10 ms·

First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is th

by hgytr 7y ago

First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is the extension of the internal forums. CNBC made a good summary and I can comment on each bullet point. Larry and Brin probably stopped attending because nothing important is said on TGIFs. More people -> more leaks -> less interesting information -> less attendence. Nothing surprising here. Sundar's solution seems to be resorting to boring once a quarter all-hands about business strategy. I wonder what the attendance will be. It's a hypocrisy to complain about troubles with trust and at the same time ban political or whatever discussions. Googlers are generally very smart folks and understand that whatever they say may be used against them in the future, when policies change once again. Today you post a memegen where you state that triangles are better than squares, tomorrow you get fired because squares have become the symbol of some protected class. You have to apply a form of forward self-censorship and be very careful about what you say to whom. I don't think there is a tension between execs and workers, but only because the two classes live in different worlds. Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Just my 2c.

redblacktree 7y ago
> typical big corporation with typical corporate politics I don't know why this would surprise anyone. People are people and politics are politics in any large organization. There is no reason to think Google would be exempt.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > There is no reason to think Google would be exempt. It can be controlled in some way. If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example. Or getting them early enough (young enough) to shape them in a way that will lower internal tensions. Not every large company is burning in political fires.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Another option is to have a culture of not permitting political fires to be lit on company property. In other words, not talking about politics at work.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    > If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example. That’s not possible. In fact, one of the best ways to stoke internal political fires is to make the mistake of convincing those holding the majority political viewpoint that they represent the viewpoint of the whole company.
- hn82738 7y ago
  > There is no reason to think Google would be exempt. Except that it did seem to be exempt, for much longer and while becoming much larger than I think most people would have imagined.
  - ubu7737 7y ago
    Google lost its varnish around the time it sought to fight Facebook with Plus. Around the time they released the Nexus 7. I guess around the time Sundar became ascendant.
    - ridaj 7y ago
      Sundar only became ascendant afterwards. When + was around, Vic Gundotra was in charge of that. Nexus 7 was released back when Andy Rubin was still firmly in charge of all things Android. I'd associate Sundar's ascendancy more with the shift from Nexus to Pixel and Android One, with the assistant, etc.
  - hgytr 7y ago
    There is an interesting analogy. Two uranium hemispheres remain peaceful only until they are joined.
rainyMammoth 7y ago
> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for humanity than Google and the adtech industry. I would qualify all of those companies as "better place to work" than Google. It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money.
- hgytr 7y ago
  If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - OneMoreGoogler 7y ago
    Over 16 years I've worked at only four companies, but one of them was Google, and it was honestly my least favorite. Creature comforts: I have an actual cubicle with >2x the space. Excellent meals are still provided, but now lines are <1 min. I can always find a parking space. I can always find a bathroom stall. Engineering culture: No more promo or perf review nonsense. There's none of the internal competition / pressure that I felt every day at Google. The org and leadership has vastly less churn. The place is dead at 5:15pm. And the people I work with are incredibly smart. In terms of company: my new employer is not creepy. My grandmother understands what I work on. Do follow your heart, but I'm so happy I left.
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      What "pressure" you feel is entirely up to you. Most managers at Google don't micro manage you.
hos234 7y ago
Organizational Politics and Real world Politics are usually studied separately. One in B-schools the other in political science depts. You have to spend time thinking about why that is. There is a lot of overlap, because both are about gaining power and influence, but there are big differences in needs, resources and routes taken. It's easy to misunderstand them. Google, thanks to the amount of info they sit on and decisions they make about how it flows, is stuck bang in the middle of those two worlds. Other corps sit in that intersection too such as oil/energy, defense, banking, media etc but none of them have achieved info scale that Google has. This is still early days where traditional Politicians/Parties (other than the Chinese) haven't fully processed what those info flows can do to them. They recognize now, how important corps sitting on top of mountain ranges of data are. But the moment they loose power and influence because of those info flow is when real awakening happens. It's safe to assume Real World Politics will dominate Org Politics within such corps. Things will break apart just as they did with Newspapers and TV/Radio News. At an individual level it's always good to think about what your needs are and be conscious of them. People who aren't, just get dragged by whatever chaos is unfolding thinking they have no role to play or choice. Those that are in touch with their needs and values experience the whole story very differently.
throwaway6833 7y ago
Throwaway time.. The minefield about trying to predict what's going to be politically correct in the future is so true--you nailed it. You might carefully self-censor your discussions to things that are politically allowed today but everything lives forever, so something you say may fall out of fashion and years from now it could get you in hot HR water. The only solution is to just stick to work topics, really. The need for both current and forward self-censorship is very real. The "bring your whole self to work" thing is actually kind of a trap. If you're politically aligned the correct way, then sure, you're welcome to bring your whole self to work and participate in political discussions. If you're a Trump supporter, for example, or don't buy in to the whole pronouns thing, then [it's kind of unspoken that] you're expected to please leave that whole self at home thankyouverymuch. Kind of a one way street. I just come in to work and don't seek out political drama. It's totally optional. Besides the above future-PC worry, you really have to go out and look for trouble. For me, memegen is a place to read silly lighthearted memes and nothing more.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  Genuine question: (you're on a throwaway, what's the harm in answering me, right?) What is there to buy into about pronouns? If my first name is Stan, named after my dad also named Stan, and my middle name is Jason, and my dad abandoned my family when I was young so I prefer people to call me Jason, you'd have no problem calling me Jason and be understanding that calling me Stan is a sore point, right? What if I don't want to explain my personal issues with my father and childhood family situation to coworkers? If I just say that I really strongly prefer Jason and that it genuinely upsets me if you call me Stan, would you demand an explanation? So if I claim, without explaining, that I strongly dislike being addressed as "she" and strongly prefer "he", isn't that the same amount of work? What is there to buy into, an explanation about personal struggles with gender dysphoria? That seems like a pretty personal thing to expect from a coworker, does it not? What am I missing?
  - username90 7y ago
    Names says nothing about a person while he/she describes an aspect of you. A person who wants to use the wrong pronoun is like a fat person wanting people to call them thin. Of course calling fat people fat is not very nice, the same can be said about missgendering people, but it is very hard to call fat people thin so you try to avoid the subject. So if you look like and behave like a man then people will call you a man, if you look like and behave like a woman then people will call you a woman. Of course there are cases where the person looks like and behaves like the other gender but some assholes still calls them by their old pronoun, but in most cases I see someone who is obviously male wanting to be called female or vice versa. In those cases it hurts a bit because it goes against the meaning of the words, and given how our language is structured it is very hard to avoid the subject like most people do with other attributes.
WAHa_06x36 7y ago
> Today you post a memegen where you state that triangles are better than squares, tomorrow you get fired because squares have become the symbol of some protected class. This is not how anything works. What actually happens is, today you post something insensitive and disparaging because you can get away with it as a "joke", tomorrow, people will actually stand up for themselves and tell you it's not ok to say that, and it never was, and you were too much of an asshole to even consider that that might be the case.
- verall 7y ago
  Downvotes and no response. I don't know why HN wants to hide behind this strawman so bad. Noone is getting fired for posting about geometric shapes, unless you're trying to say something insensitive or disparaging. The line of what is acceptable to stay has changed, but turns out if you wern't being an asshole in the first place, people are very forgiving. Also, Twitter is not an example. People are constantly unforgiving assholes on Twitter for short-term Internet fame; your workplace isn't Twitter.
  - drenvuk 7y ago
    It's not a strawman. Good jokes that haven't been said before are hard to find and many times lie on the edge of what's acceptable and isn't acceptable or is a combination of nearly unrelated ideas delivered through a multitude of different comedic devices. There's a reason that workplace humor is so repetitive and soul deadening.
    - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
      None of that is actually true.
      - drenvuk 7y ago
        Your missing sense of humor is noted.
    - verall 7y ago
kerng 7y ago
>> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Such comments is what changed at Google. There are other excellent places to work at these days, like Microsoft (also Amazon) if you are interested in large scale cloud services and not advertisement.
- hgytr 7y ago
  Microsoft is pretty good, indeed, but they don't match the Google pay. A senior at Google pulls 350 (add free food and gym to that), while a principal at Microsoft will be lucky to cross 250 (no free food and no gym on site). Sample size: a few tens of people. And the limited housing supply means that prices are tuned to the more successful folks. Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its employees. The curious vesting schedule means you instantly lose 10% of your stock grant value. The company expects you to pull more hours and do some real oncall duties: this means less free time for you and less pay/hour rate. Good and gym are out if question. And don't forget to pay for your parking spot. IMHO, if you aren't big enough to demand a custom contract, you don't go to Amazon unless you have no better choices. My question is still open: what are those better places?
  - kerng 7y ago
    You seem to confuse pay with "best place". Principal at Microsoft can make way more though (not working there, but know from Partner level folks there) - it's a very wide range, spawning 3 job levels.
    - hgytr 7y ago
      I know SDE IIs at MS who made 350+. However 90% of those SDE IIs don't even approach the entry level Google pay. My info about the principal salaries comes from those principals themselves. By the best place I just meant best in terms of getting knowledge, status and pay with the least effort in the least stressful conditions.
mikro2nd 7y ago
> Googlers are generally very smart folks Seems like it's time to remind folk of Joy's Law: "no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,”[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_law_(management) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_law_(management)
missosoup 7y ago
> but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. The level of self-censorship my friends from Goog exercise and how carefully they choose their words on everyday topics is unlike anything I've seen from people working at any other big corps. They've also become more flexible on moral stances that once used to be clear cut lines for them. Google is a borderline cult. It has fallen far below the bar that most people would set for 'best workplace'. This is just something that Goog employees don't become aware of until they leave the bubble.

by hgytr 7y ago

redblacktree 7y ago

> typical big corporation with typical corporate politics I don't know why this would surprise anyone. People are people and politics are politics in any large organization. There is no reason to think Google would be exempt.

ekianjo 7y ago
> There is no reason to think Google would be exempt. It can be controlled in some way. If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example. Or getting them early enough (young enough) to shape them in a way that will lower internal tensions. Not every large company is burning in political fires.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Another option is to have a culture of not permitting political fires to be lit on company property. In other words, not talking about politics at work.
- kortilla 7y ago
  > If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example. That’s not possible. In fact, one of the best ways to stoke internal political fires is to make the mistake of convincing those holding the majority political viewpoint that they represent the viewpoint of the whole company.
hn82738 7y ago
> There is no reason to think Google would be exempt. Except that it did seem to be exempt, for much longer and while becoming much larger than I think most people would have imagined.
- ubu7737 7y ago
  Google lost its varnish around the time it sought to fight Facebook with Plus. Around the time they released the Nexus 7. I guess around the time Sundar became ascendant.
  - ridaj 7y ago
    Sundar only became ascendant afterwards. When + was around, Vic Gundotra was in charge of that. Nexus 7 was released back when Andy Rubin was still firmly in charge of all things Android. I'd associate Sundar's ascendancy more with the shift from Nexus to Pixel and Android One, with the assistant, etc.
- hgytr 7y ago
  There is an interesting analogy. Two uranium hemispheres remain peaceful only until they are joined.

rainyMammoth 7y ago

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for humanity than Google and the adtech industry. I would qualify all of those companies as "better place to work" than Google. It is maybe the best place to work if you have no sense of ethics, want to take it easy, work 9 to 5 and maximize your money.

hgytr 7y ago
If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- OneMoreGoogler 7y ago
  Over 16 years I've worked at only four companies, but one of them was Google, and it was honestly my least favorite. Creature comforts: I have an actual cubicle with >2x the space. Excellent meals are still provided, but now lines are <1 min. I can always find a parking space. I can always find a bathroom stall. Engineering culture: No more promo or perf review nonsense. There's none of the internal competition / pressure that I felt every day at Google. The org and leadership has vastly less churn. The place is dead at 5:15pm. And the people I work with are incredibly smart. In terms of company: my new employer is not creepy. My grandmother understands what I work on. Do follow your heart, but I'm so happy I left.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    What "pressure" you feel is entirely up to you. Most managers at Google don't micro manage you.

hos234 7y ago

Organizational Politics and Real world Politics are usually studied separately. One in B-schools the other in political science depts. You have to spend time thinking about why that is. There is a lot of overlap, because both are about gaining power and influence, but there are big differences in needs, resources and routes taken. It's easy to misunderstand them. Google, thanks to the amount of info they sit on and decisions they make about how it flows, is stuck bang in the middle of those two worlds. Other corps sit in that intersection too such as oil/energy, defense, banking, media etc but none of them have achieved info scale that Google has. This is still early days where traditional Politicians/Parties (other than the Chinese) haven't fully processed what those info flows can do to them. They recognize now, how important corps sitting on top of mountain ranges of data are. But the moment they loose power and influence because of those info flow is when real awakening happens. It's safe to assume Real World Politics will dominate Org Politics within such corps. Things will break apart just as they did with Newspapers and TV/Radio News. At an individual level it's always good to think about what your needs are and be conscious of them. People who aren't, just get dragged by whatever chaos is unfolding thinking they have no role to play or choice. Those that are in touch with their needs and values experience the whole story very differently.

throwaway6833 7y ago

Throwaway time.. The minefield about trying to predict what's going to be politically correct in the future is so true--you nailed it. You might carefully self-censor your discussions to things that are politically allowed today but everything lives forever, so something you say may fall out of fashion and years from now it could get you in hot HR water. The only solution is to just stick to work topics, really. The need for both current and forward self-censorship is very real. The "bring your whole self to work" thing is actually kind of a trap. If you're politically aligned the correct way, then sure, you're welcome to bring your whole self to work and participate in political discussions. If you're a Trump supporter, for example, or don't buy in to the whole pronouns thing, then [it's kind of unspoken that] you're expected to please leave that whole self at home thankyouverymuch. Kind of a one way street. I just come in to work and don't seek out political drama. It's totally optional. Besides the above future-PC worry, you really have to go out and look for trouble. For me, memegen is a place to read silly lighthearted memes and nothing more.

laughinghan 7y ago
Genuine question: (you're on a throwaway, what's the harm in answering me, right?) What is there to buy into about pronouns? If my first name is Stan, named after my dad also named Stan, and my middle name is Jason, and my dad abandoned my family when I was young so I prefer people to call me Jason, you'd have no problem calling me Jason and be understanding that calling me Stan is a sore point, right? What if I don't want to explain my personal issues with my father and childhood family situation to coworkers? If I just say that I really strongly prefer Jason and that it genuinely upsets me if you call me Stan, would you demand an explanation? So if I claim, without explaining, that I strongly dislike being addressed as "she" and strongly prefer "he", isn't that the same amount of work? What is there to buy into, an explanation about personal struggles with gender dysphoria? That seems like a pretty personal thing to expect from a coworker, does it not? What am I missing?
- username90 7y ago
  Names says nothing about a person while he/she describes an aspect of you. A person who wants to use the wrong pronoun is like a fat person wanting people to call them thin. Of course calling fat people fat is not very nice, the same can be said about missgendering people, but it is very hard to call fat people thin so you try to avoid the subject. So if you look like and behave like a man then people will call you a man, if you look like and behave like a woman then people will call you a woman. Of course there are cases where the person looks like and behaves like the other gender but some assholes still calls them by their old pronoun, but in most cases I see someone who is obviously male wanting to be called female or vice versa. In those cases it hurts a bit because it goes against the meaning of the words, and given how our language is structured it is very hard to avoid the subject like most people do with other attributes.

WAHa_06x36 7y ago

> Today you post a memegen where you state that triangles are better than squares, tomorrow you get fired because squares have become the symbol of some protected class. This is not how anything works. What actually happens is, today you post something insensitive and disparaging because you can get away with it as a "joke", tomorrow, people will actually stand up for themselves and tell you it's not ok to say that, and it never was, and you were too much of an asshole to even consider that that might be the case.

verall 7y ago
Downvotes and no response. I don't know why HN wants to hide behind this strawman so bad. Noone is getting fired for posting about geometric shapes, unless you're trying to say something insensitive or disparaging. The line of what is acceptable to stay has changed, but turns out if you wern't being an asshole in the first place, people are very forgiving. Also, Twitter is not an example. People are constantly unforgiving assholes on Twitter for short-term Internet fame; your workplace isn't Twitter.
- drenvuk 7y ago
  It's not a strawman. Good jokes that haven't been said before are hard to find and many times lie on the edge of what's acceptable and isn't acceptable or is a combination of nearly unrelated ideas delivered through a multitude of different comedic devices. There's a reason that workplace humor is so repetitive and soul deadening.
  - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
    None of that is actually true.
    - drenvuk 7y ago
      Your missing sense of humor is noted.
  - verall 7y ago

kerng 7y ago

>> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Such comments is what changed at Google. There are other excellent places to work at these days, like Microsoft (also Amazon) if you are interested in large scale cloud services and not advertisement.

hgytr 7y ago
Microsoft is pretty good, indeed, but they don't match the Google pay. A senior at Google pulls 350 (add free food and gym to that), while a principal at Microsoft will be lucky to cross 250 (no free food and no gym on site). Sample size: a few tens of people. And the limited housing supply means that prices are tuned to the more successful folks. Amazon seems to be very focused on squeezing out most out of its employees. The curious vesting schedule means you instantly lose 10% of your stock grant value. The company expects you to pull more hours and do some real oncall duties: this means less free time for you and less pay/hour rate. Good and gym are out if question. And don't forget to pay for your parking spot. IMHO, if you aren't big enough to demand a custom contract, you don't go to Amazon unless you have no better choices. My question is still open: what are those better places?
- kerng 7y ago
  You seem to confuse pay with "best place". Principal at Microsoft can make way more though (not working there, but know from Partner level folks there) - it's a very wide range, spawning 3 job levels.
  - hgytr 7y ago
    I know SDE IIs at MS who made 350+. However 90% of those SDE IIs don't even approach the entry level Google pay. My info about the principal salaries comes from those principals themselves. By the best place I just meant best in terms of getting knowledge, status and pay with the least effort in the least stressful conditions.

mikro2nd 7y ago

> Googlers are generally very smart folks Seems like it's time to remind folk of Joy's Law: "no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,”[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_law_(management) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_law_(management)

missosoup 7y ago

> but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. The level of self-censorship my friends from Goog exercise and how carefully they choose their words on everyday topics is unlike anything I've seen from people working at any other big corps. They've also become more flexible on moral stances that once used to be clear cut lines for them. Google is a borderline cult. It has fallen far below the bar that most people would set for 'best workplace'. This is just something that Goog employees don't become aware of until they leave the bubble.