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One of the problems is people don’t stick around for their entire career. They know a lot of the work is unfulfilling. They stick around for long enough that th

by zcw100 6y ago

One of the problems is people don’t stick around for their entire career. They know a lot of the work is unfulfilling. They stick around for long enough that their departure doesn’t look like they were fired and try to obscure it in something innocuous like, “I was looking for something more challenging” and the recruiter thinks,”wow, more challenging than Google?!? This candidate must be hot”. The amount of status these people enjoy in their careers after leaving is amazing. After that they’re captured. They’re never going to tell you the truth about what it’s like working for Google. They gain an enormous cache from having worked there. The amount of respect I afford these people is inversely proportional to the amount of time it takes them to say where they worked or went to school. Went to MIT and don’t ever manage to bring it up in a conversation and I have to learn it from someone else? Massive respect, but they usually mention it in the first 30 seconds.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
*cachet
amelius 6y ago
> One of the problems is people don’t stick around for their entire career. This is what I don't understand about people working for a company that builds silos or walled gardens. You always know that one day you are not working for that company anymore and you will be outside the silo/garden, and the company will effectively work against you (or against your entire profession) in ways you perhaps did not anticipate. These companies pretend they have an "engineering" culture. But the policies of these companies show very little of that. When do these engineers wake up?
rossjudson 6y ago
There is no "working for Google". There is "working at Google on Something, with People". There's a great deal of variety within Something, and variety within People. There's cutting edge research, there's the boring slog of what must be done, and there's everything in between. There's 20% time, where you can define your own Something. There's very hard work being done on a massive scale to ensure user and customer security and privacy are pervasive through everything. Plenty of xooglers will tell you exactly what they thought about working at Google. You will hear all types of opinions when you do. Cachet simply isn't a factor for most. Apply Occam's razor to the stories that xooglers tell. Are they all lying and "covering up"? Or is the diversity of opinions you read about real, and reflective of the experiences of that writer? I'd go with with real.

by zcw100 6y ago

fennecfoxen 6y ago

*cachet

amelius 6y ago

> One of the problems is people don’t stick around for their entire career. This is what I don't understand about people working for a company that builds silos or walled gardens. You always know that one day you are not working for that company anymore and you will be outside the silo/garden, and the company will effectively work against you (or against your entire profession) in ways you perhaps did not anticipate. These companies pretend they have an "engineering" culture. But the policies of these companies show very little of that. When do these engineers wake up?

rossjudson 6y ago

There is no "working for Google". There is "working at Google on Something, with People". There's a great deal of variety within Something, and variety within People. There's cutting edge research, there's the boring slog of what must be done, and there's everything in between. There's 20% time, where you can define your own Something. There's very hard work being done on a massive scale to ensure user and customer security and privacy are pervasive through everything. Plenty of xooglers will tell you exactly what they thought about working at Google. You will hear all types of opinions when you do. Cachet simply isn't a factor for most. Apply Occam's razor to the stories that xooglers tell. Are they all lying and "covering up"? Or is the diversity of opinions you read about real, and reflective of the experiences of that writer? I'd go with with real.