6 ms·

Work elsewhere.

by pnw_hazor 7y ago

Work elsewhere.

scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
Huh? We don't work at Google, we use Google services
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  The Goog employees, several who comment here at HN, could stop it tomorrow. Not plebes like you and me.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    If you think you can solve it, come apply for a job at Google. This kind of thing is a seriously hard thing to police in a fair and reasonable way. Real spammers have become very sophisticated, and separating them from good users is very very difficult. Many bots steal real human accounts for their nefarious behaviour. Human review of accounts doesn't help much either - you simply can't allow a human to delve through a users mail/photos to see if they are a bot or not.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - finnthehuman 7y ago
      >If you think you can solve it, come apply for a job at Google. Parent poster isn't advocating the "fix it from the inside" route, he's advocating you leave. >This kind of thing is a seriously hard thing to police in a fair and reasonable way. It's so "seriously hard" that you had to use a different example that's more favorable to google's position (identifying a bot user without data access) in a thread about a different topic (your distaste for manual, thoughtful app reviews)?
    - master-litty 7y ago
      I had an on-site with Google last year and didn't quite make it in. Since then I've noticed HN has an aggressively negative opinion on Google's general affairs, and most of it makes sense on the surface. It almost feels like I dodged a bullet. But comments like these shine a completely different perspective. The OP's story is extremely frustrating but it doesn't seem to stem from a lack of care, in your eyes. If someone were really motivated to solve problems in that area, do you really feel they would be given the time to explore it? I get the impression these sort of projects would be underprioritized.
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        > If someone were really motivated to solve problems in that area, do you really feel they would be given the time to explore it? Yes. Beware though - some parts of the issue might be more political rather than technical (eg. Team A wants user accounts banned for violating XYZ policy, while Team B has other data which shows those user accounts aren't bad, but can't share the data with Team A because that violates privacy terms). For issues that are purely technical (for example, the automated spam detection system has a false positive on an obscure but legit library), any Google employee can send a pull request to fix it, and in general your pull request will be accepted and deployed.
        master-litty 7y ago
        Could I ask you some more questions about day-to-day Google over email? It's wonderful to hear about.
ummonk 7y ago
If all the Google programmers who're here at HN started working elsewhere nothing significant would really happen. Google would continue to operate the same way. Except maybe making it to the front page of HN would stop functioning as an ad hoc appeals process for Google decisions.
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  That's what everyone says about bad places. That's what they always say when asked to do terrible things. There will be people they could hire, but it wouldn't be anyone that would get invited to conferences, and so on. Nobody that would make Stanford proud. People who work at Google know they are working for a terrible company doing terrible things (there are plenty of those...) but those programmers, every single one of them, is able to easiliy work somewhere else. It isn't like they are warehouse workers slaving for Amazon.
  - maimeowmeow 7y ago
    Google has a new policy to not rock the boat, including snitchin on anyone who might be. Probably not that large of a group of people that both read hacker news, read this exact article, even care about such things, and work at google. At a company of that size, they are maybe fancy cogs, but still replaceable.
    - master-litty 7y ago
      Is it an official new policy? Having a hard time finding any solid information about it.
      - astura 7y ago
        I guess their talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004
  - javert 7y ago
    Amazon warehouse workers also have the option not to work there. Amazon is not forcing them to be there and Amazon does not owe someone a job any more than any other business owes jobs to random people.

Work elsewhere.

scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago

Huh? We don't work at Google, we use Google services

pnw_hazor 7y ago
The Goog employees, several who comment here at HN, could stop it tomorrow. Not plebes like you and me.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  If you think you can solve it, come apply for a job at Google. This kind of thing is a seriously hard thing to police in a fair and reasonable way. Real spammers have become very sophisticated, and separating them from good users is very very difficult. Many bots steal real human accounts for their nefarious behaviour. Human review of accounts doesn't help much either - you simply can't allow a human to delve through a users mail/photos to see if they are a bot or not.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - finnthehuman 7y ago
    >If you think you can solve it, come apply for a job at Google. Parent poster isn't advocating the "fix it from the inside" route, he's advocating you leave. >This kind of thing is a seriously hard thing to police in a fair and reasonable way. It's so "seriously hard" that you had to use a different example that's more favorable to google's position (identifying a bot user without data access) in a thread about a different topic (your distaste for manual, thoughtful app reviews)?
  - master-litty 7y ago
    I had an on-site with Google last year and didn't quite make it in. Since then I've noticed HN has an aggressively negative opinion on Google's general affairs, and most of it makes sense on the surface. It almost feels like I dodged a bullet. But comments like these shine a completely different perspective. The OP's story is extremely frustrating but it doesn't seem to stem from a lack of care, in your eyes. If someone were really motivated to solve problems in that area, do you really feel they would be given the time to explore it? I get the impression these sort of projects would be underprioritized.
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      > If someone were really motivated to solve problems in that area, do you really feel they would be given the time to explore it? Yes. Beware though - some parts of the issue might be more political rather than technical (eg. Team A wants user accounts banned for violating XYZ policy, while Team B has other data which shows those user accounts aren't bad, but can't share the data with Team A because that violates privacy terms). For issues that are purely technical (for example, the automated spam detection system has a false positive on an obscure but legit library), any Google employee can send a pull request to fix it, and in general your pull request will be accepted and deployed.
      - master-litty 7y ago
        Could I ask you some more questions about day-to-day Google over email? It's wonderful to hear about.

ummonk 7y ago

If all the Google programmers who're here at HN started working elsewhere nothing significant would really happen. Google would continue to operate the same way. Except maybe making it to the front page of HN would stop functioning as an ad hoc appeals process for Google decisions.

pnw_hazor 7y ago
That's what everyone says about bad places. That's what they always say when asked to do terrible things. There will be people they could hire, but it wouldn't be anyone that would get invited to conferences, and so on. Nobody that would make Stanford proud. People who work at Google know they are working for a terrible company doing terrible things (there are plenty of those...) but those programmers, every single one of them, is able to easiliy work somewhere else. It isn't like they are warehouse workers slaving for Amazon.
- maimeowmeow 7y ago
  Google has a new policy to not rock the boat, including snitchin on anyone who might be. Probably not that large of a group of people that both read hacker news, read this exact article, even care about such things, and work at google. At a company of that size, they are maybe fancy cogs, but still replaceable.
  - master-litty 7y ago
    Is it an official new policy? Having a hard time finding any solid information about it.
    - astura 7y ago
      I guess their talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20779004
- javert 7y ago
  Amazon warehouse workers also have the option not to work there. Amazon is not forcing them to be there and Amazon does not owe someone a job any more than any other business owes jobs to random people.