dsschnau
Quicken Loans in Detroit is the same thing to a T

------
Invictus0
Is working HR interesting at any company though? There's really nothing of
substance in this rant at all; I'm curious why the wapo thought this was fit
for publication.

------
zelos
>Yet Google’s low-level HR employees are barraged by higher-ups about Passion!
and how we are Changing People’s Lives!

Does anyone seriously listen to that kind of talk? It's a job - in this case
helping to sell advertising - why try to pretend it's some kind of religious
calling? Why do so many companies insist on spewing that claptrap?

------
top256
I remember interviewing for them on site and saying "no thanks I'm not a good
fit" after the first interview. They sounded so corporately boring...

------
soared
Can't believe the author can write this article and not see the glaring
problems. This is a narrow minded article that speaks to one person not
fitting in, not a widespread problem like he tries to make it seem. If you
wear ear plugs at lunch something is obviously not clicking. It sounds much
more like the author isn't a fit for the company.. there is no mention of
having friends or anyone positivity about the job.

------
pm24601
Just proves ... its not the company: it is the job that counts.

~~~
jxramos
that's exactly right! I tell my younger mentees that you can work for
companies that are doing cutting edge stuff, but watch what you are actually
doing and contributing to that. Are you growing and being challenged as a
productive individual. At best one would have to be content playing an
indirect role that aides the development of cutting edge research or whatever.
I guess the fallacy for the author was assuming a few degrees of indirection
in a supporting role was going to be life changing and doing things that
mattered. I like seeing his honesty in reporting that things from him vantage
point from all the action was in the end not all that meaningful for him.

------
varjag
A Person With Boring Job Is Bored At Work.

------
selimthegrim
Two words: mail merge

~~~
GauntletWizard
That's essentially what they're doing! They've got an automated form. The
recruiter's job is to screen linkedin profiles for qualified candidates; The
tedious bit of the mail (two keypresses and typing their name) is just gravy.

------
georgiedown
Why the Damore video without any kind of context? It's like they're trying to
push a narrative here.

~~~
CalChris
Just as this HR underling's life is a soulless tedium of selecting stock
phrases, that video was chosen automatically (which is to say, even less
soullessly) by a context matching algorithm.

Now if you think that a narrative is being pushed here then I have a Rorschach
test I'd like you to take.

~~~
georgiedown
Or maybe it's fucking stupid to have an automatic system picking related
videos and inserting them in posts in a way that makes them look like they're
the main video of the post.

------
sealthedeal
My fiance is a recruiter at Google, and while she still has issues with work
or has a complaint every now and then, she embraces her job and is a top
performer. She finds pride in finding people that normally wouldn't think they
could get a job at Google, and push them through process, and once they get
hired she takes satisfaction that yes, she in fact did help change their life
and or career.

Anyone can make the claim that there job sucks, or the company they work for
tries to brainwash them, or maybe they feel overqualified for what they are
doing. If you have an issue with your job you change it. I applaud the author
for making the change, but I find it terribly unprofessional and kind of
childish that he would rant about his previous employer when they didnt do
anything wrong to him...

