
Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs - thesanerguy
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/12/google-commits-1-billion-in-grants-to-train-u-s-workers-for-high-tech-jobs/
======
brudgers
I wonder how long it would take for Google to spend an extra $1 Billion by
bringing janitorial, food service, and other non-technical jobs in-house
instead of contracting it out to the lowest bidder.

To put it in perspective, $1 Billion is 10,000 times $100,000. Or 1000
$100,000/year jobs for ten years before discounting for the time value of
money. Instead, big chunks of the money will get siphoned off to
administrators and technical instructors and computer manufacturers and lots
of other areas that already have plenty of money.

A billion dollars is less than half the annual budget of University of
Nebraska for serving ~50,000 students [1]. Back of envelope turns $1 Billion
into ~22,000 student years which is in the same people-helped ballpark as the
10,000 worker years, with the difference being that those 10,000 worker years
come with actual jobs at $100,000 a year. And the 10,000 worker years are
offset by the current cost of contracting out the work and the value that work
returns to Google's bottom line.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nebraska_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nebraska_system)

~~~
fraserharris
They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady
supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical
contracted services are cost centers.

~~~
samfisher83
They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I
don't think they will have any problem hiring people. Maybe this would help
some small company a lot more that can't afford pay google salaries. Also If
you believe the Pareto principle most of people at google probably aren't that
important to their successes.

~~~
shados
They actually do have problems hiring enough. They get tons of applications,
but the vast majority are not worth looking at.

The people from top schools are in high demand, and Google no longer has
monopoly on cool tech workspaces with free lunches and random expensive perks.

They have plenty of openings and they harass qualified people trying to poach
them just as hard as everyone else. And since they actually DO have some
unique challenges, they sometimes actually DO need people who know more than
Rails CRUD apps, which makes things even trickier.

~~~
samfisher83
It seems the only stories you hear of them are interviewing people and then
ghosting them. If they actually cared about hiring people you figure at least
they would treat their candidates better. In my experience even amazon has
been more on the ball with the recruiting process.

~~~
shados
I'm not particularly fond of Google or the way they interview, but I've lived
just a few blocks from their Cambridge office (so almost every engineer I know
around here has interviewed there at one point or another).

Aside for their criterias and interview questions which I find absurd (but
that's subjective, I know a bunch of people who think they're fine), I haven't
heard much that was really wrong with it aside for obviously underqualified
candidates being brought in and then leaving pissed off after bombing it.

The reality is that in this industry right now, unless what you're doing is
little webapps with REST apis that store/retrieve data and not much else,
hiring people is hard. All the somewhat large companies have 100+ openings at
any given time and the majority of candidates are code monkeys. My current
employer is doing decently and our reputation seems to allow us to get a
steady stream of above average people applying, but there's still so many
openings.

Only so much you can do.

------
WalterBright
It's never been easier to get training in all sorts of things, for free. For
example, I'm currently taking MIT's 6.002 electronics course because I never
learned circuit analysis properly. It's on youtube, it's free, I watch it
anytime.

There's the Khan Academy, too.

~~~
s73ver_
Yeah, but there's no certificate. And, despite what everyone wants to believe,
most employers still want that certificate or degree. They're not gonna accept
"I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube" as an alternative.

~~~
kamaal
>>They're not gonna accept "I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube" as an
alternative.

Soon they will.

If the internet people come at cheaper prices.

There isn't much difference between people who watch a lecture on the internet
vs those who watch it live.

~~~
netheril96
> If the internet people come at cheaper prices.

But filtering out the good ones from the "internet people" is more expensive
than seeking through college graduates.

------
jorblumesea
How does flooding the market with developers that will never be able to pass
their interviews help them? I guess it will increase the amount of people in
the 1% by expanding the size of that pool?

Just seems like Google out of all companies has a need for the best, not just
blue collar code slingers. Many people with 4 years CS degrees from good
schools do not get hired.

~~~
sulam
A couple misconceptions seemed buried in here. First of all, plenty of Google
engineers are doing “boring” work that can be done by coding school grads.
Secondly, Google declines qualified candidates roughly 50% of the time
according to people who work there. The hiring process is far more random than
we’d like to imagine it is when you have a “high bar”.

~~~
jorblumesea
> First of all, plenty of Google engineers are doing “boring” work that can be
> done by coding school grads.

Google's hiring process does not reflect this at all. Even entry level
positions have very high bar. Boring has nothing to do with it, Google wants
the best.

> Secondly, Google declines qualified candidates roughly 50% of the time
> according to people who work there.

That's not random, that's just setting a really high bar.

Have you been through a Google interview? Their phone screen questions are
equivalent to many companies' "hardest" interview problems.

~~~
sulam
I've been through the entire Google interview, yes. And I'm going to go
(slightly) out on a limb and say that if Google could reduce their false
negative rate, they would. IOW, yes, that's a factor of having a high bar, but
what that statement is capturing in aggregate is the fact that their
interviewers are not all equally calibrated and the interview process can be
very uneven, although always looking for very strong people. They then turn
around and give those really strong engineers a very high salary and (in many
cases) relatively uninteresting work. It would be surprising to me if that
changes as a result of this $1B grant, but I would be equally surprised if
they don't try to skim the cream off that particular crop.

------
afpx
Google spends what, upwards of $10B a year on software engineer salary and
benefits? So, seems like a good deal. If they can spend $1B and decrease
salary’s and benefits by at least 10% over a few years, they get return on
investment.

~~~
alpb
Why would salaries or benefits decrease?

~~~
tiggybear
Your paid based on your leverage not how much your output is worth. If supply
of workers with your skills goes up, your leverage to negotiate goes down and
so does your wages.

Labor does not get to share in economic growth, they get to split an ever
decreasing share of profits. The more people that are available to sell their
labor, the more pieces that shrinking pie has to be cut into.

------
TuringNYC
I wish Google could spend just a fraction of that money employing technical
writers to better document their technologies. So much of the documentation is
outdated or flat out broken. Even stock sample projects right on the Android
Studio sometimes fail to work.

Oh, and remember the mess Gradle was in 2015/2016? How much money could it
possibly cost to better document some of the major tools?

------
Klockan
I don't understand why they don't open more remote offices instead. Around 90%
of their employees are currently within the US, wouldn't it be a lot easier to
find tech talent if they had a major position in other areas of the world as
well?

~~~
walshemj
two reasons time difference and communications

~~~
Klockan
Those are not issues when you have thousands of employees at a location, then
you can base entire products there. There is plenty of people in Europe who
would love to work for Google but there are so few positions here that it is
almost impossible to get one unless you want to move to the US, it wouldn't be
hard for Google to get ten times as many engineers here as they currently have
if they just wanted to.

~~~
ggambetta
There's plenty of people in Europe that work in Google's European offices.
When I left in 2014, Zürich was something like 1500 people, with London and
IIRC Paris having similar sizes, and many other smaller ones. That's hardly
"so few positions", let alone "almost impossible to get one".

Also, time zone differences (and to a lesser extent communications) were
inconvenient, although there were very viable ways to work around them.

~~~
Klockan
I know, I work there. Most I know don't even bother applying since it is hard
to get an interview, they don't see getting into Google as an alternative. All
Google would need to Gobble up all talent in Europe is basically to start
pestering every developer like they do in Silicon valley, they already pay
twice of what 99% of developers are earning so taking everything would be easy
for them.

~~~
taway_1212
Does Google pay more than decents contracts in European big cities (i.e. 120k+
€)?

~~~
jacquesm
Depending on your skill level: yes.

------
thatonechad
Universities need to start focusing on skills instead of general education.
Imagine the amount of skills you could learn if you didn't have to take 60
hours of nonsense credits and focus on skills you require.

Programming / Networking / Hardware need a new type of University that is
similar to Trade colleges but focus primarily on the skills and nothing more.
The first 1-2 years could focus on the foundations while the next 2 years
focus around solid design principles and actually developing projects (real or
fake).

~~~
demygale
Name a giant in this industry, that person benefitted from a liberal arts
education.

~~~
thatonechad
I'm sure all the gender studies classes has helped the vast majority of tech
students become better developers

~~~
s73ver_
Given all the stuff that's happening lately with people like Susan Fowler, a
whole lot of developers could have benefitted from more of those.

Of course, that's completely ignoring that there is far, far, far more to
"liberal arts" than gender studies.

~~~
Klockan
Diversity training doesn't work though and it often makes things worse.

[https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-
work](https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work)

~~~
somebehemoth
You will need more citations to prove that point. Same publication, more
recently published, "Two Types of Diversity Training That Really Work".

"For one, a recent meta-analysis of over 40 years of diversity training
evaluations showed that diversity training can work, especially when it
targets awareness and skill development and occurs over a significant period
of time."

[https://hbr.org/2017/07/two-types-of-diversity-training-
that...](https://hbr.org/2017/07/two-types-of-diversity-training-that-really-
work)

------
synicalx
You know, I'm actually really impressed with Google for speaking with their
money on this. There's a lot of "why don't these hicks just get a real job",
but no one really seems interested in furthering that sentiment.

There's popular opposition to Trump's promise to give people jobs by
resurrecting industries that a lot of people (probably Google as well) would
rather see stay dead. But there's no denying people need jobs, and formal
education ain't cheap.

Now we've got a tech giant backing that up with cold hard cash. It would be
great to see other companies getting on board and putting some dough in the
ring or at least offering some kind of internship/work experience programs for
people coming out of an education funded by these grants.

------
Overtonwindow
Stated differently: "In light of recent criticism on its ability to import
foreign, cheap labor, Google commits to improving their public image for
American labor"

~~~
UncleMeat
How is Google importing foreign, cheap labor? Their H1B applications are
public and you can check the salaries yourself. None of the majors are abusing
foreign labor.

------
dna_polymerase
Yeah, more bootcamp trained JS-"artisans" and Ruby-"artists" for all of us! If
they wanted to do good, invest in the school system, use your power to monitor
Betsy DeVos and call her out for the bullshit to come from her. If Google
could raise interest in STEM in High Schools already that would be way more
organic.

~~~
speedplane
Don't think there is anything wrong or ignoble teaching people JS. It's an
excellent start.

------
Apocryphon
To the critics in this thread- maybe it's time to consider unionizing tech
workers after all?

~~~
marnett
I agree but how? Or would co-op consulting shops make more sense?

~~~
Apocryphon
Why not try both? The point is that the status quo is untenable, corporate
power is going to commodify devs just as they have done to workers in many
other industries, and you might as well try fixing about it rather than
getting disrupted like so many other dinosaur entities that tech has done to.

~~~
stale2002
The status quo is untenable???

I am not sure what world you live in, but the world that I live in is one
where software engineering salaries and jobs have continued to increase over
the last 5, despite all these bootcamp grads and the large increase in CS
majors.

~~~
jimmaswell
The tech labor shortage seems to me to be essentially a fabrication invented
by tech companies to encourage further oversaturation. I just cannot believe
jobs are growing faster than the workforce when my experience has been this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15461080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15461080)

The status quo is untenable because it's a bubble. There are far too many
junior programmers.

~~~
stale2002
Hmm, I am a couple years out of college and therefore fit the definition of
"senior developer", so perhaps you are right, and I just haven't noticed the
effects yet.

But right now, things are really really good for developers who only have a
couple years of experience. But perhaps that is going to change as all these
junior devs become senior.

------
eatbitseveryday
Google is often criticized for not hiring developers who "still need more
work", and instead hires experienced people. Hiring less capable people and
training them internally would make some sense to me.

~~~
FLGMwt
I'm not Google, but my guess is they'd rather invest in the market to let _it_
float the "experienced" people rather than take a gamble on a known
"inexperienced" person and attempt to train them.

Maybe this is shitty, maybe it isn't, but it's probably more economical.

------
IBM
Makes sense given the antitrust movement is getting stronger.

------
bradleyjg
I'd be more impressed if they committed to hiring employees that don't already
have the skills they are looking for and doing on the job training. That would
be far more effective both in terms of actual skills transfer and in terms of
future career trajectory than Yet More Retraining Programs untethered from any
actual employer or employment opportunities. We've been doing the latter since
at least the Kennedy administration to little effect.

~~~
briholt
Another major glaring problem that no one wants to admit is that lots of tech
work requires (at the very least) college-level-IQ, which excludes the
majority of the population. And the lower-IQ jobs are quickly being automated
away.

~~~
vilmosi
IQ just means potential not capability. Given enought time I believe most
people can be trained to do almost any job.

I don't think our brain suddenly evolved in 200 years from illiterate peasants
to software engineers. We just have more school time these days.

~~~
sunir
Since it is empirically obvious that 200 years ago the world was not entirely
populated by illiterate peasants ...perhaps your population model of the
distribution of IQ and causes thereof is inaccurate.

~~~
vilmosi
Not entirely but the vast majority. It's empirically obvious writting existed
200 years ago therefore someone somewhere knew how to write.

What do you think people did before the industrial revolution?

~~~
sunir
A lot.

------
wavefunction
I am glad to see Google doing something like this.

All of humanity growing together towards a brighter future for everyone is
truly our highest calling.

------
thewhitetulip
But nobody wants to address the mounting student loan problem!!

Degrees don't come for free, technical graduates don't come for free, students
have to go to college for that and in US you need a LOT of money for that.

This is the chicken and egg problem where nobody wants to address the real
problem an everyone is going around giving superficial solutions.

~~~
ucaetano
Student loans are only a problem to students doing one or more degrees in
low-2nd and 3rd tier schools with few job market prospects.

The rate of student loan defaults is actually inversely proportional to the
amount owed.

~~~
thewhitetulip
I don't say that student loans aren't getting refunded, I am saying that you
need to take a loan to study. That's the problem.

------
0xFFC
What they mean by high tech specifically ? Android dev, web dev, etc qualifies
as high tech job?

------
perpetualcrayon
I think not only do we need to be thinking about getting people "prepared"
with new skills, but also about smooth lateral movement across industries.

In a lot of cases these are probably viewed as the same thing but, for
example, I would ask: When was the last time a Senior Java Developer was a
candidate for a Senior FrontEnd Web Developer position?

I think the future is going to be a lot less about being hired for "jobs" with
"companies". Instead it's going to be substantially more about "projects"
being done by "groups / organizations". The groups / organizations being
assembled / disassembled with high frequency.

------
Chiba-City
Start with basic observations. Tool acquisition is not tool mastery. Tool
mastery does not mean jobs for or at Google. Janitors are not getting IPO
payouts for lives of leisure. Cold war coastal higher education, city living
and corporate trading prowess have drained many interior communities of their
best brains throughout decades of deindustrialization and deskilling.

Some better nerds here can hardly imagine perfectly smart people who cannot
yet touch type or turn a spreadsheet into a group calendar. Our miraculous
simple decision support tools are still opaque to majorities of Americans.
Only Americans far outside Google will create value to create jobs. That takes
planning for any possible sweat equity or financial investment. We have
generations of people to train with tools. The boy genius prizes for ever new
tooling are not really separate concerns. Cultivating and harvest new boy
geniuses from the field is expensive. They don't exactly grow on trees.

Google like Apple or Microsoft had to discover and rediscover their own
relevance. They cultivate their markets now with intensive growth. This is a
good move.

------
swendoog
Everyone hates a cynic so bring on the downvotes:

I'm going to warn everyone of what's coming.

Software engineer jobs will be blue collar, $40-$60k a year jobs, by 2030.

The HUGE push from government, and private business, to fill the PERCEIVED
lack of engineers, will come to fruition around that time.

Make no mistake about it - there is NOT a lack of skilled engineers right now.
There is a disinterest among business to pay higher, and higher salaries.

If you are a SWE right now, save your money, and invest your time into
improving YOURSELF. Have a backup plan, because I promise you, the good times
are coming to an end sooner than you think.

~~~
cromwellian
"PERCEIVED lack"? Doesn't the fact that salaries are sky rocketing essentially
disprove your point? Why are the salaries getting pushed higher and higher?
Because demand for SWEs is outstripping supply.

This to me looks like the same kind of privileged outlook that other
professional guilds like the AMA desire. Do you want cheaper healthcare, or
doctor compensation to keep going up? Hey, letting nurse practitioners take on
some of the load is "flooding the market with n00bs"

This just seems like protectionism by another name.

Yes, the good times for software engineering will come to an end. I'm a
software engineer, this will affect me. But the question is, do I have a
natural god given right to have a ballooning salary every year, while fighting
attempts to increase labor supply that might cut that growth rate?

~~~
vkou
> Yes, the good times for software engineering will come to an end. I'm a
> software engineer, this will affect me. But the question is, do I have a
> natural god given right to have a ballooning salary every year, while
> fighting attempts to increase labor supply that might cut that growth rate?

Does our owner class have a natural god-given right to a 6% return on their
investment every year, for doing nothing?

They are certainly spending their energy on fighting attempts to spread the
economic pie around. We need solidarity, not shaming people for protecting
their means to make a living.

~~~
WalterBright
> Does our owner class have a natural god-given right to a 6% return on their
> investment every year, for doing nothing?

You, too, can become an "owner class" by opening an online trading account and
buying stocks. Commissions are often under $10 for a trade.

~~~
vkou
Since I wasn't born into money, or won the lottery, I can't live off that 6%
return for another two decades.

Either way, even if I can, the guy who makes my morning coffee can't, and
never will be.

~~~
WalterBright
> for another two decades

I.e. start investing and in 20 years you'll be financially independent. Sounds
good to me to be living in the US.

> the guy who makes my morning coffee can't

I talked with a guy once who told me he "can't". He was driving a new car, and
the payments, rent, etc., added up to more than his income. I suggested he
sell the car, buy a car he can afford to pay cash for, and start investing.

He partially did take my advice. He sold the car, bought one he could pay cash
for, and then blew the extra income on some other luxuries. Of course, then he
still was in "can't" territory.

My current car I bought used 25 years ago and still drive every day. It costs
me practically nothing.

------
s73ver_
How many of these grants are going outside of already tech heavy areas? How
many of them are going to coal country, or to the Rust Belt?

It's great that they're doing this, but unless they're going to be doing it in
the places that are hurting, not much is going to change.

------
polishTar
Better link: [https://blog.google/topics/causes-community/opportunity-
for-...](https://blog.google/topics/causes-community/opportunity-for-
everyone/)

------
twoquestions
Stated differently, "Google commits $1B to flood the market with newbie tech
workers, and to grow future client businesses".

The cynic in me can clearly see their interest in the effects of this grant,
but thinking on it more that interest might serve us better in the long run. I
just hope the community gains from that money before it makes it's way back to
Google.

~~~
Apocryphon
For a long time the anti-H1B segment has been critical of Big Tech for trying
to undercut American tech workers instead in investing in citizens. So now
they're investing in the wrong citizens?

~~~
UncleMeat
I swear, many of the HN crowd seems like they'd be happiest if they were the
only developer on the planet.

~~~
vkou
You should ask taxi drivers about how they feel about millions of people
getting paid peanuts to drive for Lift and Uber.

Or lawyers about how they feel about millions of people with law degrees
unable to find work as lawyers.

Or Physics PHDs about how they feel driving a cab^wUber.

Or musicians, who live off selling t-shirts.

Why do you think supply and demand does not apply to the IT labour market?

~~~
UncleMeat
Because labor generates additional demand. There isn't fixed demand for
software engineers that persists across all time. The demand for engineers has
grown over the last fifty years.

------
wehere1
always remember: the industry's involvement in CS education has less to do
with philanthropy and goodwill than it does with lowering the cost of labor
over the long term

~~~
cm2187
High labor cost just because of skill shortage may be gratifying and lucrative
for the happy few but is not an efficient allocation of resources for the
wider society. Increasing the skill supply is the right thing to do.

Replace "developer" with any other profession to convince yourself.

~~~
baursak
The only people who care about efficient allocation of resources for the
society are socialists and academics. Certainly CEOs with multi-million dollar
annual compensations don't think they're contributing to allocation
inefficiencies by negotiating their compensations. Neither do doctors and AMA,
who we all love and respect. Neither do military leaders or politicians, who
demand half the country's budget for military expenditures. Etc, etc.

Increasing the skill supply is the right thing to do if you're Google
stakeholder, or broadly speaking, a capitalist. It's much more questionable if
you're in the labor force.

~~~
sounds
Or, more bluntly:

Google should pay high salaries. The market will supply the skilled workers
when the salaries are high enough to attract more workers.

(Google does pay high salaries. If they want more skilled workers, raising
their salaries is the most efficient way to get that outcome.)

~~~
s73ver_
Well, it's more than just pure salary. I'm sure if they changed things so that
one did not have to work crazy hours while there, they could get away with
paying less.

~~~
orangecat
You don't have to work crazy hours at Google. At least at the teams I was on;
there were occasional reports of lousy conditions in some groups (e.g. Nest),
but they were very much the exception.

------
Top19
As much as something like this is appreciated, the history of job retraining
programs are filled with over promises, under-commitments, and disaster,
stretching back to the 1970’s.

There is no need to train more CS people. There is a need for recovering the
“grand bargain” between employers and employees that began in the 1940’s and
was slowly unwound beginning in the mid 1970’s.

The reason that business schools exist on university campuses in the first
place is because they were supposed to train business leaders to aspire to the
same ideals as a university: knowledge, development of character, the search
for truth to create a better word, etc.

If people knew how much harder they work today for fractions of a chance at a
reward that is now 3x expensive, gestures like this would be seen for what
they are, a band-aid in place of a tourniquet.

BTW if you’re upper-middle class, know life is now pretty good, but your
economic base is being slowly eroded as well and there will be a time when
your economic fall will come.

*- - - -

EDIT: Keep in mind, this is the same company whose head of HR (Laszlo Bock)
literally says he does not believe training helps at all develop people. This
sounds like I am taking him out of context but I kid you not. I wish I was at
home so I could find the physical page numbers, but he says it in his book
“Work Rules!” from a couple of years ago. It’s at the beginning of the chapter
where he talks about the New York Yankees.

~~~
aswanson
That "grand bargain" is over, and never returning. The economy is global,
cutthroat and changes on a dime. Every man/woman is in a mercenary situation
today, whether they're aware of this fact or not.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
If this was the case, then why wouldn't Google just tap this global labor
reserve instead of training people? Why is the federal reserve expecting
inflation to rise as unemployment continues to be low?

~~~
aswanson
"If the sky is so clear and the sun is shining, how could there possibly be a
hurricane approaching...?"

~~~
dv_dt
Those of us who depend upon exchanging our labor to survive are in a mercenary
situation (some in better situations than others). But I think it's a stretch
to equate it to a physical source of scarcity, but maybe I'm taking your
analogy too far...

------
SadWebDeveloper
So this means there are new open positions for foreigners/H1B at Google?

~~~
walshemj
No its about training US workers - they have seen the anger / nativisam
stirred up by the last election and are trying to improve their pr

~~~
SadWebDeveloper
And implied that US workers aren't on par with the rest of the world,
therefore it will help them get better _in the future_ but meanwhile, while
the next generation of tech-savvy US workers appear they will need skilled
foreigners working at google for at least the next 10 years. If my predictions
are correct, seems a good time to apply for Google at this moment.

------
paxy
Prediction – people will still bitch and whine, as always.

~~~
craftyguy
Wow, literally a self-fulfilling prediction!

------
ehudla
Someone cares to try to put this story in political perspective?

------
slosh
How about a billion to high tech trains

------
nerpderp83
This is absolutely lovely news.

------
Animats
Actually spending $10 million. Talking about $1 billion over 5 years.

------
Mc_Big_G
Before you go patting Google on the back, consider this. They stole money from
engineers by colluding with the other big players to keep engineering salaries
artificially low and now want to use some of that money to train more workers
to create more supply which lowers salaries even further.

------
ovrdrv3
mkdir plan

git add $1B

git commit -am "train US workers for high tech jobs"

git push

(please PR for a better git joke)

------
leggomylibro
Great, it's about time that these companies stepped up to bring more people
into their workforce. It's ridiculous to complain to legislatures about skills
shortages without stepping up to bring your own resources to bear on the
issue.

Still, as nice as giving money to other organizations is, it would even better
to see them actually training people from a diverse variety of backgrounds.
They're not exactly taking any responsibility here.

~~~
praxulus
>It's ridiculous to complain to legislatures about skills shortages without
stepping up to bring your own resources to bear on the issue.

Do you hold people who want to fight climate to the same standard? Is it
ridiculous for an individual to support a carbon tax without voluntarily
buying carbon credits on their own?

~~~
leggomylibro
Well it depends on the means of the individual, but basically yeah. I'd expect
someone with a decent amount of disposable income to purchase renewable energy
from their utilities company or a 3rd party. It's not crazy expensive compared
to other discretionary expenses, and it's a pretty clear ethical obligation in
the current times.

Maybe Yellowstone will erupt in 80 years and it won't matter, but on balance,
it's a no-brainer.

------
2close4comfort
They just want cheap labor! There is nothing altruistic about Google and their
commitment to their fellow man. They merely want children (teach a kid scratch
so they can be enslaved for a lifetime!) and people in lower income countries
to take up where the people here need more inorder to live here. And if Google
were to be honest they need people who want to live in the bay area and are
willing to enslave themselves to do it! And now that the flow of new blood was
cut off now Google again needs fresh souls...so they are coming for anyone who
can type, and wants to move the CA and live in their Hooverville.

~~~
perpetualcrayon
I say let them attempt to improve peoples' lives.

I doubt it will make you feel any better, but I don't think there will be a
place in the world for a private company the size of Google (comparatively
speaking).

Imagine a world where individuals will be starting up companies in their
garage with a scale equivalent to Fortune 50 companies of today.

------
gaius
Great! They won't need to offshore any more work! Or rely on exploiting H1B's!

~~~
cletus
There is exploitation of H1B workers but it's not at the hands of the tech
giants. Pretty much all the abuse of foreign workers on visas I've seen is at
the hands of these Indian bodyshops that, given the long wait for green cards
for those born in India, such jobs are tantamount to indentured servitude.

Speaking as a Xoogler who was on a visa and got a green card sponsored by
Google, from my own experience I and others in my position were treated very
well.

