5 ms·

Why do so many Googlers on HN have such unpleasant personalities? "Did it ever occur to you" that you make your employer look even more awful?

cromwellian 8y ago
Isn't making accusations of theft and industrial espionage is unpleasant? This kind of accusation in the industry crops up time and time again and I don't think it should be accepted unchallenged, neither between small companies, or large ones. I've seen this claims so many times, people claiming some investors took their deck and gave it to their portfolio companies, people claiming another company copied them. The instances where this actually happens usually occurs when an already proven market product is copied (e.g. look at FB copying Snapchat recently), I've never seen it with a pre-success product. Think of it this way, if I had the idea for capacitive touch smart screen phone in 2004 and met with Apple, could I claim they stole the iPhone from me? There is so much more to an iPhone than just the 'idea'. Now, if you have some non-obvious algorithm, which if you asked a senior engineer to design, could not come up with it in a few weeks, my opinion would be different. Like if you invented a fundamental new type of homomorphic encryption, which, could be explained on a single page, but enables a fundamentally new type of distributed computing. There are indeed, some ideas which are very 'dense' in value purely by their description alone, but they're few and far between. In any case, online forums are rife with people making conspiratorial claims, in economics, in politics, everywhere, and I think a technical community like HN should demand a higher degree of evidence.
- paul7986 8y ago
  Are you saying I was not pursued/invited and met with Motorola ATAP(Google had bought them in Jan 2013) now Google ATAP in April 2013? I am making this up? I made up this NDA I signed https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf and this letter when Google absorbed ATAP https://ryanspahn.com/google.JPG https://ryanspahn.com/google.JPG . Ive got emails from the jerk who invited us out there .. who baited us then said here is the door and by the way the race is on..goodbye. I met with many others too ..like Samsung and that guy was an upstanding gentleman. Google was awful... treated us like dogs! I have no reason to lie only to tell my story to warn others and highlight that Google no longer follows it's motto "Don't be evil."
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    I don't think you're making it up, it sounds like you had a bad experience, and someone from Motorola biz-dev/m&a was being a jerk, but without knowing how the interaction went, it's not really my place to pass judgement. In a company of 88,000 employees, there's a non-zero probability of getting a bad interviewer. I'm sorry to hear you had that experience. Where I part company is the added interpretation. If I was in your situation, and had a negative experience, I'm pretty sure I'd be angry, and feel wronged, and feel 'used', it's only natural. I mean, Dropbox tried to sell themselves to Apple and Steve Jobs didn't like the price, he went on to say 'you dont have product, you have a feature', actually worse than that: "And so he started trolling us a little bit, saying we're a feature, not a product, and telling us a bunch of things like that we don't control an operating system so we're going to be disadvantaged, we're going to have to figure out distribution deals, which are risky, and sort of a bunch of business-plan critiques. But then he was like, 'Alright, well I guess we're gonna have to go kill you, basically.' Maybe not in those words, but pretty close." But do I believe Apple "stole" Dropbox? nah, cloud based backups, sync, etc are pretty straightforward, and although there is innovation at the UI and syncing protocol layer, iCloud is not really a Dropbox clone. BTW, I encourage you to continue to try and innovate around your idea. There may be a use case beyond 'speakers', like emergency alerts, security, think "California earthquake imminent in 10 seconds!". There could also be a use case for synchronized sound based gaming at parties. There's loads more to do, and having had some bad experiences shouldn't discourage you, it kind of comes with the territory of presenting ideas and startups, you really get shit on a lot.
    - paul7986 8y ago
      I agree ideas are a dime a dozen and are not patentable... syncing audio between devices on the same network or separate networks as an idea is not novel. It's all about the steps taken and if they are unique enough to be strong IP, as well you the inventor have access to capital for the patents and the right connections to truly make things happen. Stuff my friends and I are working on to better amidst daily life. Access to capital & more importantly those who can help here in Baltimore for audio syncing technology isn't easy to come by. Though more importantly we have reached out to those in our network who have sold companies yet none have had any experience in making deals with Google, Samsung and others(what strategy to use when all just want to know your algorithmic steps & if they are unique). It's been a crap-shoot for us and our meeting with Google was a learning experience, but a very unnecessary harsh one and worse compared to meetings with others like Samsung; all very professional and respectful! Indeed we have not given up and the recent news that Google was awarded patents for SpeakerBlast type technology has lit a fire under us even more. Well I'd enjoy learning what you do at Google. Are you on the Chrome Audio team ;-) *Edit: weird your first post here was flagged.

cromwellian 8y ago

Isn't making accusations of theft and industrial espionage is unpleasant? This kind of accusation in the industry crops up time and time again and I don't think it should be accepted unchallenged, neither between small companies, or large ones. I've seen this claims so many times, people claiming some investors took their deck and gave it to their portfolio companies, people claiming another company copied them. The instances where this actually happens usually occurs when an already proven market product is copied (e.g. look at FB copying Snapchat recently), I've never seen it with a pre-success product. Think of it this way, if I had the idea for capacitive touch smart screen phone in 2004 and met with Apple, could I claim they stole the iPhone from me? There is so much more to an iPhone than just the 'idea'. Now, if you have some non-obvious algorithm, which if you asked a senior engineer to design, could not come up with it in a few weeks, my opinion would be different. Like if you invented a fundamental new type of homomorphic encryption, which, could be explained on a single page, but enables a fundamentally new type of distributed computing. There are indeed, some ideas which are very 'dense' in value purely by their description alone, but they're few and far between. In any case, online forums are rife with people making conspiratorial claims, in economics, in politics, everywhere, and I think a technical community like HN should demand a higher degree of evidence.

paul7986 8y ago
Are you saying I was not pursued/invited and met with Motorola ATAP(Google had bought them in Jan 2013) now Google ATAP in April 2013? I am making this up? I made up this NDA I signed https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf https://ryanspahn.com/motorola-google-Expired-NDA2013.pdf and this letter when Google absorbed ATAP https://ryanspahn.com/google.JPG https://ryanspahn.com/google.JPG . Ive got emails from the jerk who invited us out there .. who baited us then said here is the door and by the way the race is on..goodbye. I met with many others too ..like Samsung and that guy was an upstanding gentleman. Google was awful... treated us like dogs! I have no reason to lie only to tell my story to warn others and highlight that Google no longer follows it's motto "Don't be evil."
- cromwellian 8y ago
  I don't think you're making it up, it sounds like you had a bad experience, and someone from Motorola biz-dev/m&a was being a jerk, but without knowing how the interaction went, it's not really my place to pass judgement. In a company of 88,000 employees, there's a non-zero probability of getting a bad interviewer. I'm sorry to hear you had that experience. Where I part company is the added interpretation. If I was in your situation, and had a negative experience, I'm pretty sure I'd be angry, and feel wronged, and feel 'used', it's only natural. I mean, Dropbox tried to sell themselves to Apple and Steve Jobs didn't like the price, he went on to say 'you dont have product, you have a feature', actually worse than that: "And so he started trolling us a little bit, saying we're a feature, not a product, and telling us a bunch of things like that we don't control an operating system so we're going to be disadvantaged, we're going to have to figure out distribution deals, which are risky, and sort of a bunch of business-plan critiques. But then he was like, 'Alright, well I guess we're gonna have to go kill you, basically.' Maybe not in those words, but pretty close." But do I believe Apple "stole" Dropbox? nah, cloud based backups, sync, etc are pretty straightforward, and although there is innovation at the UI and syncing protocol layer, iCloud is not really a Dropbox clone. BTW, I encourage you to continue to try and innovate around your idea. There may be a use case beyond 'speakers', like emergency alerts, security, think "California earthquake imminent in 10 seconds!". There could also be a use case for synchronized sound based gaming at parties. There's loads more to do, and having had some bad experiences shouldn't discourage you, it kind of comes with the territory of presenting ideas and startups, you really get shit on a lot.
  - paul7986 8y ago
    I agree ideas are a dime a dozen and are not patentable... syncing audio between devices on the same network or separate networks as an idea is not novel. It's all about the steps taken and if they are unique enough to be strong IP, as well you the inventor have access to capital for the patents and the right connections to truly make things happen. Stuff my friends and I are working on to better amidst daily life. Access to capital & more importantly those who can help here in Baltimore for audio syncing technology isn't easy to come by. Though more importantly we have reached out to those in our network who have sold companies yet none have had any experience in making deals with Google, Samsung and others(what strategy to use when all just want to know your algorithmic steps & if they are unique). It's been a crap-shoot for us and our meeting with Google was a learning experience, but a very unnecessary harsh one and worse compared to meetings with others like Samsung; all very professional and respectful! Indeed we have not given up and the recent news that Google was awarded patents for SpeakerBlast type technology has lit a fire under us even more. Well I'd enjoy learning what you do at Google. Are you on the Chrome Audio team ;-) *Edit: weird your first post here was flagged.