This is a bit tangential to the layoffs, but it's something I've been thinking about for the last few weeks. This article made things a bit clearer.
I think Google's practices are disturbing. The fact that they use NDAs on everything and skillfully avoid "legal requirements" of all sorts make me wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes. The men in charge could really be up to anything.
Those of us who believe the "don't be evil" motto are getting duped. The information about what happens in the company is very tightly controlled, so if there are any creepy measures in effect, we won't know about them. Google is not better or worse than any other company, but we are led to believe that it is.
Until we really know what happens inside ("how the food is made"), we should withhold judgment about whether the company is good or bad. It's a setback for objectivity that a lot of smart people hold Google up as some golden standard, when the information available isn't good enough to make any generalized, overreaching judgment.
As for the layoffs, this seems like a turning point in the company's history. Things are going to look different in the future, with the stock having turned a pretty dramatic peak (stock market crash or not). Google won't become unprofitable, but the market obviously believes that its growth is slowing. Apparently with agreement from the powers that be.
Re: comment--I have many friends at Google who I talk to pretty much everyday. It IS a great place to work. It all depends on the person though. Many people love it, some probably wouldn't enjoy it.
This article is rubbish though. Like, if this were an essay and I was grading it I'd give it a D-. Where are the sources? Is the author an employment lawyer, because he seems to be pretty confident in his assertions.
"that is why you probably have never spoken to the same person twice at Google and that is also why there is somebody new on the job and most times you know more about their job than they do."
This "quote" is from another flimsy blog and makes no sense.
I wouldn't worry about it that much. I mean think about it...most of Google employees are young idealistic guys who know how to program. You honestly think if Google was doing something sinister, one of those idealistic kids wouldn't throw up an anonymous webpage spreading the word that would make front page of reddit/digg/HN?
Are they doing the whole do no evil thing? Probably not. But they are hardly a sinister organization with plans for world domination using your google search history to black mail you into doing their bidding.
Anonymous webpage versus Google. Hmm. Tell me, how many Diggs do you think that one is going to get before it gets buried?
I suppose you could possibly craft a less likely to succeed story but it would take some work: [Scientology: Why George Bush's plan to install Vista on your iPod is a good idea]
I'm mostly talking about the lower level code monkeys. And sure someone can have dollar signs in his eyes, but still leak some information anonymously if they think its something unethical
Good point about the lower-level guys, but I'm not sure if that's the majority. As for the leaking, they won't leak if it means jail time or fines, I think, even if the $$ are huge.
yeah, you're right. no way developers are in the majority at google, it's 90% management spread out into 25 layers.
Seriously, if something was really wrong at Google you would hear about it. It doesn't take much to leak information anonymously and the chances of getting caught are virtually zero.
Over some businesses it does have absolute power, in the Orwellian sense (absolute power == the power to kill).
Many people would argue that it's the fault of those businesses for designing their business to utterly depend on a high organic ranking or a good Adwords quality score, but like the smoker with lung cancer, knowing who to blame for the fact that an inscrutable entity has power over you is little comfort.
Google provides reliable, high-performance, high-quality software for free. They have a massive philanthropic edge and have raised the bar for employee benefits.
This article states they are acting within the law not outside of it.
The NDA's are there to hide information they don't want in the hands of their competitors. I would think even the tiniest bit of information can be used by a competitor to extrapolate what is going on behind the scenes in Google.
Google would certainly like to be thought of as the greatest place to work ever, but if you read about Netscape they had all that in '94, 5 years before Google. Secondly, if you use Google's "free" products then you are not their customer. You are their product. They sell you to their advertisers. That's neither good nor bad, but it does need to be acknowledged.
Regardless of what you feel personally about Google, you must admit that they have manipulated their public image skillfully.
Plus, from what I've read of people around during the beginning of other major tech companies, I'm not sure Google's approach is all that unique. Their uniqueness may stem more from our short term memory.
Who knew they had actual people doing customer services... I have only ever dealt with pseudo-related email template responses. I figured they engineered a solution to the people problem long ago.
My experience is with AdSense. It's a huge part of their business, you'd think there would be real people for every point of contact. It's disconcerting to get a response from a robot when there are thousands of dollars at stake.
I just got an email this morning from a Google recruiter (I'm serious) asking if I was interested in a software position there. From that I would say that they are still actively hiring.
There may be layoffs, but is there any info on what positions are being eliminated? There's a big difference between laying off janitorial staff and laying off product engineers.
I thought they were hiring. Atleast 2 people I know got identical emails from them detailing a SET (software Engineer in Test) position. These guys had interviewed with GOOG in the past though.
I think Google's practices are disturbing. The fact that they use NDAs on everything and skillfully avoid "legal requirements" of all sorts make me wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes. The men in charge could really be up to anything.
Those of us who believe the "don't be evil" motto are getting duped. The information about what happens in the company is very tightly controlled, so if there are any creepy measures in effect, we won't know about them. Google is not better or worse than any other company, but we are led to believe that it is.
Until we really know what happens inside ("how the food is made"), we should withhold judgment about whether the company is good or bad. It's a setback for objectivity that a lot of smart people hold Google up as some golden standard, when the information available isn't good enough to make any generalized, overreaching judgment.
As for the layoffs, this seems like a turning point in the company's history. Things are going to look different in the future, with the stock having turned a pretty dramatic peak (stock market crash or not). Google won't become unprofitable, but the market obviously believes that its growth is slowing. Apparently with agreement from the powers that be.