
My Google Internship - goldsborough
http://www.goldsborough.me/google/internship/2016/11/18/01-57-54-my_google_internship_/
======
Shank
I love reading accounts like this. As someone who had an internship in high
school, I'm always happy to hear what other people's experiences were going
into and out of the process. I think my immediate reaction is that Google
creates an environment that simply doesn't exist at most other places.

I interned at two companies in the defense industry. You could argue that our
experiences were different because of security, but I disagree. The
environment you described sounds like an absolute heaven: you have
challenging, fun work, and have extremely well placed and delivered benefits.
At both of my internships, the problems were hard. They weren't particularly
fun to solve so much as they "had" to be solved and I was the only one to
solve them. I got similar rewarding experiences completing tasks, though
everything I did had to be "on the clock." As soon as we stopped working, we
were expected to stop billing or move to some other task.

The offices were dull, boring, and expensive to spend time in. Your internship
had availability of food and technology that kept you happy. Neither of mine
did this. At one internship, we had a free snack room. That's it. If we wanted
to eat lunch at the cafeteria at my second internship, we could at great
personal cost. We were stuck with "hand me down" hardware that was a menagerie
of hardware pulled from random places throughout the building. If you were
given a bad keyboard on day one, too bad -- it was yours forever.

I complain like this because you had the exact opposite of the experience I
had. Your experience is an irregularity, at least compared to what I've seen.
This all comes down to culture, I think. The Google corporate culture is
modern, focused on employee happiness, and focused on diversity. Things like
getting your own hardware choices and free food go a long way to adding
goodwill, and failing to take basic measures like that shows what I consider
to be a lack of caring.

I wish more companies would copy Google on how they treat their employees and
interns. Even if it might seem a bit cheesy to go after the low hanging fruit,
employee happiness goes a long way to building a thriving, mutually beneficial
relationship between an employee and a company.

Seeing a post like this makes me feel like my internship hosts haven't cared
in the slightest. That's pretty painful, if I'm brutally honest.

~~~
edblarney
One one side: yes.

And BTW - this has nothing to do with defense industry, it's just 99% of
business is like this.

Business could do a lot more to make a more fun environment.

On the other hand ...

Google is a 'de-facto' monopoly, and they print money. They are super, super
rich, and literally have billions more than they know what to do with.

So it's easy to justify a lot of extra expenses. And these things can be
expensive.

Lastly - let's not be so naive. Much of the reason many of these things are
offered is so that you 'never have to leave the office'. 'Free lunch' was a
cold, hard, Google style calculation: the time it took to 'drive to resto and
back' was wasted time, it was cheaper to give people food than have them waste
this time.

Years ago, my friend interviewed at Google, and they lauded all the 'free
clothes' that you could take, which were often used 'the next day' as
employees 'stayed the night'. Sleeping over at the office was a relatively
common practice, and as such, there's going to arguably be some pressure to
work insane hours. Which is completely against the law. We lambast conditions
in factories in China, and just because Google workers earn a bit more does
not mean that the practice is any less problematic, when the vast majority of
the surpluses are going to 'the factory owners'.

~~~
hota_mazi
> 'Free lunch' was a cold, hard, Google style calculation: the time it took to
> 'drive to resto and back' was wasted time, it was cheaper to give people
> food than have them waste this time.

No, it's not. If it was, all companies would do it. And they would probably
just give away sandwiches and call it a day instead of setting up dozens of
gourmet cafeterias with different themes and chefs at the helm throughout
their campuses.

Google loses millions of dollars every day in free food.

Why do they do it? Because that's how the company started and even after the
IPO and the accountability that came with it, the founders stuck with their
decision to put the employees first and the shareholders second

~~~
edblarney
"No, it's not. If it was, all companies would do it."

No, this is false.

Google employees productivity, as measured in earnings/capita, is
significantly greater than most other companies.

Google does not 'lose money' on the policy, if it was a 'net loser', they
would end it.

It's effectively part of the total incentive package.

If it costs them $20/day per person, that's an extra $4K/year per person, if
it increases productivity by only 2% it's an obvious winner based on that easy
calculation alone.

Google has billions of dollars they don't know what to do with, and their
effective cost of capital is very low. Anything they can do to materially lift
output - that doesn't cost zillions - is probably worth it.

------
steven777400
I love reading accounts like this. It's fun and well written and I enjoy the
photos too.

I work in a cube farm of grey cubes on boring LoB applications. I know I'll
never be skilled enough (or, more correctly, I'll never be ambitious enough to
become skilled enough) to work at Google et al but it's really fun to sample
the experience from the outside. :)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I really hate reading people believe they aren't skilled enough or won't be
good enough to work at Google. When you realize all of the toys are part of an
extremely successful strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible,
and that Google is a huge company that has to hire thousands of people every
year, you realize that this view that Google is "the best place to work" or
that everyone who works there is a genius is silly.

While some of the most intelligent people I know work at or have worked at
Google at some point, I know just as many Googlers I would describe as
incompetent company men incapable of seeing beyond a PR line. Please don't
ever get the impression that Googlers are somehow above you, because they're
not. They're just people doing jobs.

You probably deserve more credit than you give yourself, and hey, humility is
a virtue.

~~~
munificent
> When you realize all of the toys are part of an extremely successful
> strategy to keep you at the office as long as possible

Ugh, I can't believe how often I see this repeated with zero evidence to
support it.

I work at Google. The office is a ghost town by 6:30. The work life balance on
every team I'm aware of is _great_.

Saying the perks are some underhanded strategy to keep people around hugely
insults the intelligence of the people working here or at any other office for
that matter. Do you honestly think there are people that are like, "God, I'm
miserable! I've been here 16 hours and I hate my life but I just... can't...
stop... playing foosball!" Damn you, Google, and your nefarious perks!

No, that doesn't happen.

The reality is that skilled software engineers are in very high demand and
companies compete very hard for them. Salary is part of it but perks are a
huge component. No matter how much cash you make, for eight hours of the day,
you are not spending it on fun leisure, you are at work. So companies
understand now that they have to make the workplace appealing too to keep
talent.

They also find, no surprise, that happy, stimulated people are productive,
creative people too.

> Please don't ever get the impression that Googlers are somehow above you,
> because they're not.

I totally agree.

~~~
namelezz
> skilled software engineers are in very high demand and companies compete
> very hard for them

I keep hearing this but when I ask how to identify skilled engineers things
get confused. ;)

~~~
humanrebar
It's mostly about keeping the ones you already have.

------
lambda_func
Nice writeup. My favorite part is

>> simply practiced interview questions for about three to four months, every
day, from morning till night. I then had three phone interviews around
November, which I passed.

It's interesting (& funny) to see both high schoolers and experienced people
spend similar amount of time (~several months) practicing for these types of
technical interviews.

~~~
rubicon33
What it should be, is sad. These types of questions are often very different
from actual work. The fact that you have to study or train for an interview
process specifically, is absurd. Just being qualified for the job, should
suffice.

~~~
crucifiction
Actually its good. If you study for months on interview questions to be able
to pass the interview, you have "gamed" the system to get in and will likely
be washed back out in 1-2 years depending on the mercy if your leadership
team. People who spend the night before brushing up on their CS and passing
the interview are those that actually pass (and stay and grow) and that is who
the company really wants. Its just hard to weed out people who are very
determined to game their way through.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
...or the people willing to put that much effort into "gaming" the system as
you call it are those most likely to put in the effort to succeed and thrive
on the job, and are therefore precisely who Google is looking for...

------
19guid
> It’s Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting
> against binary gendering on toilets

So if I support binary gendering on toilets, I'm not welcome at Google? Why
has it become necessary to subscribe to a particular set of political beliefs
in order to work for Silicon Valley firms?

~~~
Veelox
I don't think 19guid has a problem with using a toilet or being an asshole. I
think the question is why is dissent from specific political views looked down
upon?

I have been in Silicon Valley for almost a year now after moving from the
Midwest. I have been able to talk freely with my coworkers about some of my
conservative views. Yet when I have shared what would count as "traditional
values" on internal forums I have been on the receiving end of redicual and
name calling.

I very much would like to hear a thoughtful response on why Silicon Valley is
so unaccepting of political dissent.

~~~
danspencer
You have a good point. A friend of mine works at Yahoo and he regularly gets
emails from management encouraging everyone to show up at the Yahoo booth at
Gay Pride Parade. Sure, Yahoo wants to be at Gay Pride Parade because they
want to be seen as an open and accepting place. If Yahoo does not participate,
it looks bad because every other big company (read: Yahoo's competitors)
attends Gay Pride Parade too.

But now we have a problem. What if there are conservative employees who do not
support gay marriage rights? Should their opinions and feelings not count? If
Yahoo is an open and accepting place, then it should be just as acceptable for
a manager to send emails to employees inviting them to Straight Parade, or to
"Anti Gay Marriage" Parade. But if that were to happen, the manager would be
fired immediately.

Being against Gay Marriage rights is a political opinion, just like being FOR
Gay Marriage rights. Isn't it discriminatory that a company like Yahoo is only
allowing one opinion to be heard? In fact, isn't it problematic that Yahoo is
promoting ANY political opinion in the first place? For Yahoo to remain an
accepting and open work place, it should either have no political agenda at
all, or it should promote all political opinions equally.

~~~
rincebrain
There are several things to unpack here, but I'm going to stick to one.

The primary difference, in practice, between something like Gay Pride and
something like "Straight Pride", would be the power dynamic between the two.

Historically, and even to some extent currently, the people with more power
have been those who would be in the latter parade.

"Punching up" is what it's called when you are challenging a group more
powerful than you - "punching down" is more commonly referred to as
"bullying".

~~~
Chris2048
This is the usual story, but power is more complicated than that. "up" and
"down" assume a linear dimension.

> Historically, and even to some extent currently

Surely only the current situation matters? Why should the people now care
about the power dynamic of the past?

~~~
rincebrain
Sure, it's not necessarily one dimensional, but it also doesn't just scale in
terms of total magnitude summed across all dimensions (e.g. a bit of power in
50 axes is not comparable to the same quantity of power in one axis).

The reason to care about the dynamic of the past is that people are influenced
by the past - in particular, people's actions in the present are often based
on things that they did or that were done to them in the past.

Specifically, here, the reason to care about the past is that, even if/when we
reached a point of equilibrium, where a subset of people were no longer in a
minority of power, there would still likely be X Pride events for a while
after, because the feeling of needing/wanting such things would not go away
overnight.

~~~
Chris2048
> it's not necessarily one dimensional

Or even multidimensional. a "sum across all dimensions" doesn't make sense to
me.

We are talking about something (power) that differs across contexts,
locations, times etc. Power is as complex as our (human) social organisation,
an is not amenable to linear algebra.

> people are influenced by the past

Unless that is is a result of holding this belief; People are _never_
influenced about the past, only by their subjective, current beliefs about the
past. It would make more sense to consider what people believe now.

Marxist historical analysis has fallen out of favor for a good reason.

> would not go away overnight

Desire for power will never go away.

The "subset of people" is biased towards how you do your grouping; For
example, that I, a white man, am naturally grouped with white slavers of the
past, such that modern black Americans have something to resent me for.

Your narrative here relies on these kind of groupings in order to talk about
"a point of equilibrium" and "no longer in a minority of power" \- you need to
identify a group as the same over a period of time in order to make these
distinctions.

------
preordained
Sorry, it seems like some kind of pseudo-utopia for people who want to feel
special and intelligent all the time. People in silly spaceship themed rooms,
meditating or hacking upside down, or maybe in sensory deprivation chambers
for deep focus? It all screams: I'm entitled to coddling and acceptance--nay,
encouragement of my eccentricities--cause I'm special. I just don't know if
that's healthy or necessary, if Google is so successful in part due to this,
or despite it.

~~~
lostboys67
So you think that everyone dressing like an IBM'r in the 70's is better its
the eccentrics, hackers and od balls that often can produce the ground
breaking work

~~~
lostboys67
Never thought id get down voted on here for standing up for "hacker" culture.

And BTW one of the worlds leading IBM experts (ie IBM used to get him to give
talks ) to used to meditate in his own home made flotation tank - he one saved
a quarterly billing run that was measured in hundreds of millions.

------
danspencer
Cool article. But I always find it funny how people try to convince you that
so-and-so in their company is a big shot ("our director, the fourth highest
rank at Google, after CEO, SVP and VP"). Trust me, outside of your company,
that person is quite irrelevant. For most people, that person is just someone
working at a big company.

~~~
Bartweiss
Hey now, at least the naming hierarchy makes sense. My favorite example is
finance, where VP is such a meaningless title that Goldman Sachs argued _in
court_ that it doesn't carry any weight.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-04/goldman-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-04/goldman-
sachs-just-says-vice-president-to-be-polite)

------
HiroshiSan
Jesus christ, there is a lot of jealousy in this thread. I don't have anything
interesting to add to the conversation but I am in awe with how much you've
been able to accomplish in life already. Good job and I look forward to seeing
what else you put out in the world.

------
rifung
It's already insane that you got an internship (at Google too!) in your first
year of college, but you seem to have done extremely well there too.

Nicely done! Seems like you're well on your way to being a very successful
engineer.

~~~
popcorncolonel
And what's next in the path of a very successful engineer? 10 years down the
line? 30? 40?

~~~
pearjuice
Writing snarky comments on HN seems to work for most people.

------
chmln
Great read.

However, he lost me at

> Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting against
> binary gendering on toilets

Is it Google's business? Why should Google be involved? Why cater to 0.6% of
the population, at the expense of convenience for the 99.4%?

At my last job we had "non-binary", "all-inclusive" bathrooms. They're just
awkward. Not the stalls themselves, but having to share the bathroom with
females, who would also rather have their separate, female bathroom.

~~~
amputect
Yes, it is, but I think the implementation matters. In my building on the
Google Kirkland campus, we have men's and women's bathrooms in a few different
places, and also one place where there's 5 single-occupancy unisex bathrooms
and one mother's room. It's great! It doesn't take any space away from the
other bathrooms, and it accommodates people who are uncomfortable in the
cisgender multi-person bathrooms for whatever reason (maybe they're somewhere
in the QUILTBAG or maybe there's totally unrelated physical or psychological
reasons they prefer single-occupancy restrooms).

My understanding is that we're not trying to strike down all the barriers and
make all toilets unisex, but there definitely are people who are working to
make sure that every building has at least one of those unisex single-
occupancy bathrooms, for people who need it. It doesn't cost Googlers anything
except at most a couple of conference rooms.

~~~
chmln
Honestly, its largely a non-issue. Presenting people with choice and
accommodating e.g. mothers is common sense.

It is the fact of _protesting_ such matters at work that threw me off in the
first place. Opinions shouldn't be crammed down people's throats.

~~~
rincebrain
If the protest was about the lack of such choice, at the time, then this is
still compatible with what you're suggesting is common sense.

------
tyingq
Really well written...an interesting read.

On this though: _" On my last day, my team got me some cake and gave me some
very sweet farewell gifts, such as the potato below."_

What's with the potato? Is that some inside joke at Google?

~~~
Vexs
I think potatoes are just a joke in general. They're just... there.

~~~
Bartweiss
I think this is why Dwight Schrute owned a beet farm, also. He could have
farmed anything, but beets are just inherently _funnier_ than wheat or
soybeans.

------
ztratar
Love how they docked you for Work/Life balance. Grats on the productivity and
keep up the building. :)

------
nofugsgiven
The fine article describes exactly the environment one would expect of people
who run the worlds largest search engine but who still couldnt see a Trump
victory coming a mile away. People living in a well cocooned safe space. A
superb fit for university students.

Pretty much consolidates my view that AlphaGo was Google's IBM Deep Blue
moment ie now past their peak. Their future products and services are going to
be increasingly as distant from reality as the people themselves are, and thus
much less useful or profitable.

------
userbinator
It's good that you found it enjoyable, but something worth keeping in mind
beyond the fun-and-games atmosphere is whether you are in agreement with the
company's overall direction and goals (and the fact that you are essentially
contributing to that effort by working there); it reminds me of this article
with a very much opposing view:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7689897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7689897)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's not so much Google employees would tell you they agree with Google's
goals and direction, but that they have an incredible cognitive dissonance
about what direction that is.

Most Google engineers will tell you that Google is trying to make the world a
better place, rather than the reality that Google is trying to make incredibly
large amounts of money at the expense of anything that gets in their way.

------
kenjackson
I'm curious about the negative on work/life balance. Did they really talk
about how to improve it, or was it tongue-in-cheek?

~~~
goldsborough
Well, they did mean it for real. They didn't directly give me feedback on how
to improve it, other than "go home, man". It's a personal choice in the end :)

~~~
NamTaf
For a defined 3-month internship where your primary goal is to suck up as much
experience as possible at a young age during said internship, I think you can
give insane work hours a pass and just accept that they're making the most of
the short-term opportunity. Just don't let it become habit in a fulltime job
and you'll be sweet.

~~~
Cyph0n
Even for a 3 month period, I think 16 hours is overkill. I would say 12 hours
is the upper limit. This is just my opinion of course.

In any case, good on Google for warning people about that, especially younger
interns/employees. Some people just get into the lifestyle and end up
realizing what they lost way too late. Work isn't everything. It's important
to wind down by doing things _other than what you do at work /school_, such as
exercise, meditation, or a just developing a hobby in general.

~~~
xapata
Sometimes I like to do 16 hours one day and 0 hours the next.

------
wsh91
Hey--congrats on a really successful internship! I'm glad you had fun, and
maybe we'll see you when you've wrapped up your studies, too. :)

------
Zedmor
Read you resume. Un-fuckin-real. wow.

~~~
tedks
Geez. You weren't exaggerating.

------
alexpetralia
Incredible maturity at your age - Google does a great job at finding talent.

------
dancek
> I spent around three days on my presentation, mainly because I did it in
> LaTeX instead of PowerPoint, as any sane person would in about one tenth of
> the time.

This was the only part I could completely identify with. Perhaps even using
Google Slides would have been acceptable! But what geek could resist the
allure of Beamer... :)

------
hiddencost
The volume of people hung up on bathrooms should illustrate, to anyone on the
fence, how virulent transphobia is. Framing it as a political question rather
than a question of basic rights is quite dark.

For context, they'll have a hallway with a dozen single bathrooms. They're not
even mixing genders. But folks are so obsessed with their own fears of the
unknown that they happily jump on any excuse to deny trans personhood.

For context, trans people are less likely to be predators or violent, and much
more likely to be the victims of violent crimes.

[https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html](https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html)

------
ipince
Glad you had a good time. Any concerns about working on personal projects
using Google resources (whether or not you used their laptop, you used their
building, wifi, snacks, etc.). Wouldn't they own the IP? (if they wanted to
pursue it)

------
randartie
Kind of ridiculous IMO that Google does not extend offers before leaving the
internship. In cases like this, it really does not make sense.

~~~
goldsborough
In that midpoint form I mention there's a box you can tick if you want to do
"conversion" interviews at the end of your internship. Since I still have two
more years of uni I didn't tick that box.

~~~
atmosx
IMHO you're on the right track. Just try to get some fun while you're in the
university because you ain't gonna find that environment (parties, girls,
friends, etc.) elsewhere. Even if you do find something similar, sure as hell
won't be the same.

~~~
NamTaf
Agreed. Don't let uni just be a gateway to employment. It's also a really good
young adult experience where you can form social networks trivially easy that
will serve you well into the future. It's your last hurrah of the innocence of
no constant commitments and obligations before fulltime work too.

------
quickConclusion
Interesting, well written. Gives a window on how a corporation manages
relationships with young smart people, and the actual psychological impact it
has, the effectiveness. Thank you.

Nitpicking: "Disclaimer: All opinions expressed below are my own." ??? Who
else? How does poor legalese help your story? I swear: nobody will sue you.

~~~
goldsborough
I learnt to be very careful about anything that's about Google and not from
Google :)

------
40acres
You mentioned that you took some MIT OCW courses, did you actually do the
psets and quizzes?

~~~
goldsborough
No, I mainly used OCW to go deeper into more advanced dynamic programming and
hashing techniques. I was more involved in the Princeton courses and
especially Cracking The Coding Interview.

~~~
josepi_
Mind referencing more (all? :D) of the resources you used?

------
amelius
Instead of Google cherry-picking all of the talent out of the pool, why not
let them pay corporate taxes, so we can spend the money on education?

------
amelius
If only institutes like CERN had such good HR/recruitment techniques as
Google, this world could be a better place.

~~~
Insanity
Not sure how the experience is like as a CERN intern, but you can surely do
internships there as a student: [https://jobs.web.cern.ch/join-
us/students](https://jobs.web.cern.ch/join-us/students)

\-- If someone happens to have experience with interning at CERN, I'd love to
hear about that :-)

~~~
Bartweiss
Second hand, but the CERN interns I know were over the moon about it.

Obviously they didn't have the perks of Google because they don't have the
sheer cash flow, but they both described it as a fun and interesting place to
work, with an entertaining social side among the employees.

------
j23eima
What languages did you find yourself coding in?

~~~
goldsborough
Web stuff, Python and Go

------
i336_
I must admit I'll drown a bit if I check all the comments, so I'm not sure if
this has already been said.

IMHO, the author is playing the "I like you very much and I'm going to be
agreeable with just about everything you say and do, so you won't go wrong if
you pick me to come back" game. At least they're demonstrating they have a
good understanding of social networking.

This reads like it's supposed to be an experience review, but it's incredibly
over-positive and unbalanced/unfair. There are no real negatives mentioned. So
I can only experience it as "I want to come back very much".

That the author has gone to this extent (and only mentioned their successes)
suggests either insecurity (impostor syndome) or - likelier - fear they won't
be accepted back. The author did mention that their reviewers showed them some
instances where they went wrong, I'm wondering if this is the main reason for
this or whether it was simply the overwhelming environment.

\--

On another note, since everyone's added their opinions of actually working at
Google I might as well join in.

First of all, I took a look at the link noted in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086051)
and I don't agree with any of the points raised in there; most of that article
can be adequately explained as conspiracy theory and provocation/incitation, I
don't think the points they raise (and attempt to inflame) have much
substance.

That said, I do have some concerns of my own.

The issue that's likeliest to have the biggest practical impact for me
personally is that I have absolutely no foundation in math, due to the fact
that I was born with severe learning difficulties that I only began to
correctly identify around 18-22 and which I'm still in the process of learning
how to counter for (I'm 26 now).

This means that while I'm well-developed in more areas today than ever, math
is an area I'm so far behind on I have zero incentive to catch up because I'd
have so much foundational stuff to deal with. For example, I was at the
supermarket a few months ago basically pushing all the buttons on my
calculator as I couldn't remember what operator(s) to use to figure out how
many onions I could buy for the amount of money I had. This wasn't a cognition
problem - it was simply the fact that I am _that ignorant_ about math as a
subject.

Tackling that to get a compsci job just doesn't seem like a good use of my
time since I'll be 40 in a bit over 10 years and it may take me that long (or
longer) to catch up. Normal kids to start to learn rudimentary math concepts
around 8 or so after all. (I tried, but none of it never made any sense.)

So I definitely appreciated all these pictures, knowing I'll never be likely
to call a place like this home.

I most also admit I'm more than a little jealous at the "nearly free" store -
I could certainly do with changing my trend of having computers that are
always 10 years old (my very limited disability support pension prevents me
from legally getting a job, while diagnosis and ongoing treatment are
unbelievably expensive!). Consistently old tech is one of the major reasons I
haven't been able to springboard myself off of my pension and get a job - I've
always been incredibly fascinated with animation, the visual arts, 3D, etc,
and I'm on computers that swap like mad if I have more than 3 or 4 browser
tabs open.

Beyond these issues, there's the very tricky problem of the fact that Google
isn't a startup, and I can't say I'm too enthused by the fact that it's
generally frowned upon to want to define your own job title - I can see this
stifling a lot of innovation (Google Reader, Google Wave, etc) that isn't an
immediately apparent hit.

For perhaps obvious reasons I've grown up always looking at the long view, and
Google's corporate culture seems to have a very short attention span.

Nobody is likely to ever read this but I thought I'd leave this here as a
real-world example of why someone might not be a good fit for an environment
like Google.

If someone from Google ever wants to prove me wrong I'd be very happy to hear
about it! :D

------
edblarney
"It’s Googley to stand up for diversity and inclusion, such as protesting
against binary gendering on toilets"

This is BS.

99.99% of the world is find with the 'binary signage' on toilets, and it is
absolutely not 'anti trans' or 'anti anyone else' frankly, to do so.

BTW - this is not like a 1960's movement - you're not in the 'right side of
history' here. 'Binary Gender' is, and will always be normative, simply
because almost everyone is binary, and is fine with it. The number of people
who actually have issues with 'binary' is very, very small. Even most people
who are trans are _still_ 'binary' (!) i.e. they identify as one gender or the
other, not anything in between.

I somehow doubt that 'it's Googley' to be this, this may be a little bit of a
stretch, or 'mis-articulation' by the author.

Though I don't have a problem at all with someone who is 'anti gender binary'
(I don't really care) - I _do_ have a problem with a company that pushes
social extremism as part of their culture. It's just more evidence of the
culty behaviour at Google.

I make a hobby of studying cults. I used to go into the Scientology clinic to
'take the test' and kind of debate with them, to get an understanding of how
they are. I used to read a lot of their stuff - not for the 'knowledge' but to
grasp the nature of the organization.

These kinds of 'ideals' are actually far more about creating a coherent group,
than projecting any ideals.

Google is a good company, generally, but they do some nefarious things with
our data. One of the great things about having a 'we are morally superior'
cult, is that any decision made by Google that can feasibly be considered
unethical - won't be, using the internal logic of 'We don't do evil, so, what
we are doing cannot be evil'.

Anyhow, it takes working at several companies for a while to start to figure
this out.

~~~
tptacek
For someone who doesn't care much about toilet signage, you sure care a lot
about toilet signage.

~~~
edblarney
You misread, or I miscommunicated my statement: I don't care about 'signage'.

If Google has a practical reason to have special signage, all the power to
them.

I care about the 'social ethos unwittingly imbued on people' as a function of
an aggressive culture.

The signage is an artifact of the culture, as implied by the author it's
'Googly', i.e. 'these are the values that we must have' \- which may have
nothing to do with the workplace, but more to do with projecting ideology.

If an Atheist was required to have 'morning prayer' at a company ... would
this be acceptable? I mean, why should an Atheist care? It's just a bunch of
words that would effectively have no meaning to them? Of course, it wouldn't
be right to have 'prayer', per say, as a 'cultural requirement' unless it was
a religious org, or special in that manner. Imagine being the only one at your
company who 'doesn't do it' ... you'd be the Black Sheep surely.

Google may have an over-representation of people with gender ID issues, and
may very well just have some pragmatic solutions, like 'individual bathrooms'
that are just marked as 'bathrooms'. This seems like a rather good solution to
me, and avoids the ideological issues entirely. There's no argument needed,
anywhere. But to specifically foster 'anti gender binary ideals' as part of
the culture is wrong.

My guess is the author is projecting is own ideals onto what 'Googly' means.

Ask someone 'what Burning Man means' \- and you get 1000 different answers.
Most of them 'authoritative'. :).

~~~
idlewords
You sound like you're the one grappling with "gender ID issues".

~~~
edblarney
There are other places for trolling and ad-hominem.

Moreover, you're likely unwittingly helping me make my point.

------
tmptmp
>>For most people, this means coming to work some time between 9 and 11 AM
(breakfast ends at 10 AM) and leaving between 5 and 8 PM (dinner starts at
6:30 PM). My schedule was a little different: I came to work between 9 and 10
AM and left between 12 and 2 AM. Yes, you read that right. I spent a lot of
time in the office, to the extent that my co-workers asked me if I lived
there.

This is the kind of devotion to work/study, I wish I could emulate.
Especially, given his age, working for 8 hr on company work and then 6-8 hr on
your personal work/study without getting distracted is amazing. He should, and
he indicated would (which is good), not ignore the work/life balance.

Congrats and thanks for posting.

