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Oh, to read the Google employee forums today... I wonder how those "activist employees" will respond this time.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
They'll be upset and "outraged", before returning to work. I keep thinking, each time Google is in the news, that this is finally the day engineers will just walk off the job and not come back. But I know it probably isn't. Even those who have every ability to find a new job quickly will find some excuse to justify staying.
- Retric 8y ago
  Google has a very high turnover rate relative to company age pay etc at just 3.2 years on average. So, I suspect they really do lose a lot of people over this stuff, they just keep hiring at a very fast pace.
  - bmj 8y ago
    I wonder at what point working for Google will lose its shine, and their hiring pace will drop off.
    - chongli 8y ago
      Probably at the point when they can no longer offer sky-high starting salaries. You should see the job boards for my school co-op program. Job postings by Google, Apple, et al get ridiculous numbers of applications for just 1 position. Nobody here cares about Google's stance on activist employees. They want to get their money and pad their resume.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - jkaplowitz 8y ago
      You'll be waiting quite a while: Amazon has long been (and remains) an overall much worse place to work, yet they find plenty of warm bodies to fill their seats. (Of course this is a generalization - I know people with good experiences and others with bad ones at many companies, including these two.)
    - wasdfff 8y ago
      People make a living building missiles payed for with public money that blow up schoolbusses across the world just to put their own children in a better school district. When people get a decent paycheck no one thinks about how much that dollar cost.
      - drdeadringer 8y ago
        Some of us do, and then switch to other companies and/or industries.
      - bunnycorn 8y ago
        If you think your country commits such acts of war crimes, then you should flee your country today. If you are not building the missiles, you are paying taxes that go to buy those missiles to blow up school buses. As an Electrical Engineer, I would be glad to help my country or the allies of my country to build missiles to help in the war effort. If we don't help, we will end up with barbarians blowing up our neighbourhood.
        asdff 8y ago
        You are correct, it is pretty heinous that we are all beholden to paying the war industry vast sums of money. Is it really worth it to spend millions on missiles that notoriously miss their targets? Wouldn't a very small trained team of operators be much better and far cheaper at safely eliminating a threat than blowing up an entire apartment complex from a desk hundreds of miles away with a missile that costs more than everything in that town? In August, Saudi Arabia fired a missile that killed 40 school children (1), probably one of the many weapons they bought from the US. I'm sure that missile that ended their lives cost 1000x more than whatever school building they were bussing to when they became the latest victims of geopolitical theater. At which point do you realize you are engineering more and more expensive and advanced ways of killing for the sake of skimming personal profit for executives and investors out of public budgets? If I worked for one of these companies, I don't think I could live with myself with that huge guilt, knowing my great efforts lead directly to further destabilizing the world and ending peoples lives. I'm not comfortable using my skills to perfect ending peoples lives. That isn't innovation, that isn't advancement, that is regression. Raytheon is the barbarian blowing up the neighborhood, not a Yemeni schoolkid. 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/13/middleeast/yemen-children-school-bus-strike-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/13/middleeast/yemen-children...
    - cheeze 8y ago
      As long as they continue paying folks boatloads of money, they'll continue working there.
    - zjaffee 8y ago
      Goldman Sachs has been on the back-burner of ethical issues for decades, yet they're still one of the most desirable employers among college graduates.
  - polishTar 8y ago
    This is absolutely not true. You might be confusing median tenure with turnover rate, but those are drastically different things; especially so in a company that’s growing.
    - JeremyBanks 8y ago
      http://go.corp.google.com/percent http://go.corp.google.com/percent Give us the stats.
      - polishTar 8y ago
        The attrition rate is google-public, but not public-public.
        Retric 8y ago
        Several approximations are floating around and none of them look good. Over 10% annual tunover is bad and Google is as far as anyone can tell well above that.

They'll be upset and "outraged", before returning to work. I keep thinking, each time Google is in the news, that this is finally the day engineers will just walk off the job and not come back. But I know it probably isn't. Even those who have every ability to find a new job quickly will find some excuse to justify staying.

Retric 8y ago
Google has a very high turnover rate relative to company age pay etc at just 3.2 years on average. So, I suspect they really do lose a lot of people over this stuff, they just keep hiring at a very fast pace.
- bmj 8y ago
  I wonder at what point working for Google will lose its shine, and their hiring pace will drop off.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Probably at the point when they can no longer offer sky-high starting salaries. You should see the job boards for my school co-op program. Job postings by Google, Apple, et al get ridiculous numbers of applications for just 1 position. Nobody here cares about Google's stance on activist employees. They want to get their money and pad their resume.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    You'll be waiting quite a while: Amazon has long been (and remains) an overall much worse place to work, yet they find plenty of warm bodies to fill their seats. (Of course this is a generalization - I know people with good experiences and others with bad ones at many companies, including these two.)
  - wasdfff 8y ago
    People make a living building missiles payed for with public money that blow up schoolbusses across the world just to put their own children in a better school district. When people get a decent paycheck no one thinks about how much that dollar cost.
    - drdeadringer 8y ago
      Some of us do, and then switch to other companies and/or industries.
    - bunnycorn 8y ago
      If you think your country commits such acts of war crimes, then you should flee your country today. If you are not building the missiles, you are paying taxes that go to buy those missiles to blow up school buses. As an Electrical Engineer, I would be glad to help my country or the allies of my country to build missiles to help in the war effort. If we don't help, we will end up with barbarians blowing up our neighbourhood.
      - asdff 8y ago
        You are correct, it is pretty heinous that we are all beholden to paying the war industry vast sums of money. Is it really worth it to spend millions on missiles that notoriously miss their targets? Wouldn't a very small trained team of operators be much better and far cheaper at safely eliminating a threat than blowing up an entire apartment complex from a desk hundreds of miles away with a missile that costs more than everything in that town? In August, Saudi Arabia fired a missile that killed 40 school children (1), probably one of the many weapons they bought from the US. I'm sure that missile that ended their lives cost 1000x more than whatever school building they were bussing to when they became the latest victims of geopolitical theater. At which point do you realize you are engineering more and more expensive and advanced ways of killing for the sake of skimming personal profit for executives and investors out of public budgets? If I worked for one of these companies, I don't think I could live with myself with that huge guilt, knowing my great efforts lead directly to further destabilizing the world and ending peoples lives. I'm not comfortable using my skills to perfect ending peoples lives. That isn't innovation, that isn't advancement, that is regression. Raytheon is the barbarian blowing up the neighborhood, not a Yemeni schoolkid. 1. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/13/middleeast/yemen-children-school-bus-strike-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/13/middleeast/yemen-children...
  - cheeze 8y ago
    As long as they continue paying folks boatloads of money, they'll continue working there.
  - zjaffee 8y ago
    Goldman Sachs has been on the back-burner of ethical issues for decades, yet they're still one of the most desirable employers among college graduates.
- polishTar 8y ago
  This is absolutely not true. You might be confusing median tenure with turnover rate, but those are drastically different things; especially so in a company that’s growing.
  - JeremyBanks 8y ago
    http://go.corp.google.com/percent http://go.corp.google.com/percent Give us the stats.
    - polishTar 8y ago
      The attrition rate is google-public, but not public-public.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Several approximations are floating around and none of them look good. Over 10% annual tunover is bad and Google is as far as anyone can tell well above that.