
How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006) - alnis
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googlife
======
luu
Funny, my experience is the opposite on literally every concrete assertion
about people and motivations.

Looking at my team, and the broader team under my director, only one was hired
"straight out of college". Well, if you consider fresh PhDs to be "straight
out of college", there are a few, but I doubt Aaron meant folks approaching 30
with kids on the horizon when he was talking about people just out of college.

Perhaps a couple are cynical, but I wouldn't call any childish or
enthusiastically adolescent, which isn't too surprising, considering that the
median employee within two levels of management of me is mid-thirties with two
kids.

We have a couple of visiting scientists (professors at major research
universities), and they were surprised by what we're doing, so perhaps the
secrecy doesn't do such a bad job of keeping things inside the company after
all.

I don't doubt Aaron's experience, but it's exactly what you'd expect due to
selection bias. How old was Aaron when he wrote that, 20? He probably wasn't
hanging out with the median person from my team. There's nothing wrong with
that. But, all things considered, that essay contains a lot of awfully strong
assertions.

~~~
madaxe_again
I'm personally aware of a very incapable 22 year old, fresh graduate, who has
been hired for north of $200k.

I'm also aware of a whole bunch of other folks who have been variously hired
within months of graduation, so I'd wager there's some selection bias from
your corner too.

~~~
cromwellian
Base salary? Unless said 22yr old had done some significant research, had an
awesome open source project, is an all star Phd, then I'm temped to call
bullshit on this one, and your acquaintance is blowing smoke up your ass.
$200k base salary puts you into Level senior staff engineer/director software
engineer territory. Most college grads AFAIK are slotted at 3-4 slots slower.
You're effectively saying the person your aware of was hired almost as a
Director level engineer at age 22. Most high level Google engineers are
promoted at this level because of the cross-functional aspects of their
experience -- they've taken the lead on several mid to large projects and
worked across many Google product areas/teams. Experience impossible to
achieve in college.

To give you perspective, I've seen CEO and CTOs of acquired startups in the
$50-100 million range can land at mid level engineering levels at Google. If
incompetent people with no experience are landing director level jobs @ $200k
base salary as a common practice at Google, I want in on this scam!

~~~
madaxe_again
It's a non-engineering role. Don't want to reveal more, as while I'm frankly
spitting nails at the hire, I quite like this person.

------
cromwellian
I'm 42. Most of the people I work with are in the 30s and 40s and have
children. The stereotype of Google hiring nothing but Stanford grads has been
over for a while.

As much as I like Aaron, here he is guilty of excessive generalization. Even
in 2006 the claims don't match reality. I lived through the first dot.com boom
in CA, where companies were falling hand over fist to offer perks, many of
them financially unsustainable, because there was a huge competition to
acquire and keep talent, as well as keep them in the office for long hours
with the promise of striking it rich on what were often worthless stock
options.

Google is pretty clear and upfront about what the compensation will be.
Everything I was told about what to expect about stock grants, year bonuses,
and benefits, has more or less hit the predicted windows. I was never really
oversold on what my compensation would be and I was able to do financial
planning around it because it was so transparent.

I also don't see what's wrong with 'infantilizing'. We lose creativity as we
become adults because of the sheer numbers of rules, responsibilities, and
requirements placed on us. If you want people to do good research or
engineering, take away as much as possible impediments, like worry over money,
laundry, or corporate politicking.

Do we also talk about Phd students and tenured professors in research labs
being "infantilized" by an academic environment often isolated from the
outside world? I don't view it as necessarily a bad thing. Although I guess
you could claim that Einstein still did good work while working at the Patent
Office.

All in all the essay is a rather convoluted and weak critique of Google
culture and hiring practices based on anecdotal observations that don't match
reality.

~~~
treenyc
thanks. I also know people who work at Google who are hired straight of
college just like described in the article. Can you or anyone provide us with

1\. actual % of people in different age group working at google.

2\. Please let me know what department you are working in. That might provide
some insights.

Occasional Perks is great. However, if the company rely on that to retain its'
employees than something rotten.

Google is just a new IBM, Dupon of our time.

I have heard that google will pay employee's family member $2000 every month
after their death for 10, 20 years. I think that is great way to make people
have great programming skills to stay with the company even if they are not
doing anything exciting or creating values for humanities.

~~~
cromwellian
Even if I had the hard data, I doubt I would be at liberty to disclose them. I
work on both infrastructure and on consumer facing apps stuff (like gmail). My
role working on the GWT compiler means I interact with dozens of other product
teams, so I have a pretty good idea of the average age of people I have to sit
in meetings with.

Google used to be a youngish company with a low median average age, I'd say
that started to change even as far back as 2005. The demographics of the
company are greying.

I don't really stay at Google because of the food or other benefits, I stay
because of the people, culture, and products. If it ever becomes a shitty
place to work on those grounds, then a startup will start to look much better.
Many Googlers have in fact encountered shitty politics within their particular
area and left the company eventually.

That is, the idea that Google is not an interesting place to work, but a
shitty workplace that needs to "bribe" people to stay because it's so rotten
is so far from reality is hilarious. I think Google could drop a lot of the
perks tomorrow, and there's be some disgruntled #firstworldproblems people
whining, but they'd ultimately stay. As I mentioned and was quoted in this
TechCrunch article ([http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/25/sugar-
water/](http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/25/sugar-water/)) a lot of the problems
that startups "solve" in the Valley are utterly trivial, and if you really
want to work on stuff like flying stratospheric balloons, or grand mega-AIs,
or whatever Jeff Dean is cooking up next, there aren't many places outside of
academia you can flee to.

The perks by and large serve to keep employees happy and undistracted. Happy
employees equals happy culture equals higher propensity to work together
collaboratively instead of being shit balls to your co-workers because you
don't have good healthcare, or must commute outside the office to get crappy
subway sandwiches every day.

If you don't think Google is doing anything exciting, or creating value for
humanities, than pray-tell, what company in this area that doesn't have great
perks, is doing better in those categories?

------
icambron
I don't work at Google and from where I sit now, it's hard to imagine myself
wanting to work for Google, but this complaint that it's infantalizing its
employees is ridiculous. Making your own food and doing your own laundry are
not substantial life challenges. Growing up is not about learning to do chores
you don't actually have to do. (When you make enough money to pay someone to
mow your lawn, are you back to being a little kid?) The whole article is
premised on the idea that the status quo in which most adults do have to do
(or choose to do) their laundry is somehow intrinsically superior, which is
just silly. Think of all the other services you don't do yourself, or even
that your grandparents do but which now come in the form of a household
appliance. Why do some services go in the bucket labeled "self-sufficiency"
and all the other ones don't?

Growing up is also not about throwing out the brightly colored things and
getting rid of the spaceship models. Why would you think that? Because someone
told you to act like a Real Adult? Because when you grow up, you need to trade
in your dinosaurs for responsible abstract art or else...well, what, exactly?
Growing up is about taking responsibility for yourself. That's basically it.
Maybe Google is preventing that too, but this article doesn't make that case.

~~~
colanderman
maximumsteve, your posts show up as dead (meaning no-one without "showdead"
turned on can see them). Not sure why, you seem perfectly coherent. I suggest
starting a new account.

------
jrockway
I guess on some level this is true. Is there some place where you can work and
get money for doing whatever you want, and defying authority whenever you
want? If so, sign me up!

Over in the real world, working for an employer like Google is a risk hedge.
If your idea for a project this quarter turns out to not be useful, you don't
run out of money and end up living in a cardboard box. You learn from your
experience, try again, and your family gets food on the table. You can say
it's childish to hedge risk, but you can also say it's very adult to hedge
risk. Maybe you _are_ a super genius that can code up a solution to a really
hard problem all by yourself. But what if the market doesn't like it? Too bad,
you're in the same place as the guy who sits at home all day, smokes pot, and
watches daytime TV. The market decided: you suck.

I agree with Aaron that we could always use more computers. Sometimes during
peak hours, the batch scheduler will only give me a few hundred machines to
run my MapReduce on. What am I, a farmer?

Ultimately, I like working at Google and I like having toys in the office. I
have Nerf guns. I use Hakase from Nichijou as my profile picture. At the same
time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. And I
feel that I'm evaluated (and compensated) fairly. Does that make me infantile?
Maybe so. But I like it.

My real fear of leaving Google is the time I'll have to spend writing all the
infrastructure from scratch. And finding someone else that can afford my
hourly rate.

~~~
choosewisely
>> _At the same time, I feel like I 'm doing impactful work, with some very
smart people._

Ah, you must be one of the stars getting people to click on ads, even more. No
matter how you spin it, you make money by what can rightfully be characterized
as fraud (1,2,3), or confusing ads with unbiased content(if there's still a
thing like unbiased content at Google) while ripping your users off. But
whatever makes you feel better

1\. [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-
to...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-to-be-evil-
during-the-holidays/) 2\. [http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-
search-results](http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results)
3\.
[http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_re...](http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_results_LyPpxMbp9gwbEsGnCpnn0J)

~~~
jrockway
I work on Google Fiber. You give us money, we give you an Internet connection.

I'm glad you made an account just for this, though. What a great community HN
can be.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
> I work on Google Fiber. You give us money, we give you an Internet
> connection.

...so that there's a pretty good chance that [you] will use Google Search, and
[we] will then show you ads. Also, [we] inadvertently created a channel for
analysis on [your] Web browsing habits if [we] were so inclined, which would
enable [us] to refine advertising even more, among other things.

If those are not the entire rationale for Google's "everybody should be
online" initiatives, like Fiber and Loon, it's at least a significant portion
thereof and you know it. Hell, it's probably why the Chromebook exists. You
and I are kidding ourselves if we arrive at a conclusion that Google is in any
other business than data and advertising impressions. Facebook needs eyeballs,
too, hence why Zuckerberg has been on the same warpath.

I didn't make the account just now.

~~~
yuhong
The ads are not bad by themselves.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
I would contend that advertising, marketing, and consumerism are not noble
causes for humanity, and engineers who devote their lifespan to enabling such
things are wasting their precious allotment of time. Google's revenue driver
is putting products in front of eyeballs. Imagine a world in which such a
thing was not a market.

Yes, you need awareness of products for people to buy said products. I get
that. But no, you don't need to do data analysis on my browsing and search
habits to come up with the most effective product to show me to increase the
chances of me buying it. Spreading the word about a product is one thing.
Treating the human being as a means to a sale, optimizing accordingly, and
creating a market for "data" is another. That anybody on planet Earth would
consider my shopping habits worthy of purchase just boggles me, and that I am
not even consulted in most cases about analysis and sales of such data taking
place is just the icing on the cake.

It says something that I pay Comcast $100/month+ for entertainment and I am
_still_ shown advertisements for a third (or more) of every hour. I pay for
the privilege of being shown new cars. Repeatedly. Black Friday comes to mind,
too, as another example of the feedback loop losing control of itself.

To be clear, things are not bad. Our consumer culture is a little bit out of
hand, and I'd rather devote my remaining years to producing something of
actual value instead of imaginary marketing value. To that end, that Google
let me go was in fact a blessing in disguise, and I just hadn't realized it
yet.

~~~
michaelt
Does your assessment of the value of advertising include the things that are
funded by adverts?

That covers almost all print journalism, a lot of full-time internet content
creators (from the onion to full time youtube content creators) not to mention
Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome and Youtube.

If advertising includes everything paid for by adverts, advertising is useful
to humanity. If advertising doesn't include everything paid for by adverts,
Google isn't only an advertising company.

~~~
wpietri
We happen to currently fund some things via ads. But that's an accident of
history. If we didn't have ads, there's no reason to think we wouldn't have
found another way.

~~~
rodgerd
There are rather a lot of industries that are all ears for yor alternatives.

~~~
wpietri
Now that we have ads, they're hard to get away from. You're removing a problem
people notice (having to pay) and causing problems they mostly don't (wasted
time, wasted money, suboptimal purchases). This path dependence doesn't make
ads good, though.

------
raldi
A month earlier, Aaron wrote about his experiences working in a more
traditional kind of office:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace)

 _> Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I
simply couldn’t take it. By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a
bathroom stall and started crying._

So I'm not sure what kind of office would have ever met his approval.

~~~
shmerl
This one doesn't look gray: [http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-
amazing-offic...](http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-amazing-
office-space-in-san-francisco-2012-3?op=1)

~~~
jrockway
This, incidentally, is the same building that Google San Francisco is in.

~~~
bmmayer1
Thank you for saying "incidentally" instead of "ironically." You are one in a
million.

~~~
jrockway
Ironically, I was wrong about the buildings.

~~~
raldi
Incidentally, I believe the building has ironic columns.

~~~
dekhn
dorian, actually.

------
ihodes
This article always struck me as being composed of two distinctly different
opinions. One, Aaron's assertion that employees at Google are being
infantilized. Two, that Google's mission and their overall morale and sense of
purpose has changed.

Two may be true; I can't speak but anecdotally to this (and nor could he).

But One always struck me as very mean-spirited and unnecessary. As if told by
the father in Peter Pan, or Scrooge. As if Google's engineers should be
wearing suits (like the "lowlifes" he so despises?) and sitting in Aeron
chairs, only, and forgetting about such silly things as dinosaurs and space
travel.

~~~
walid
You do know that one of Aaron's strengths, or at least a point of focus, was
gamification. Looking at this article in that light you realize that he was
trying to stir up a conversation. He also didn't seem to bother to be nice, at
least when he had an opposing opinion.

~~~
pjscott
I think the word for that is "trolling." And you're right: the article _does_
make more sense when looked at that way.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> I think the word for that is "trolling."

There is a difference between stirring up a conversation you think needs to be
had, by simply not beating around the bush in regards to an opinion you
actually hold -- and _pretending_ to have an opinion you know to be
controversial, just so people waste their energy discussing something you
couldn't care less about.

Calling anything you disagree with, or anything written without caring how
others might take it, a "troll" is at best mistaken, at worst a nice try.

------
charleslmunger
I don't think this is really accurate. It's not about treating people like
kids, it's about rejecting the attitude found at dilbert-style corporations.

The T-Rex skeleton and the shark fins are there because they're cool. Google
has monorail cars as meeting rooms in the Sydney office [1] - because an
engineer requested it. It shows that management listens to employees. It gives
people the confidence to propose somewhat outlandish ideas, because if
management will buy a monorail because an employee requests it, management
will allocate resources to things that actually matter because employees
request it. Those stories don't get publicized, but I've seen it happen
multiple times.

Also, the idea that all google employees are young kids just out of college
who are being shielded from "the real world" by free food and buses is silly,
many of my coworkers are married with kids.

[1]
[https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE](https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE)

I work for google, but I'm not speaking on their behalf.

~~~
pvdm
The article is from 2006. Things evolve.

~~~
minwcnt5
I was there in 2006. It wasn't accurate then either.

------
enneff
Working at Google I feel the opposite of infantilised. I am given nearly total
autonomy to do my job how I see fit (and shouldn't i? Nobody knows my job
better than me). I can book business travel, order essential equipment, and
even start new work spontaneously without wasting time seeking approval. I set
my own goals and am the judged by how well I meet them.

I feel that traditional offices are more infantlilising in that they assume
most workers need explicit instructions to get their work done and must seek
approval to do anything out of the ordinary.

Aaron here is distracted by the shiny things. As an employee you very quickly
become accustomed to the benefits and spend more time just getting work done.

------
pcvarmint
I thought it looked creepy, like an adult daycare center.

I was approached twice and interviewed twice by Google but I don't think I'd
fit that culture.

No offices -- just open spaces.

A meritocracy where you are evaluated by your peers generally, rather than by
a boss or customer for your merits in a particular job.

Where you don't even know what you will be working on until you're hired, as
if that gives you a choice.

Lots of silly signs hanging, some of which would be trademark violations if
displayed in public (Bombay Sapphire, etc.).

Too academic (from Stanford days?) for my tastes.

~~~
derwiki
I'm surprised at how polarizing no offices vs open offices is. My first job at
IBM, I had an office with two co-workers. They were great, but on days they
were out it was sooo isolating. When I quit and took a job at a start up in SF
with an open office plan, I _loved_ it immediately. I could look across the
room and see if the systems guy was there or getting coffee, instead of
pinging into the Sametime void.

So, I'm clearly on the open office side of the camp. What are the main
arguments for offices? Peace and quiet and the ability to focus?

~~~
tikhonj
This is something I've found very weird: there's a _sharp_ difference between
the opinions of people I know in person and people online.

HN commenters love to hate open office plans. It's one of the few topics on
which they agree with /r/programming!

And yet everywhere I've spent time has been in favor of open offices. This
includes a few startups, sure, but also an enterprise software company
(Guidewire), an academic research lab (Berkeley ParLab) and a quantitative
trading firm (Jane Street).

In the ParLab, even most professors didn't have dedicated offices--apparently,
this makes them more accessible and gets them to talk to their students more.
David Patterson, the leader of the lab--with _a lot_ of research experience--
talked about how switching to an open layout was a real improvement in the
research process.

At JSC, both traders and developers share an open space. This makes
communication between the two parts of the company much more fluid. The
founders of the firm all originally came from another firm where developers
and traders were sequestered from each other, and they have found the shared
open space to be entirely preferable.

Many of the other experienced people I've worked with have also been big fans
of open office layouts. And these are some of the most productive
organizations I've ever seen--probably some of the best full stop.

And yet most online commenters treat it as a given that an open space is
completely inferior to real offices.

Personally, I'm a big fan of working in a nice open layout. It makes it much
easier to talk to other people, even if I don't have a specific problem to
solve. This makes work both more pleasant _and_ more efficient because I can
get outside input or an extra set of eyes at any point in the development
process. Moreover, since I'm similarly helping other people out, I get a good
sense of their projects as well.

And if I need to concentrate, I can just put on headphones or go to a quiet
room. But I much prefer that not to be the default action, only taken when
it's needed.

~~~
com2kid
I wonder how many of those people ever had their own office. If you don't know
any better, what you have may seem pretty good.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. For some types of problem
solving, a closed space to think for an extended period of time is really
useful.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
> I wonder how many of those people ever had their own office. If you don't
> know any better, what you have may seem pretty good.

Coach never felt cramped until I was back there after the first time flying
business class. Spoiled for life. If there is some second transition to travel
satori -- where mountains are mountains and coach is no longer cramped -- I
haven't attained it yet.

For people writing code, there needs to be _some_ way to indicate "I am in the
cave, do not disturb unless truly urgent". The most-obvious way is a door that
closes. I imagine it can work other ways in other environments.

~~~
jaredmcateer
I used to have my own office and closing the door just meant people would
knock on my door instead of popping their head in. Headphones and setting
myself to busy on IM has always been the best way of indicating to someone I
was busy.

------
hawkharris
Right after college, I was enticed by these perks: free food, laundry
services, etc. After a few years in industry, I became more interested in the
less sexy but more substantive benefits like a competitive salary, a 401K and
good medical coverage.

College-like perks and grown-up perks are not always mutually exclusive. My
understanding is that Google pays developers well and offers great benefits.

However, my experience has been that some tech companies emphasize their
college-like benefits in lieu of providing strong adult benefits. "Stock
options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?"

If a company is going to play up its college-like perks, it should also bring
to the table substantive financial and health-related benefits. Otherwise I
can see how it would be difficult to retain young developers as their
priorities change.

~~~
sliverstorm
_" Stock options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?"_

If I want a beanbag chair at my desk, I'll buy myself a beanbag chair,
thankyouverymuch. :)

~~~
yeukhon
Or both, or the company allows employees to reimburse their own ergonomic
chair purchase. I actually prefer the latter if I can't find one I like from
whatever the office provides.

------
6d0debc071
You can't judge infantile behaviour from the presence of dinosaurs. I'm a
woman in my mid 20s, I still have a fluffy snake from when I was 12 that I
like to stroke when I'm thinking.

Oh no! People derive pleasure from things you no-longer do.

There's a difference between being mature and being solemn. Far too often I
see the latter being treated as the former. Being mature is about
responsibility, managing your own life, growing to understand what you enjoy
and how you relate to others. A lot of people who think they're very adult,
just because they don't have fluffy snakes and the like any more... a lot of
them I don't see as adults; who've thought about their happiness and
responsibilities; I see _sad_ teenagers.

------
mlyang
Creatives (designers, engineers, etc.) with optionality (at the caliber that
Google would hire) pine for freelance-like working conditions (not referring
to pay, but rather creative control, flexible hours, and amenities). These
tech firms try to absorb as many of those benefits as possible to woo over
employees. In Google's early days, maybe employees had greater creative
control over their projects-- hence creating more autonomous and creative
working conditions. However, as a company scales, you inevitably lose your
creative control and become a cog in the larger machine. No perks can veil
this, hence the changing of Googlers' mentalities.

Unless you're at the top of one of these large firms, I have a really hard
time imagining any creative and truly autonomous person willing to work for
more than a year at any of these institutions before breaking free and either
founding a startup, joining an early stage startup, or freelancing.

------
atgm
Who maintains/pays for the site now? I tried going to the top page, expecting
some kind of obituary or explanation as to why the site is still up, but the
blurb there makes it sound like Aaron stepped out for a week and will be
updating again soon, except for the last updated note in the corner.

I did a whois lookup out of curiosity, but the contact information all refers
to contactprivacy.com, which is apparently set up to allow people to register
domains privately.

~~~
bensw
Pretty sure Sean B. Palmer is taking care of it (or at least has taken care of
it so far)

~~~
atgm
Looks like you're probably right. I googled him and found
[http://inamidst.com/sbp/](http://inamidst.com/sbp/), which says "I’m taking
care of Aaron’s sites and data, so email me if you have any queries about
that."

I initially wondered about it because it was actually really disturbing when I
considered the fungible nature of websites and the possibility of someone
posting "past articles" as Aaron.

------
cyphunk
Google is a mammoth. Generalising it would be similar to doing the same of a
whole country. I do not work there but know many that have that speak so
highly of its foundations. Like some sort of new form of knowledge discovery
and expansion of thought. While it may be infantile this could just as well be
seen as an advantage, at least for a while to come. It is one of the frontiers
of innovation for company building (and nation building for that matter):
keeping people feeling, thinking and innovating like children. However, Aaron
was right and this is not enough to keep some great talent from slipping
through.

I had two run-ins with Google HR. Once after they purchased a company that had
a product that I was a primary architect and programmer for. Part of the
reason the process staled was because I explained "I consider programming like
hammering nails. I program. I am not a programmer". I found their questions on
what languages I program with to be silly. The other reason it staled had to
do with their inability to discuss practical "projects" we could "work on
together". It's as if Google is an Amish parent wanting to offer you their
daughter in marriage with you committing before even getting a decent look at
her.

To their credit the words "projects" and "work on together" coming from a
potential hire are foreign to all companies. But if Google wants to avoid
becoming Xerox in 30 years they would do well to understand this language and
hire more like Al Qaeda rather than Ikea.

Developing a more network based structure is not that difficult to envision.
For starters get rid of "%20 time", it's a joke. Instead I could imagine
something more like: %25 on mandated work, %25 on google projects (what used
to be %20 time), %50 time on projects entirely of your choosing that would be
handled like an investment (with yearly reviews of direction as a board of a
company would) and finally abolishment of most vacation days with vacation
taken at will from the %50 and in any form (clustered, by day, half days,
whatever). Full time creativity is a form of cognitive dissidence fostered
only by industrial era thinking. Creative workers should be given the option
to take minor or major pay cuts dynamically and at will in order to replenish
their energy. Whereas today, asking for extra time off, even with a cut in
pay, carries a lot of guilt for most. Such a structure as described, when
monitored, also provides valuable feedback on the health of the employee and
company. When you get something like this Google, hit me up on Pond.

~~~
cyphunk
Another 2c: Google[x] might be the founders way to avoid the sloth of a
mammoth structure but it may also be the one thing that turns them into Xerox.
To prevent that expressly avoid the patent-chest-trap and future reliance on
this over innovation in product based wealth. If your investors cant give up
on future patent wealth secretly plow efforts into reducing the effectiveness
of patent-chests for all.

~~~
cma
The laser printer patent developed at PARC supposedly paid for PARC a hundred
times over.

------
blazespin
Simply not true in 2013. They are aggressively hiring engineers of all sorts.
College degrees are less relevant. Google, of all companies, have developed
some of the finest talent recognition software in the valley.

~~~
auctiontheory
_Google, of all companies, have developed some of the finest talent
recognition software in the valley._

Maybe they have, but we won't know without hard evidence. Your assertion
doesn't make it so.

I like Google, I've eaten in their cafeterias (many friends work there), and I
use several of their products.

And ... I'm aware that essentially all of their revenue comes from AdWords and
AdSense. Everything else is subsidized by those two products. No other major
Google product has had to compete in the marketplace on its own merits. So,
objectively, it's hard to measure how talented their people are. (You're not
going to convince me that Google has the world's most talented UI designers.)

~~~
cromwellian
To be fair, with the exception of hardware and retail companies, almost all
internet era companies make their revenue from selling ads because people have
a negative reaction to roadblocks and paywalls. Facebook is just as beholden
to ads to Google is.

I would argue that most of the Google products that are successes today in
terms of users: Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps, Search, etc have competed on the
same merits as similar products from competitors. Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, for
example, are subsidized by other products as well.

I don't think Google has a monopoly on talented individuals, but I do think
Google has a better culture than other companies. You can have the smartest
people, but a shitty internal culture can act to break their innovation, not
multiply it. I've worked at IBM and Oracle and definitely, very smart people
at Oracle that I knew of were hampered and stymied by a suffocating corporate
layer.

------
10098
Growing up is overrated anyway.

------
niketdesai
I transferred to the Motorola division so I kind of have both perspectives
while being at Google.

In some regard, a lot of Googlers don't even know how good they have it. What
Google manages to do pretty well is pick the right people for 'the company'
and then acclimatize them extremely fast to everything: process, tools,
lifestyle and sometimes koolaid.

In doing so are we infants? Perhaps. But fundamentally this is no different
than what all children go through (acclimatization to their environment).

I'm not sure working for some crummy company, or a startup means one life is
better than the other - they are different. And if you're lucky enough to be
able to choose that then that is awesome.

~~~
sirkneeland
So what's the moto side like?

~~~
niketdesai
In what regard -- the question is too broad for me to generally answer
meaningfully.

------
yetanotherphd
Claims that other people are "infantile" are almost always just a pissing
contest. It's an easy way to put someone down since being infantile is hard to
define, and making that claim already sets you up as the more mature person in
the conversion.

And the idea that having stuff done for you is equivalent to being treated
like a kid says more about the psychological issues of the author than
reality. Our entire economy is based around exchanging services for money.
Google takes it to a (slightly) higher level, although the only perk that
people use in real life is the food.

------
fromdoon
This is typical western philosophical bullsh __. As life becomes easier in
Western world, people have more time to fret about such inconsequential
things. Please carry on!

------
psbp
The Google = slimy politician comparison really undercuts the detached
perspective that he's hoping to impart to Googlers or potential Googlers.

------
auvrw
> Even the suburban desert of Mountain View is better.

haha, i think mountain view is actually quite a quaint little town compared to
sun-beat santa clara, which really isn't so bad either. (aaah, i miss the
weather, i do.)

but heck, the late aaron swartz lamenting an HR tact that pervades so many of
the companies, software and otherwise, hiring math & science "types?" holiday
stylesheet or no, it's a depressing read.

------
jacob019
read this before noticing it was written in 2006 by Aaron Schwartz. That
certainly colors the perspective. I wonder how much has changed.

~~~
ex-googler1
not much. i quit a few months ago and so happy to be out of that insane place.
they compare your work against your coworkers, so its constant competition,
even if you meet your "goals". they also have zero work/life balance.

all that free food and google shuttles wear off after a couple of months. then
their non-stop work life settles in and you realize you made a horrible
decision by accepting the job offer.

the only bright side is you get stock options and have a great company on your
resume.

~~~
amaks
Apparently you haven't worked for Microsoft. Google is engineer's heaven
compared to MS.

~~~
ksk
>Google is engineer's heaven compared to MS.

How so? I'd be crushed at the thought of using my skills to get people to
click on ads, or coming up with new ways to mine their data.

~~~
ksk
On second thoughts, I realize this is bit of a generalization but then again,
I was replying to a generalization :P

------
shpx
Something that sounds like an ideal is nothing like what you would expect it
to be?

That's like every other thing in the world ever, isn't it?

------
tmsh
Infantilizing not infantile. Loss of potential given the strong potential of
many Googlers. His insight into opportunity costs is bright if slightly
imperfect, as always, I'd say.

This is more a complaint against people not solving hard problems enough (a la
Steve Yegge) than a complaint against bean bags - those are just metaphors.

------
n1ghtmare_
I recently got an interview with Google (didn't get it), I'd kill to work with
them. Even if they pay a bit less than what I'm currently getting, if it means
I'll work on something less boring than what I'm doing now (typical business
corporate bs where I'm working pretty much by myself).

------
general_failure
Very silly article. There are so many things wrong but i will comment on the
first para. T any about living your life when most people seem to be
outsourcing even bringing up children in the bay area since they have to work.
Laundry and food are hardly about living your life.

------
smtddr
I thought HN's algo drove controversial stories off the front page. This is
generating a bunch of arguments and yet it's still here. There are other
stories I've commented on that get knocked off the front page with less drama
than I'm seeing here.

------
imanant
That is what you would expect it to be, too. I see them dominating the world
for next 2 years at least but where they go there will determine how strong
the vision is of the founders.

------
DavidWanjiru
In times like these, I'm minded to beware the echo chamber. Coz I'm very poor
at telling when I've fallen into one.

------
linux_devil
>"People read the airbrushed versions of Google technologies in talks and
academic papers and think that Google has some amazingly large computer lab
with amazingly powerful technology."

Latest acquisition of "Boston Dynamics" and team working at "Google X" and
other projects lead to second thought . In the end it's choice of people , we
should not have say in what they should or shouldn't.

------
rusabd
If I had a talent I would write about companies treating their employees like
criminals

------
ChristianMarks
The tl;dr is Google Google Goo.

------
lowglow
Hm. I feel like Google is following Diamond Age's tips on how to train their
engineers. There's a pretty great passage in there about this, and you owe it
to yourself to read it. It reads more like a prophecy than a sci-fi book, but
it's super good. :)

------
jstark
counterpoint: growing up != performing life-taking tasks like laundry.

------
nrubin
Hey, did you also here that there are NO trees on their campus?

~~~
IvyMike
They've all been replaced by hash tables.

------
nipponese
RIP

