9 ms·

The Artist Leaving the Googleplex

81 points by wallflower 10y ago

brudgers 10y ago
Direct link to video: https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288 https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288
golergka 10y ago
OK, so this guy's problem with Google is that it doesn't give all of its perks to all employees? Why the hell would the company treat employees from significantly different labour markets the same way in the first place? Is there some crazy assumption that any employee should be equally valuable to the company?
- danvayn 10y ago
  You seemed to have missed the 'race' aspect entirely; did you actually read the article?
  - golergka 10y ago
    I was under impression that race has correlation with education, skills and value on labour market all over US already, so if you picked a sample of random white-collar/blue-collar workers, you would see pretty much the same picture. How does it become Google's responsibility all of a sudden?
    - GauntletWizard 10y ago
      Because this guy with a grudge told you it was so.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jfoutz 10y ago
  On the contrary, they wouldn't have a career doing non-parody corporate commentary art without that very behavior.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Being able to use the restroom when you need to is a perk?
  - golergka 10y ago
    Yes. I don't know how they organized scanning books, but in a lot of jobs it makes total sense. Do you know how a conveyor belt works, for example? Soccer players earn millions of dollars, but they still can't go to a bathroom break in the middle of a game.
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      I do know how a conveyor belt works. Have you heard of contingency planning? A soccer player is out on the field for, 45 minutes? Have you seen contracts that restricts a player's ability to use a restroom?
      - golergka 10y ago
        OK, just in case my point is not obvious: these are _examples_. These examples are illustrating a thesis that certain jobs can have good reasons for restricting employees access to the bathroom. Of course, I don't have any idea of what goes into soccer players contracts, because that's not the point.
        jsprogrammer 10y ago
        You claimed your illustrative example as actual fact. 45 minutes would be no different than having to attend meetings during which you would not be allowed to leave to use a restroom.
    - mucker 10y ago
      Excellent point. I've had to work in retail. You don't just get to go to the bathroom because someone has to man the front desk. This is a fact of the business. If you don't like it, feel free to go somewhere else. No one is stopping you.
- I_HALF_CATS 10y ago
  Uh, working 4am to 2:15pm has nothing to do with meal perks.
  - eru 10y ago
    I wonder why they don't just hire people in a better timezone. (Though eg bakers in Germany got up even earlier to make fresh bread every day.)
rdtsc 10y ago
I think the problem with Google is that it advertised (still does?) itself, in a rather believable way, as being be diverse, fun, everyone working together -- developers, janitors and artists all holding hands creating a brigher tomorrow and perhaps fighting against evil. Well it worked for me back then, I really did believe Google was "Don't Be Evil" kind of company and so on, vis-a-vis say Microsoft, or say Walmart. Which were not evil, just you know, regular companies makign money. At least I remember buying into the PR. So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard. So I don't see a problem at all with criticizing it. It really set itself up to a higher standard, so there is nothing wrong with pointing fingers at it and saying "look at the hypocrisy". The other more telling thing, is the story around it the video. How quickly this supposedly tollerant, open, diverse company moved to fire this person. You can only be tollerant and open as long as you are tollerant and open about approved things. You have the freedom to choose between the chocolate cake and the strawberry cake, but you don't get to ask how the cake is made, basically.
- eropple 10y ago
  > So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard. Among people who are aware of that standard, I agree with you. On the other, sadder hand, I think that, to most people, Google really is Just Another Company. And we expect companies--except maybe Apple, except actually really Apple too--to be heartless, soulless optimizing machines. That we tolerate that behavior out of social constructed created expressly to help society...well, whether they're doing that, and whether we should do something about the ones that aren't, is a deeply political matter, but tangential.
  - eru 10y ago
    Why single out Apple? They aren't that nice to their employees. And if you single out Apple, you can also single out Amazon: they may treat their employees badly by Google standards, but I am delighted to be their customer.
kapitza 10y ago
What I find most interesting about this piece is the awesome lifestyle of flitting from grant to grant as a semi-celebrity in the international jet-set art world. Also lets you feel good about "leaking" your employer's information to "organizers." Take that, employer! And best of all, you get to use the word "show" as a nontransitive verb, as in "I showed at Venice." Apparently this lifestyle is only available if you're a (to use the author's term) "Marxist." But then again, I suppose anyone can read Negri and Hardt if they're patient enough. No word on what, if any, ideological filters Google is supposed to apply to its contractor pool so this doesn't happen again. Perhaps they could ask trap questions about postcolonial theory, rejecting anyone who answered correctly...
- gwern 10y ago
  There's a lot of odd insinuations and expectations in this piece. I found particularly strange the part where he talks about his joy in talking communist politics in Berkeley and then immediately muses about how to make these skills 'marketable' and about his resentment that he might not be rewarded with a comfortable bourgeois middle-class existence. Feels like there are a lot of unstated assumptions and arguments behind his opinions and actions which he never makes explicit or considers.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mucker 10y ago
    Or abusing the system to score income on the sale of his house. I nearly snorted at that point.
    - paulcole 10y ago
      I think you're misinterpreting this. I think he moved into a unit of a luxury building (that was required to be rented to a low income person) and lived there until the unit was sold.
      - 10y ago
asuffield 10y ago
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) > sometimes mining information to leak to organizer friends > After 9–12 hours on campus I would fill my Google-issued bag with Naked juices and to-go containers of food for my roommates So... deliberate violation of the corporate NDA (which is massively disrespectful to the other people who work here) and stealing food from the cafes. I'm happy to work at a company that fires people who take something offered in good faith and abuse it. It is a part of our company culture to give people broad freedom to do what they think they should, on the understanding that they will act responsibly and not abuse the privilege. (I can't comment much on the rest of the article, except to say that I feel a person who has openly admitted their tendency to dishonesty is perhaps not best afforded a high level of trust in the claims that they make)
- I_HALF_CATS 10y ago
  I completely disagree. Someone who discloses things of this nature seems even more honest. In my opinion you seem like a bit of a square. :| edit: Goobye kharma.
- mucker 10y ago
  No I agree with you. I got about half way through till I realized this is all about a self-entitled prick. He spent the front half of the article talking about himself, then justified it with the fact that Google may hire people to do work. OH MY GOSH CALL THE POLICE!
- curiouscat321 10y ago
  The NDA is inexcusable. The food though...seems like everybody does it.
  - mc32 10y ago
    I don't think any company would ignore pilfering on a large scale (everybody doing it). Now, large companies might have an office or two which deviate from the norm and may tolerate it a bit, but company-wide, I don't think so.
  - 10y ago
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
can't post anything negative about Google on HN. Will get automatically down voted by their thousands of drones, I mean employees.
- Gigablah 10y ago
  Is it actually possible to downvote postings on HN? (Why am I being downvoted for asking an honest question?)
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    yes but I believe you need a certain amount of karma
    - hueving 10y ago
      You can't downvote articles, just comments (at least with my karma). IIRC articles move down if they fail to receive up votes and collect comments.
      - striking 10y ago
        You can't ever downvote articles, although they will drop faster in ranking if they're flagged by (many) users. Also, there's a "flamewar detector" which has something to do with vote to comment ratio.
    - mucker 10y ago
      And trust me, the down votes tend to be pro-marxist. So that this is getting so much attention speaks volumes about just HOW bad he presented this tale.
      - eru 10y ago
        How do you tell where the downvotes are coming from?
  - deleted 10y ago
adamsea 10y ago
"Being a person means being paranoid that you might be a puppet, and being an artist means making things that you want to see exist, to defy that paranoia, by communicating past anything you could rationally explain away."
mathattack 10y ago
Wow - what a self-indulgent pseudo intellectual prick. Nobody forced him to work there.
timcederman 10y ago
The author is an unreliable narrator. He mentions many incongruous aspects of his experience that just can't be true. For example, he says he waited in line next to people in SurveyMonkey t-shirts, but he worked at Google from 08-09. SurveyMonkey was only in Portland at that time.
Grue3 10y ago
As much as I dislike Google's practices, I don't think a self-described Marxist can claim moral superiority over anyone.

81 points by wallflower 10y ago

Direct link to video: https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288 https://player.vimeo.com/video/15852288

OK, so this guy's problem with Google is that it doesn't give all of its perks to all employees? Why the hell would the company treat employees from significantly different labour markets the same way in the first place? Is there some crazy assumption that any employee should be equally valuable to the company?

danvayn 10y ago
You seemed to have missed the 'race' aspect entirely; did you actually read the article?
- golergka 10y ago
  I was under impression that race has correlation with education, skills and value on labour market all over US already, so if you picked a sample of random white-collar/blue-collar workers, you would see pretty much the same picture. How does it become Google's responsibility all of a sudden?
  - GauntletWizard 10y ago
    Because this guy with a grudge told you it was so.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jfoutz 10y ago
On the contrary, they wouldn't have a career doing non-parody corporate commentary art without that very behavior.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Being able to use the restroom when you need to is a perk?
- golergka 10y ago
  Yes. I don't know how they organized scanning books, but in a lot of jobs it makes total sense. Do you know how a conveyor belt works, for example? Soccer players earn millions of dollars, but they still can't go to a bathroom break in the middle of a game.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    I do know how a conveyor belt works. Have you heard of contingency planning? A soccer player is out on the field for, 45 minutes? Have you seen contracts that restricts a player's ability to use a restroom?
    - golergka 10y ago
      OK, just in case my point is not obvious: these are _examples_. These examples are illustrating a thesis that certain jobs can have good reasons for restricting employees access to the bathroom. Of course, I don't have any idea of what goes into soccer players contracts, because that's not the point.
      - jsprogrammer 10y ago
        You claimed your illustrative example as actual fact. 45 minutes would be no different than having to attend meetings during which you would not be allowed to leave to use a restroom.
  - mucker 10y ago
    Excellent point. I've had to work in retail. You don't just get to go to the bathroom because someone has to man the front desk. This is a fact of the business. If you don't like it, feel free to go somewhere else. No one is stopping you.
I_HALF_CATS 10y ago
Uh, working 4am to 2:15pm has nothing to do with meal perks.
- eru 10y ago
  I wonder why they don't just hire people in a better timezone. (Though eg bakers in Germany got up even earlier to make fresh bread every day.)

rdtsc 10y ago

I think the problem with Google is that it advertised (still does?) itself, in a rather believable way, as being be diverse, fun, everyone working together -- developers, janitors and artists all holding hands creating a brigher tomorrow and perhaps fighting against evil. Well it worked for me back then, I really did believe Google was "Don't Be Evil" kind of company and so on, vis-a-vis say Microsoft, or say Walmart. Which were not evil, just you know, regular companies makign money. At least I remember buying into the PR. So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard. So I don't see a problem at all with criticizing it. It really set itself up to a higher standard, so there is nothing wrong with pointing fingers at it and saying "look at the hypocrisy". The other more telling thing, is the story around it the video. How quickly this supposedly tollerant, open, diverse company moved to fire this person. You can only be tollerant and open as long as you are tollerant and open about approved things. You have the freedom to choose between the chocolate cake and the strawberry cake, but you don't get to ask how the cake is made, basically.

eropple 10y ago
> So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard. Among people who are aware of that standard, I agree with you. On the other, sadder hand, I think that, to most people, Google really is Just Another Company. And we expect companies--except maybe Apple, except actually really Apple too--to be heartless, soulless optimizing machines. That we tolerate that behavior out of social constructed created expressly to help society...well, whether they're doing that, and whether we should do something about the ones that aren't, is a deeply political matter, but tangential.
- eru 10y ago
  Why single out Apple? They aren't that nice to their employees. And if you single out Apple, you can also single out Amazon: they may treat their employees badly by Google standards, but I am delighted to be their customer.

kapitza 10y ago

What I find most interesting about this piece is the awesome lifestyle of flitting from grant to grant as a semi-celebrity in the international jet-set art world. Also lets you feel good about "leaking" your employer's information to "organizers." Take that, employer! And best of all, you get to use the word "show" as a nontransitive verb, as in "I showed at Venice." Apparently this lifestyle is only available if you're a (to use the author's term) "Marxist." But then again, I suppose anyone can read Negri and Hardt if they're patient enough. No word on what, if any, ideological filters Google is supposed to apply to its contractor pool so this doesn't happen again. Perhaps they could ask trap questions about postcolonial theory, rejecting anyone who answered correctly...

gwern 10y ago
There's a lot of odd insinuations and expectations in this piece. I found particularly strange the part where he talks about his joy in talking communist politics in Berkeley and then immediately muses about how to make these skills 'marketable' and about his resentment that he might not be rewarded with a comfortable bourgeois middle-class existence. Feels like there are a lot of unstated assumptions and arguments behind his opinions and actions which he never makes explicit or considers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mucker 10y ago
  Or abusing the system to score income on the sale of his house. I nearly snorted at that point.
  - paulcole 10y ago
    I think you're misinterpreting this. I think he moved into a unit of a luxury building (that was required to be rented to a low income person) and lived there until the unit was sold.
    - 10y ago

asuffield 10y ago

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) > sometimes mining information to leak to organizer friends > After 9–12 hours on campus I would fill my Google-issued bag with Naked juices and to-go containers of food for my roommates So... deliberate violation of the corporate NDA (which is massively disrespectful to the other people who work here) and stealing food from the cafes. I'm happy to work at a company that fires people who take something offered in good faith and abuse it. It is a part of our company culture to give people broad freedom to do what they think they should, on the understanding that they will act responsibly and not abuse the privilege. (I can't comment much on the rest of the article, except to say that I feel a person who has openly admitted their tendency to dishonesty is perhaps not best afforded a high level of trust in the claims that they make)

I_HALF_CATS 10y ago
I completely disagree. Someone who discloses things of this nature seems even more honest. In my opinion you seem like a bit of a square. :| edit: Goobye kharma.
mucker 10y ago
No I agree with you. I got about half way through till I realized this is all about a self-entitled prick. He spent the front half of the article talking about himself, then justified it with the fact that Google may hire people to do work. OH MY GOSH CALL THE POLICE!
curiouscat321 10y ago
The NDA is inexcusable. The food though...seems like everybody does it.
- mc32 10y ago
  I don't think any company would ignore pilfering on a large scale (everybody doing it). Now, large companies might have an office or two which deviate from the norm and may tolerate it a bit, but company-wide, I don't think so.
- 10y ago

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

can't post anything negative about Google on HN. Will get automatically down voted by their thousands of drones, I mean employees.

Gigablah 10y ago
Is it actually possible to downvote postings on HN? (Why am I being downvoted for asking an honest question?)
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  yes but I believe you need a certain amount of karma
  - hueving 10y ago
    You can't downvote articles, just comments (at least with my karma). IIRC articles move down if they fail to receive up votes and collect comments.
    - striking 10y ago
      You can't ever downvote articles, although they will drop faster in ranking if they're flagged by (many) users. Also, there's a "flamewar detector" which has something to do with vote to comment ratio.
  - mucker 10y ago
    And trust me, the down votes tend to be pro-marxist. So that this is getting so much attention speaks volumes about just HOW bad he presented this tale.
    - eru 10y ago
      How do you tell where the downvotes are coming from?
- deleted 10y ago

adamsea 10y ago

"Being a person means being paranoid that you might be a puppet, and being an artist means making things that you want to see exist, to defy that paranoia, by communicating past anything you could rationally explain away."

mathattack 10y ago

Wow - what a self-indulgent pseudo intellectual prick. Nobody forced him to work there.

timcederman 10y ago

The author is an unreliable narrator. He mentions many incongruous aspects of his experience that just can't be true. For example, he says he waited in line next to people in SurveyMonkey t-shirts, but he worked at Google from 08-09. SurveyMonkey was only in Portland at that time.

Grue3 10y ago

As much as I dislike Google's practices, I don't think a self-described Marxist can claim moral superiority over anyone.