
Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech - jmsflknr
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/
======
segmondy
My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery
while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies
have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once
you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions,
beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the
losing side and don't learn to accept it, you will find yourself miserable.
Accept it and solider on to change if you truly believe in your fight.

There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable,
back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun
or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying
to be maimed or worse loose their life. Dealing with stupid harassment and
constant abuse from their boss who makes a $1 more above minimum wage.

Folks out there are really going through it. It doesn't mean that we don't
have tough challenges in tech, but we have become spoiled and a bunch of
whiners. The majority of the population are outside the industry and they roll
their eyes when these type of articles come out and these incessant complaints
don't endear them to us.

~~~
high_derivative
My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not
interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work
(people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their
families (people >30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just
have additional new priorities in a young family).

Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's performance
really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and
its resources as a means to further their political goals.

They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual
working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being
incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in
HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is
interpreted as some larger act of "violence" against them.

What I didn't/don't understand is why management allowed that to happen.
Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of
the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.

I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a
demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what's naturally
right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you
credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.

~~~
joelx
I agree completely with this.

Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist
Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering
your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while
still alive.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
Yes and no, some of the projects mentioned in the article, like Project
Dragonfly, involved developing the kind of censorship tools necessary to prop
up dictators like the ones you mentioned.

That’s not whining imo, that’s standing up to exactly the breed of ‘True Evil’
you define here.

We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM’s second
largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative to not let something
like that happen again.

We should all be disturbed that the executive team at Google felt that Project
Dragonfly was appropriate.

~~~
andonisus
My opinion is that someone is going to be providing that service, so it might
as well be me (better the devil you know than the devil you don't).

~~~
komali2
Exactly the reasoning used by arms dealers.

~~~
andonisus
The world is not absolute. It would be nice to be able to take an absolutist,
moral stance against things I disagree with. But as I get older, I realize
that one must be able to compromise and see in shades of grey.

~~~
komali2
Compromise is important, and one doesn't need to go the way of the Sith, but
giving in on your morals is pretty much what leads to problems in this world.

~~~
andonisus
I agree! But also being able to compromise so that you still can wield
influence is important. For example, if an American company (such as Google)
does not fill the need for this service for China, that leaves the door open
for other countries to fill this void -- countries which America might not
want to be furnishing this service.

------
notacoward
> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled
> geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

That statement needs to be challenged. The Montessori method might be great at
small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way
to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. Yes, empowering employees
is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or
radical innovation is good too. OTOH, having _every single engineer_ haring
off in random directions all the time might not be so great. I believe this
boundary-less freedom to focus on whatever's most interesting and ignore
everything else is why issues like privacy and social impact have been
routinely shortchanged at companies like Google and Facebook. We've seen where
that leads. (It leads to some characteristic technical problems too but that's
not the topic right now.)

"Don't be evil" and similar promises don't fulfill themselves. At FAANG scale,
sticking to such promises requires a certain amount of focus and discipline
_every working moment_ , not just a few people spending more time on internal
groups/lists than doing technical work. I know that's going to rub most
employees at those companies the wrong way, but that doesn't make it untrue.

P.S. I work at one of those companies. I do know how they work, and I'm not
criticizing for criticism's sake. I'm trying to get at what I think is
necessary for me and my colleagues to better ourselves and do things we can be
proud of.

~~~
throwaway77384

      That statement needs to be challenged. 
      The Montessori method might be great at small scale in an educational context, but that doesn't mean it's a great way to run a company worth most of a trillion dollars. 
      Yes, empowering employees is good. Yes, having a few "coddled geniuses" to drive basic science or radical innovation is good too. 
      OTOH, having every single engineer haring off in random directions all the time might not be so great.
    

Your whole post seems to be very reasonable, but there is one thing I'd like
to mention, which is that you will immediately run into problems if you have
rigid standards for what constitutes a "genius" and who is part of the just
"the normal engineers". A "genius" can't very easily be defined. Historical
examples like Mozart or Einstein make it easy to think that there are only a
few geniuses whose talent is immediately entirely obvious to everyone, and the
rest of society is merely average.

That is not true. To bring that kind of potential about in many people who
thought they were not geniuses prior to encountering an environment where
their skills are fostered is one of the greatest advantages a company could
possibly have.

Some might just call this "good HR", or "caring about people". I have worked
in companies where there were people who truly cared about their employees and
about their strengths (and who could not afford the obvious "geniuses") and
who thus almost "created" these geniuses. I know there are many ways in which
I am simplifying this and I know that no company should try to employ purely
geniuses. I have worked in a small team of six "very, very advanced" people in
their respective fields. It was basically impossible to create any kind of
cohesion. I would suspect it would be similar with other teams of "geniuses".
Maybe not, but I think you are overall right in what you say, but it is so
incredibly important to understand that the lines between a "genius" and a
"run of the mill" developer may be more blurred than most people expect.

~~~
notacoward
Fair point. To clarify, I think of "coddled genius" as a good-to-have _role_ ,
not a descriptor of a person. In fact, I think it's even better if multiple
people rotate through that role. A permanent division between "people who
play" and "people who work" (as I put it at one job) is bad for both groups,
and for the product/company. The point I was making was that not everybody
should be in that role, but I neglected to point out that it shouldn't be too
limited either. Both the percentage of people in that role and the standards
to which they are held (different than those in more traditional product-
oriented roles) should be _intentional_ , not the result of applying a
universal culture or management style more appropriate to an elementary school
than to a place of business.

------
pcstl
I find it somewhat hypocritical that this article describes Google as a safe
haven of dissent and open discussion, while it is pretty unanimous that
expressing even slightly right-of-center opinions at Google will have you
ostracized and possibly fired.

~~~
compiler-guy
Google circa 2010 and Google circa 2019 are very different companies.

~~~
bogwog
The article did a good job of explaining the events that led to that.
Basically just a bunch of internal controversies involving shit-slinging,
leaks, and basically what has become the standard for internet discussion in
the past few years have combined to erode the trust and protections employees
had to openly discuss even their far-right/left beliefs without retaliation.

------
sudosteph
I sense there are certain parallels between this article and the one recently
on HN about the challenges at Yale. As an "outsider" to both Yale and Google,
I admit the problems in both cases seem over-wrought, but I can't deny that
the people involved feel very emotionally invested so I am still curious to
see what can be learned.

Both articles present insider perspectives lamenting how internal conflicts
within highly exclusive organizations were pushed into the public sphere
through leaking and protesting. Both organizations are experiencing
disconnects between people in various roles (admins vs students, execs vs
employees) and a sense of loss of culture.

So my thoughts are:

\- is this a generational culture shift? Less trust in internal systems and
better access to outside publishing means young people aren't making a real
effort to stay within the system to discuss?

\- is "internal transparency" an impossible thing at scale in the modern era?
Keeping things internally private doesn't work because you only need one bad
actor out of thousands to leak everything?

\- are the culture of Yale and Google really that special, or were they just
really well marketed? Why are people so personally and emotionally invested in
these organisations? Are all big orgs like this now, or were the cultures at
these particular spots just well evolved for loyal following?

~~~
skybrian
We're reading about them because they are the center of attention and they
leak.

But I also have a sense that lots of things that were considered positives in
the early days of the Internet have become negatives, or are simply taken for
granted. For example, growth was once considered good, but now it's bad.
Giving services away for free is ho-hum at best and maybe suspicious. Trying
to fix Internet problems is greeted with deep suspicion based solely on who is
doing it. Personalization was once good, but now it's bad. And so on.

That's inevitably going to result in a different internal culture at an
Internet company than back in the days when Google's search engine first
appeared on the Internet and got near-universal respect.

------
LMYahooTFY
As of now the most popular comments here seem to decry the notion that anyone
making six figures could ever relay an experience of misery. This is utterly
non-sensical.

The article, to me, seems to imply that perhaps working at a radically free
corporation doesn't yield pure bliss and benefit.

Is there some reason this article needs to balance out any possible misery
with all the luxurious amenities Googlers enjoy? Does anyone actually think
that it's not possible someone could have a miserable experience at Google?

~~~
buboard
> that it's not possible someone could have a miserable experience at Google?

I think that. Google employees are at the top of the pyramid, so if the
article was true, they would have left for an almost identical salary nearby.
The fact that they don't means that either google pays way above its direct
competitors (it doesnt) or these people are outright lying, and their actions
speak louder than 12k words

~~~
everythingswan
Fong-Jones, Whittaker, and Stapleton did resign as per this story.

~~~
lizthegrey
hi, I'm at honeycomb.io now, and having a blast! :)

------
mark_l_watson
Wow, that was a fun read - a reminder why I support Wired with a digital
subscription.

I have some sympathy for Google, as flawed as they sometimes might be. I base
this on experience working as a contractor at Google and also having just
retired from a job managing a deep learning team at a large financial
institution. Both companies seemed (to me) to make a large effort in
diversity, ethics, etc. training and a general atmosphere of fairness.

That said, problems occur in large organizations. Really off topic, but I
dream of a world with smaller corporations, a more decentralized world. I
don’t know how we are going to get there.

------
deskamess
I have a feeling Amazon would not tolerate this level of push back to products
and business strategy (and they have the corresponding "don't care"
reputation!).

Google management seems to give in so much and if you are a GOOG shareholder
you could have a real case here (re the Maven project). [Disclosure: I am not
a GOOG shareholder]. Management has to keep the interests of the company at
heart - they are legally bound to do whats best for the company. One could
argue that getting involved in AI+Warfare is bad for the image of the company,
but the revenue it brings in as well as getting an entry into defense dollars
would be a huge benefit for its nascent cloud division.

Whether you like it or not, employees will have personal opinions and it is
great to accommodate their expression of such opinions. However, as a public
company, GOOG management has legal obligations too. As conflicts with and
demands of management increase, and it impacts revenue, we shall see top level
management excuse themselves from interacting this openly with employees.

Unfortunately, more open and liberal companies are also more susceptible to
such attacks and lawsuits when compared to a corp that is more authoritarian.

~~~
compiler-guy
For a company like Google, which is highly dependent on getting and keeping
highly skilled tech workers, "What is good for the company" often involves
keeping employees happy.

Google got to where it is by aspiring to have the best working conditions
available, and much of its talent came for that reason. You can build
companies other ways--just like Amazon did--but changing that deal out from
under the employees who came based on that deal would be quite disruptive and
result in turmoil during the transition.

Would things be better for the company coming out the other side of such a
transition? Hard to say, but the costs would be quite high.

~~~
mrzacarias
Yup, I think that summarizes what is happening there

------
serioussecurity
Everyone here seems to think that if you have a good job you shouldn't be
involved in labor organizing, because everyone else has it worse?

Isn't the point that everyone should be organizing because working conditions
everywhere are much worse than they could be, and the organizing at Google is
a case study for how organizing works at one particularly unusual company?

~~~
ummonk
Furthermore, those who have a good job are the most empowered to organize
because they don't have to worry about how they will put bread on the table.

------
andrew_
It's disappointing that the author didn't take the opportunity to choose
language that didn't provide a distinct slant to the article. An objective
tone would have been totally achievable and this would've been marked as a
fairly good summation of a rather tumultuous few years for the giant.

~~~
humanrebar
But half-credit for the summary of Demore's views. It was surprisingly even
handed about that other than saying he thought women were per se neurotic.

Tonally, it is telling that some personalities had descriptions of their
emotional states (from what source?) while others only had their actions and
opinions described.

~~~
manfredo
One key misrepresentation:

> In the memo, Damore wrote that hiring practices aimed to increase diversity
> “can effectively lower the bar” at Google.

Damore wrote that Google "...lowered the bar _by reducing the false negative
rate_." Unsurprisingly, almost every news outlet chopped off the last 6 works
of the sentence.

------
JeremyBanks
The comments here, paraphrased: those entitled tech they don’t know how much
better they have it than people under oppressive governments, how _dare_ they
use their position to try to prevent their companies from helping oppressive
governments!

------
kaitai
Lots of folks here are complaining there's no TL;DR, and I find that many of
the comments (including my previous comment here) are essentially irrelevant
to the article & simply rehashing the same old things we always talk about on
HN... getting to be like old married people here....

So here's my TL;DR, in an effort to refocus the conversation to what I think
is interesting about the article.

* First, the article does not discuss personal misery at all, so if you're talking about rich people whining about their problems, notice you're in old-married-people conversation mode, having an irrelevant yet comfortable and reassuring conversation.

* The article is long and has a broad arc, contrasting "don't be evil" with 1) Google's steps and missteps in China, 2) Google's tensions with the US government, and 3) Google's controversies over sexual harassment payouts and the Damore memo (HN's favorite!).

1 & 2) The article alternates employee walkouts over the Trump travel ban
(tension with US gov), the initial entry into the Chinese market (tension with
the employees and the US gov), the exit from the Chinese market (Google
employees in China sad, US employees joyful), the Maven project (working for
US Dept of Def, trying to downplay it to employees), the political backlash
for dropping Maven (US Gov: Google is evil & unpatriotic), and the Dragonfly
project for bringing Google back to China (unpatriotic like I said right?).

* The geopolitical push and pull is discussed in terms of employee opinions and government opinions. The harassment and diversity issues are discussed in terms of employee opinions and media and internet opinions/doxxing/etc. The larger idea is to compare the internal and external forces pushing on Google and Alphabet's C-suite and examine where they're going.

So. Do you think the comparison of internal activism re: Dragonfly & Maven to
internal activism re: the harassment payouts is warranted? To what extent
should Google be following the lead of its employees, and how should it do
that when employees disagree? Do capitalism and "not being evil" fundamentally
conflict?

~~~
humanrebar
The only thing the article conspicuously omits is that the controversies were
regularly hashed out on HN, Reddit, etc. A Martian reading the article might
assume the controversy mostly stayed on Google internal platforms and right-
wing corners of the internet. As you point out, that was clearly not the case.

------
seren
This is the most shocking part

> “the only way to deal with all the heads of the medusa is to no-platform all
> of them.”

Shouldn't it rather be the heads of the hydra ?

~~~
waqf
Gorgons have snakes growing from their hair and presumably that's what's being
referred to (though I agree that the author of the quote is probably
confused).

But "the medusa" is also an error at another level, because one should write
either "Medusa" or "the gorgon". Medusa was the name of a specific gorgon.

------
peterwwillis
> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled
> geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

A cute meme that people like to repeat because it 'sounds right', not really
accurate. Gmail was someone's pet project, Earth was purchased, and Translate
was a boring statistical analysis program for 10 years. I mean, really, how
"wild" does your mind have to be to write a crappy CRUD app or design an
algorithm?

~~~
Traubenfuchs
To me, Google Maps/Earth seems to be one of the most advanced web apps in the
world.

Gmail and Translate are, indeed, not extremely exciting.

~~~
jcheng
At the time Gmail was introduced, it's hard to overstate how groundbreaking
and influential it was. Totally raised the bar for web apps everywhere by
making effective use of XHR, which at that time was hardly known even to web
developers. An absurdly large amount of storage space (1GB when Hotmail was
10MB, IIRC?), fast and effective search. There's a reason Google was the most
loved and respected company in tech for years, and IMHO Gmail was a huge part
of that.

~~~
peterwwillis
But does it really take a coddled genius whose mind runs wild to develop a
modern web app and give it lots of storage space? Or was it just a cool idea
that a team of regular-old software developers decided to implement?

~~~
jcheng
Lots of teams of regular-old software developers have done cool stuff over the
years, but in this case, it happened to be a coddled genius. At least that is
the story we've consistently been told over the years.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit)

I'm pretty sure there were plenty of geniuses on the Hotmail team at the time,
too--maybe they weren't being coddled enough in the Ballmer era! ;)

------
molteanu
Read the 1st part. Didn't understand a thing.

What is this article about, anyway?

~~~
Traubenfuchs
> What is this article about, anyway?

Privileged people making lots of of money acting like spoiled kids despite
having limitless alternative options.

~~~
molteanu
Got it. Skiping it.

Thanks for the tldr.

------
maynman
It's worth a watch if you haven't seen Joe Rogan's podcast with James Damore.
I think it adds some much needed context:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo)

------
buboard
This is so sad. You should guys all quit in protest. You deserve better than
this. I mean it, goo

~~~
java-man
goo is listening!

------
franczesko
In my opinion, this is why workplaces should be neutral and no personal
ideologies or beliefs shouldn't be allowed to be expressed to keep it that
way.

------
MGzBezycyjEQrk5
lesson learned: large companies can afford to be wasteful.

google can afford to fight all these ideological battles and employee spats
because of their large revenue. If they weren't raking in so much dough, I
doubt they would be willing to humor employees complaints on the scale cited
in Wired (an entire social network for employees and supported by the
company?). I'm sure similar incidents occur at other large corporations. They
definitely happen at mid-sized companies, albeit with lower intensity. working
in HR for google must be quite the safari

~~~
skybrian
Well, yes, and there are lots of other things Google can do because they have
so much money, like their various research projects.

But remember that Google+ was a company-wide initiative intended to compete
with Facebook, which is kind of a big deal. Yes, they had lots of money to
throw at it, but it was for a purpose.

The internal version was originally for testing. (Also, the business version
of Google+ is still a product as part of G suite.)

------
izzydata
I don't think "misery" isn't the right word here.

------
ryanmercer
There's algae in the tube feeding the ice machine in my company's break room,
multiple wet ceiling tiles all year long, signs telling us to literally not
wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom, shared desks with other shifts, a
constant smell of mold and I make 35k a year, no chance of promotion at all
without taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get a 4-year degree
in literally anything, at a rabidly anti-union company, in a state where an
employee can basically fire you for no reason at all.

Man, I wish I had the problems of these Goooglers.

Sure, sexism and racial discrimination is bad bad bad, but this happens at the
vast majority of employers. If I and/or my co-workers tried to do one of these
walkouts, security would be there when we came back to take our badges and
tell us to leave or the police would be called.

I find it _extremely_ difficult to feel any sympathy for these folks because
they have it much better than I do, and extremely better than millions of
people in the United States and billions of people worldwide.

A cursory Google search (ha, maybe I should have used Bing) on-site
physicians, paid PATERNITY leave, death benefits, leave of absence to pursue
education, having Google on your CV probably helps tremendously if you try and
get a job somewhere else, Google allows employees to spend 20% of their time
pursuing a project that they are passionate about, apparently Googlers can
bring their pets to work, have access to all sorts of other benefits like
shuttles/food/recreation that simply do not exist for the vast majority of
people in the world.

The lifter in my work chair has been broken for years now, it has recently
started tilting to the left as well, it is 12 years old. Our windows 10
upgrade removed a functional calculator, something I use every few minutes,
requiring me to either buy a calculator or use Google for work-related maths.
There are 3 microwaves and 2 small refrigerators for 100~ employees. In the
winter the upper 60's are not uncommon in the office with the upper 70's and
lower 80's not uncommon in the summer with business casual dress mandatory.
Need to go to the doctor, be prepared to at least take a half day which you
have to request well in advance most of the time with about a month and a half
blacked out every year where no one can take time off. Need a personal day,
well you better fake sick and call in and if you call in 2-3x in a 6 month
period you're now on their radar and risking verbal warning territory.

I'm sorry, but I just can't feel sorry for them.

~~~
kace91
> signs telling us to lierally not wipe our feces on the walls in the bathroom

This is not like the other details. What the hell caused that?

~~~
cogman10
> I make 35k

I can only imagine the people this company employees if they are spending 35K
on a software developer. 90% sure the majority of staff is making minimum
wage.

With such low wages, you can't expect quality.

~~~
ryanmercer
> if they are spending 35K on a software developer.

You do realize not every human being on the planet, or even HN, is a software
developer, right?

>90% sure the majority of staff is making minimum wage.

I make 65% of my state's annual HOUSEHOLD income and 2.3x minimum wage... this
is a problem with HN, many of you make 6 figure salaries and assume that
everyone is a software engineer making 6 figure salaries.

The 2017 nominal median income per capita was $31,786 in the United States.

~~~
huseyinkeles
I actually somehow expect everyone on HN to be a software
developer/enterpreneur/anything-else-tech-related

Am I wrong with my assumption?

~~~
whamlastxmas
There's homeless people on HN. I've seen them post their stories before.
There's all types.

------
lunias
happiness = reality - expectations

~~~
OrgNet
if you expect reality, you have zero happiness?

~~~
lunias
Yes, but I interpret it as: you'd be content; no positive or negative change
in happiness.

Of course it's just a pseudo equation.

~~~
OrgNet
so if you expect more then reality, you have negative happiness because you
will never get it?

~~~
lunias
Yes, but not because you'll never get it. It's just that at that moment the
reality of your situation is different than what you expected (in a negative
way).

------
irinai13
Tried to read article. It's long and meandering, lede is buried. Is there a
TLDR somewhere?

------
tumetab1
Notice, this is long article. Around 12 000 words or 30 pages.

~~~
notacoward
Does Wired even have editors? Any editor who's not incompetent beyond belief
would have told Nitasha Tiku that it's not necessary to include _every single
detail_ from three years' worth of notes. In fact, the excess verbiage makes
it less impactful than it could have been. A good editor would have trimmed
this to one half or even one third of its current length, and it would have
been better without the bloat.

~~~
jcranberry
Don't be ridiculous. The New Yorker regularly has articles of this length if
not longer. It's ordinary longform journalism.

~~~
notacoward
There's nothing wrong with something being longer if the content warrants it.
Complex topics require lengthy exposition. But that requires the writer to
_write_ , to arrange and connect things into a coherent narrative. That's not
what happened here. This is a thin article, padded out to novella length with
repetition and irrelevancy. Again, it's not bad that the article exists. It
just needed a better editor.

------
nvk
What's the TL;DR?

Spend 5 min reading the first few blocks couldn't make out what's this about.

------
jorblumesea
Do Google employees understand that most people hate their jobs and you work
because you have to?

~~~
brandmeyer
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in action.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I never know how seriously to take Maslow. It resonates intuitively for some
people I guess. But he just made the theory up. There's not a lot of
scientific evidence to support it.

"In their extensive review of research based on Maslow's theory, Wahba and
Bridwell found little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described
or for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs#Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs#Criticism)

~~~
celticmusic
it would be very difficult to convince me that maslow's hierarchy is wrong.

I don't mean the specifics of the hierarchy, but the idea behind it. Sure,
maybe the specific hierarchy isn't right, but the idea that some needs have to
be satisfied before a person can contribute to other needs is absolutely spot
on. I know this from life experience. So to convince me that the underlying
idea is wrong would take a hell of a lot of evidence.

------
yourbandsucks
There's some kind of lesson here.

99% of other companies, especially big companies, do way less than Google to
accommodate social justice activists. Yet they seem to be least happy at
Google.

Buddha was onto something about human nature.

~~~
mikekchar
Can you expand on the last sentence? I don't understand how it connects with
the rest.

~~~
yourbandsucks
Desire is the root of suffering.

They've got the paychecks, the perks, and even their politics are constantly
validated. But they're not happy.

~~~
mikekchar
I hope you don't mind me riffing on this idea. I'm very much compatible with
this mindset, but in the case of those pursuing social justice, and still
suffering, I think there is something more.

I have a colleague who ran into a software design problem lately. He is
looking at all of the apparent possible options and none of them seem like
they will result in good code. He's gone on the internet to see if someone
else knows the solution to the problem, with no luck. Then he's spent time to
see if anyone has written any frameworks that solve this problem. While some
claim to have solved the problem, a purusal of the code show the cure to be at
least as bad as the the disease. What can he do?

To me, this is the same kind of problem with the same kind of result. When we
first see a problem, or instinct is to go and look for a solution. We go to
experts to find out what the answer is. We look at proven best practices in
order to find out what we need to do. Strangely, though, the advice of the
experts and the best practices often lead to situations that are at least as
bad as our original problem. Why?

The reason is that we are taking an _internal_ problem and looking for
_external_ answers. Buddha said that life is suffering. This is not to say
that we should give up and have a defeatist attitude, I think. It's more that
you just can't escape it: life is suffering. And code is bad. (In case you are
wondering just how crazy I can be, I once gave a talk in public about how code
is literally karma ;-) ).

We have to accept the suffering first (or bad code) and then start "acting
skillfully". There isn't an external answer that will solve our problems. The
guru on the mountain doesn't have the answer because they don't know what the
question is. The carefully built system does not work for our issue, because
our issue never existed when the system was built.

One of the things I've found about people pursuing social justice is that, on
average, they tend to be intelligent people. The more they pursue the justice,
and the more the society gives them leeway to do so, the more unhappy they get
-- because they discover that their answer is not matched with the problem
they are trying to solve. All of that energy has been put forward to solve the
problem and they very slowly learn that they might not have the correct
problem. Of course some people are always blind and they keep burning the
witches, even finding new witches to burn after they run out of the first
ones. However, I have found that the majority get really unhappy the farther
they progress down this road.

------
einpoklum
Utter self-delusion - either by the author, or by Google employees, or
possibly both.

Google has been evil from... well, depends on how you look at it, but if not
from Day One, then certainly by the time they started GMail. The whole point
is to maintain a vast surveillance network over as many Internet users as
possible (later also mobile phone users), to try to capture as much of what
they do. The use is for deeply personal and intrusive ads, but also for mass
government control (NSA gets copy of everything, remember), individual
government control and intervention (through subpoenas by less-secretive
agencies), and gradually - the shaping of public opinion and knowledge through
more and more targeted changes of search results and content recommendations.
And of course - nothing is ever erased, nor will it ever be.

Oh, also:

> To invent products like Gmail, Earth, and Translate, you need coddled
> geniuses free to let their minds run wild.

Google didn't invent any of this stuff. They were just able to put a lot of
compute power and storage behind it before others did.

------
chadlavi
Google doesn't even pay well enough to treat people poorly. They're wagering
an awful lot on the premise that working for Google is prestigious enough to
sustainably attract and retain talent.

Meanwhile a smaller tech startup will pay better and give you way more of a
hand in shaping the product, and maybe even not work you 80+hours a week. I'm
not sure what the appeal of the big names is for devs.

~~~
ggambetta
> Google doesn't even pay well enough to treat people poorly. [...] Meanwhile
> a smaller tech startup will pay better [...] maybe even not work you
> 80+hours a week

Having worked both at Google and at smaller tech startups, this is pretty much
the opposite of reality. I wonder where are you getting these ideas from.

~~~
chadlavi
Is google just particularly dogged about salary negotiations, then? The
numbers I've seen for someone new to the org don't impress me relative to the
competitive baseline. Maybe you have to ask way higher, or you have to come in
at a high level already?

~~~
sidibe
Where do you see significantly better salaries? You might be ignoring the
stock compensation which is basically like cash for an established stable
company like Google

~~~
andreilys
This is actually a common complaint on Blind (anonymous social networking
site).

Google seems to consistently low ball relative to other companies (Facebook,
Apple, uber, etc.)

Obviously depends on the team/role but seems like google is trying to leverage
its “prestigious brand” to pay less

~~~
chadlavi
exactly this.

