
I Used to Want to Work for Google - blackhole
https://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2017/09/i-used-to-want-to-work-for-google.html
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mrguyorama
I also _used_ to want to work for Google, but for a different reason. Early in
college, I had read the original Google whitepaper from the 90's, and I had a
view of google doing lots of cool tech work and lots of open, beneficial
research. I viewed them as a positive force on the industry.

Then, senior year, I ended up flying out to California for an onsite
interview. The all day event included meeting many people for interviews,
tours, and discussions. Not a single one was doing open research, or Android
development, or anything similar.

They were all directly, or at least moderately involved, with Building and
targeting ads "better".

That shattered my world view. I had always viewed working for large companies
as a positive thing, a protective and supportive environment that could afford
to invest in employees and their future and work with them to improve lives.

Nope, every member of google was a cog to either squeeze more ad revenue out
of the world, or burn money to push their ad infrastructure into other
markets.

The amount of money Google makes is mind numbing, and it nearly all comes from
selling space on infrastructure for programs and software whose core design is
to convince you to spend money, no exception.

The amount of money spent all around me every day just to attempt to bend my
will, to convince me to spend my hard earned dollars on this or that, utterly
terrifies me.

~~~
lostmsu
> or Android development

You've got lucky. Android catches up with internal Windows dev nowadays. Last
time I met with Google engineers, they told me Android team was always on fire
because of target release dates, infinite bug backlog and other similar stuff.

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exotree
"I quit right before Windows 10 came out because I knew it was going to be a
disaster."

What? This does not make much sense. The post, as a whole, reads immaturely.
Microsoft also may have missed market opportunities, but to call the entire
company and its employees incompetent is quite the claim to make. If he truly
believes that, I fear there is no company that is moral, ethical, or full of
enough smart employees to be deemed worthy of his talent. I hope he is working
on being a capable entrepreneur, in this case.

~~~
dwightticks
Sense?! it's a Google bashing post; it'll do well here.

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flavio81
" _The problem is that there aren 't many other options. Google is evil,
Facebook is evil, Apple is evil if you care about open hardware, Microsoft is
too stupid to be evil but might at some point become evil again, and Amazon is
probably evil and may or may not treat it's employees like shit depending on
who you ask. At some point, you have to put food on the table._"

He is speaking as if there were only 4 or 5 technology companies working for
in the _whole world_.

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osteele
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are the “Ivy League” companies.
They are high ROI, you will work with a selective group of peers, these peers
will remain an important part of your network after you “graduate”, and
putting Apple etc. on your resume will make you eminently hirable or
foundable.

I know this list of companies from constant press exposure. I know this list
of benefits from having gone to Apple from my (state) college, seeing the
effect this has had on my career and opportunities, and comparing experiences
with colleagues who went to name-brand schools.

Is there a comparable list for non-profits and social purpose and benefit
organizations?

If someone wants to maximize their earnings, peer quality, technical
challenge, and impact, they know where to turn. If they want to maximize their
social impact instead of earnings, while still working on challenging problems
with quality peers, the mainstream and technology media aren't giving them
this guidance. Is there a guide for this?

IWBNI the decision process for working on positive impact projects were
_easier_ than deciding to work for profit, given that one has to take a salary
hit to do the former. (And maybe it is, and I just don't know where to advise
that someone look.)

“There's a reason they call it compensation.”

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eridius
> _Apple is evil if you care about open hardware_

This seems like a really weird stretch, included to justify the narrative of
the "big 5" being evil. Apple not caring about open hardware isn't _evil_.
That's kind of like saying Starbucks is evil because they don't care about
non-coffee-based energy drinks.

> _Microsoft is too stupid to be evil but might at some point become evil
> again_

This is less of a stretch, but still pretty weak.

~~~
humanrebar
The various collusion incidents would have been better to bring up.

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johan_larson
Power once gained tends to be used. Google makes a lot of money, that
translates into a lot of power, and that is going to be used to the advantage
of Google's stakeholders, whether in soft ways or hard. That's not to say that
all big and powerful companies do really obnoxious things. There are
definitely differences between the morally compromised and the truly evil. But
the tendency is toward worse, not better.

If you have a problem with that, you need to find an employer that is on the
smaller side or in a market where there are lots of competitors. That way, the
company just _can 't_ push around others all that much. But a company like
that is probably running on very lean margins, so it can't afford to be
generous to its employees.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...that is going to be used to the advantage of Google's stakeholders...

Except the censorship things Google is doing aren't in the best interest of
the stockholders. Various _stakeholders_ (senior level execs) may be
_interested_ in censoring people, but those interests are at odds with being a
politically boring company that uses its marketing muscles to sell its
products.

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compiler-guy
During the nineties, plenty of people thought Microsoft did plenty of evil
things. Truly evil things, so I'm not sure the argument that Microsoft is
incompetent, instead of evil, is very persusasive.

An outsider often sees evil where an insider sees good reasons.

~~~
insertnickname
He didn't say that Microsoft had never done anything evil, he said they hadn't
done anything evil while he was at Microsoft. In fact, he said this:

 _This is evil. This is horrifying. This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in
the 90s that made everyone hate it so much they still have to fight against
the repercussions of decisions made two decades ago because of the sheer
amount of damage they did and lives they ruined._

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expertentipp
Well they can take you for a one month long intensive recruitment ride only to
dismiss you with a false negative (they can afford it on all fronts). At the
end of the day Google is just an ad company. Everyone hates ads. I don't claim
to be above it and if I had a serious offer from Google I would consider it,
but it ceased to be my dream or even a goal long time ago.

BTW The corporate promotion of multiculturalism and sexual minorities has very
primitive motivation. It just happens that most of the cheap workforce is
mostly male, from various south Asian regions, plus there is justified black
guilt in the Anglosphere. The cheap workforce has to be agreeable and inner
fights or conflicts are undesired.

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fortythirteen
Agree or disagree with his reasoning, but this is the crux:

> This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in the 90s that made everyone hate
> it so much they still have to fight against the repercussions of decisions
> made two decades ago...

The grumblings that, only a year ago, were reserved for the hardliners have
now started to gain steam amongst the general in-the-know developer
population.

Soon, technologists will start thinking of alternates to Google when choosing
what products and APIs to use. Eventually whole companies will sprout up just
to provide competitive products that only serve the need of not being in the
Google ecosystem.

It's the circle of life.

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scarlac
> This is evil. (...) This is the kind of stuff Microsoft did in the 90s

and

> at no point did I think Microsoft was doing something evil

It honestly seems like the author is lacking empathy and looking for a way to
justify going back to Microsoft.

I sympathize with his point that Google seems to be doing many things that
aren't "good" but outright calling the entire company "evil" is not
productive.

And I also turned down an offer from them, in part from the increased focus on
share value, but I don't consider them outright evil. Companies are complex
and should never just be reduced to "evil".

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tiredwired
Why work for a big evil company when you can work for a small evil startup?

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pkd
I share some reservations with the author of this post but this reads like a
rambling rant more than a coherent piece of thought.

I don't want to work for companies where the toxicity permeates through the
culture, and I assume that that feeling is close to how the author feels when
he mentions now wanting to work for "evil" companies.

But the fact is that whole institutions aren't really evil or good - they are
merely reflections of the people who are incharge of them at that moment. You
can see that in any company that has gone through massive managerial changes -
the company's culture & outlook has changed with them. Microsoft is the most
prominent example of that.

So is Google evil or is it just that its policies as dictated by the current
managerial top layer contradicts with your morality?

I guess any sufficiently large company will quickly start pushing the
boundaries of ethics just by the virtue of being powerful enough to influence
other people.

To avoid working at such companies you can always choose to work at the second
fiddle tech shops - which provide just as much of an engineering competence
(if that is what you care about primarily) without the power of influencing
policies. Then you can be sufficiently happy.

Also it is hilarious to talk about putting food on the table at this day and
age - yes compensation between companies can heavily vary but even a
moderately competent software developer today makes more than they need just
to make ends meet.

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kazinator
Google used to want me to work for them, but some years ago, the fairly
frequent recruiting attempts became less frequent and then dried up.

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Grazester
All those companies named there can be considered "evil"(operating with their
interest in mind) in one way or the other and yes Amazon is. They stopped
selling the Chromecast and Apple TV because it competed with its own product,
the FireTV.

If Google decided to pull all Amazon's apps that competed with its own in the
Play Store people would have been running around with their pitch fork at 1600
Amphitheatre Parkway.

People sometimes also dont care to work for a company because of the company's
altruistic nature but for "selfish" reasons like, the prestige, paycheck and
perks. There are non profits for those who care solely for this kind of thing.

I am not condoning or criticizing people for working wherever they please but
not everyone wants the same thing.

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kafkaesq
Why was this post flagged? Yes it's a bit of a rant, but overall the topic is
definitely valid. And most of the author's basic observations (if not his
overly charged moral characterizations) seem reasonably valid, also.

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jstandard
Though I didn't flag it myself, this is just bad writing.

The post is so over-the-top inflammatory I can't take anything seriously.
That's what people are likely reacting to.

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rhcom2
So don't. Isn't it that simple?

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whipoodle
It's an advertising company. Those tend to be bad.

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randcraw
Exactly. At its essence, advertising is manipulation. There is no _good_
manipulation, at least not from a corporation.

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flazzarino
isn't blogspot.com a google owned product?

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Jemmeh
Yep, they bought it in 2003. Funny.

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trgv
This is all so hyperbolic it's hard to do anything but laugh.

Google has made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. Evil? Nah.

~~~
kafkaesq
I agree that the post was overly hyperbolic.

But unfortunately by this point it's beyond dispute that Google has engaged in
some seriously questionable behavior, on ethical fronts -- such that to refer
to this conduct as a serious "mistakes" smacks of denial, or whitewashing.

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iammahiii
What even Erik is talking about? Why is it wrong? Can someone explain if you
have a view?

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markyuckerberg
At this point, the large compensation package offered at these places is
starting to look like hush money to keep your mouth shut and to turn a blind
eye towards anything that looks from the outside like some kind of systematic
manipulation (e.g. of public opinion, suppression of disconcerting
viewpoints).

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sysdyne
"flagged" Gooooooooooglllllllerrrrrrsssssss Time to find a website that isn't
infected by a virus.

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UnpossibleJim
I love this. Posted at 1:04 in the AM. Seemingly a drunken rant (kudos if it
isn't). I love the internet =)

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jshaqaw
Gay rights aren't stupid

