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Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN. Not that two wrongs make a right

Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN. Not that two wrongs make a right, but I don't agree with your read on the "STFU" line. I think Googler123 meant it conversationally and casually, not like a not-nice direct challenge to Michael like you read it. Your argument about management is flawed: a company is made up of people, who ALL have to act the way they want employees to act, and expect the same out of each other. Michael absolutely has a right to express himself, and since he was a Google employee, he had the duty at that time to try to make it the best place in the world to work. That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place. Especially since he had a safety net job offer. What was his risk? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508058

stock_toaster 14y ago
> Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN. Maybe this is just me, but I think hyperbolically telling a for profit corporation to stuff it (e.g. screw AT&T), is far more socially (normatively) acceptable than making a personal attack against an individual. Neither are _nice_, clearly.
- VikingCoder 14y ago
  It's not just a for profit corporation, it's his former employer.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    So? Why does that detail matter? In my first digs at Google I specifically avoided exposing any relationship (it was exposed by an HN commenter, to deflect). All I said was that there was mismanagement at a level approaching the criminal (which is true) and I gave a couple details (accidentally leaking calibration scores-- I thought that had been common knowledge-- and the death of 20% time). Neither of these are confidential. How a company treats its employees is (with lots of legal precedent) covered under whistleblower protections-- not a trade secret. Therefore, the existence of any employment relationship is irrelevant. If I leaked a product, I'd be unethical and deserve to be sued. Exposing the existence of calibration scores is fair game.
    - VikingCoder 14y ago
      You're completely ignoring the context of our conversation: "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." It is not okay to say that about your former employer. In any context. If you think it is okay to say that about your former employer, there's something wrong with you. I certainly would never want to work with you.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        Google never treated me with any loyalty. What do I owe them? Nothing, as far as I can see it, as long as I don't do anything unethical. (Exposing bad practices and using rude language aren't unethical.) Still, you're right in a way. Google is 55,000 people and I have no problem with 54.9+ thousand of them. In fact, that company often makes great products because, in spite of the executive malignancy, they have some top-notch engineering talent under their roof. I shouldn't have said, "Choke on a taint, Google". I should have said, "Choke on a taint; parasitic, psychopathic, incompetent and entitled executive caste that implemented closed allocation at a once-great company, developed a mean-spirited, Kafkaesque 'calibration score' system worse than Enron's, and has destroyed billions of dollars of value." Sorry, but the people who played a direct role in the managerial destruction (e.g. calibration scores) of Google are human garbage. They took what used to be a great company and destroyed it, and for no good reason. They deserve much more than I have thrown at them.
        VikingCoder 14y ago
        It's not because of LOYALTY that you're supposed to avoid telling your former employer to not "choke on a taint." It's because it makes YOU look bad. Can I ask a question? You keep complaining about closed allocation. What EXACTLY would you want them to have, instead? And I don't mean just say "open," say specifically what you mean, how you think it would work in practice. At a company with 55,000 employees. Also, you're putting way too much emphasis on calibration scores. Companies record what managers think of their employees. How ELSE would you want a company to do it?
michaelochurch 14y ago
That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place. I don't know where people get this idea. There's a lot of story and I haven't told most of it. My boss promised a 3.4, then gave me something lower (probably 3.0-3.1). When I confronted him, he said it was because Google+ out in California wanted me to suffer for criticizing a product (that later failed, as I predicted). So I asked him to put a note on the HR file noting that the ding was political and not related to performance. I didn't care what the score was (the difference in bonus between 3.0 and 3.4 is minor) but I wanted the record to show what had happened, and an agreement on 3.4+ for the next 4 quarters to compensate for throwing me under the bus. That's all I wanted, and it's a small, reasonable, request. Everyone knows that "performance" reviews are about politics anyway, so I have no qualms about using one as a negotiation token. It's a game, so play it. In response to my request, he went and revised my calibration score downward. He also made speculations about health problems (I have very-high-functioning hypergraphia, which is often a symptom of something else but in my case it's just standalone hypergraphia) that were irrelevant to work performance-- just to label me. I was in the process of deciding whether (a) to get attorneys on the case-- most attorneys don't want to appeal performance reviews because there's no money in it-- (b) to offer a side bribe to someone with performance DB access, or (c) to just get another job. The winner was (c); (a) and (b) meant $10k+ for something that might not work and would only pay itself off if I were there for 5+ years. Also, HR investigated and found out there was no ding from California. Completely made up. So, I dug around and found out that a mysterious departure of someone (a serious CS heavyweight) who had this same manager was a case of outright bullying that had gone on between approximately Oct. 2010 and July 2011. More digging found a pattern; this particular manager had a pattern of lying. In one case, he was actually reported to HR for repeatedly (and probably intentionally, though he denied it) using last-minute 1:1 reschedulings to conflict with someone's therapy. That was before I came to Google. Predictably, HR did nothing that time, too. This was a manager who had a years-long history of bad behavior, especially toward people with (otherwise manageable) health problems. It wasn't even hard for me to piece together the story, because so many people knew that it was going on. If he didn't see you as vulnerable, he was very affable and supportive, but if he smelled blood, he attacked. He actually admitted, in one proceeding, that he enjoyed "testing" an employee with panic disorder to find triggers. In my case, I'm fairly normal but I do have hypergraphia and can tell a decade-long story (with increasingly high levels of function; from 2002-09 I had a serious trolling problem, now I focus on writing coherent and useful stuff) about that. I don't blow whistles over small shit. This was a big fucking rat. When Google stops allowing Evil, I will stop attacking it.

stock_toaster 14y ago

> Telling Google to "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." [1] is also not nice, in any universe, not even HN. Maybe this is just me, but I think hyperbolically telling a for profit corporation to stuff it (e.g. screw AT&T), is far more socially (normatively) acceptable than making a personal attack against an individual. Neither are _nice_, clearly.

VikingCoder 14y ago
It's not just a for profit corporation, it's his former employer.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  So? Why does that detail matter? In my first digs at Google I specifically avoided exposing any relationship (it was exposed by an HN commenter, to deflect). All I said was that there was mismanagement at a level approaching the criminal (which is true) and I gave a couple details (accidentally leaking calibration scores-- I thought that had been common knowledge-- and the death of 20% time). Neither of these are confidential. How a company treats its employees is (with lots of legal precedent) covered under whistleblower protections-- not a trade secret. Therefore, the existence of any employment relationship is irrelevant. If I leaked a product, I'd be unethical and deserve to be sued. Exposing the existence of calibration scores is fair game.
  - VikingCoder 14y ago
    You're completely ignoring the context of our conversation: "Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint." It is not okay to say that about your former employer. In any context. If you think it is okay to say that about your former employer, there's something wrong with you. I certainly would never want to work with you.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Google never treated me with any loyalty. What do I owe them? Nothing, as far as I can see it, as long as I don't do anything unethical. (Exposing bad practices and using rude language aren't unethical.) Still, you're right in a way. Google is 55,000 people and I have no problem with 54.9+ thousand of them. In fact, that company often makes great products because, in spite of the executive malignancy, they have some top-notch engineering talent under their roof. I shouldn't have said, "Choke on a taint, Google". I should have said, "Choke on a taint; parasitic, psychopathic, incompetent and entitled executive caste that implemented closed allocation at a once-great company, developed a mean-spirited, Kafkaesque 'calibration score' system worse than Enron's, and has destroyed billions of dollars of value." Sorry, but the people who played a direct role in the managerial destruction (e.g. calibration scores) of Google are human garbage. They took what used to be a great company and destroyed it, and for no good reason. They deserve much more than I have thrown at them.
      - VikingCoder 14y ago
        It's not because of LOYALTY that you're supposed to avoid telling your former employer to not "choke on a taint." It's because it makes YOU look bad. Can I ask a question? You keep complaining about closed allocation. What EXACTLY would you want them to have, instead? And I don't mean just say "open," say specifically what you mean, how you think it would work in practice. At a company with 55,000 employees. Also, you're putting way too much emphasis on calibration scores. Companies record what managers think of their employees. How ELSE would you want a company to do it?

michaelochurch 14y ago

That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place. I don't know where people get this idea. There's a lot of story and I haven't told most of it. My boss promised a 3.4, then gave me something lower (probably 3.0-3.1). When I confronted him, he said it was because Google+ out in California wanted me to suffer for criticizing a product (that later failed, as I predicted). So I asked him to put a note on the HR file noting that the ding was political and not related to performance. I didn't care what the score was (the difference in bonus between 3.0 and 3.4 is minor) but I wanted the record to show what had happened, and an agreement on 3.4+ for the next 4 quarters to compensate for throwing me under the bus. That's all I wanted, and it's a small, reasonable, request. Everyone knows that "performance" reviews are about politics anyway, so I have no qualms about using one as a negotiation token. It's a game, so play it. In response to my request, he went and revised my calibration score downward. He also made speculations about health problems (I have very-high-functioning hypergraphia, which is often a symptom of something else but in my case it's just standalone hypergraphia) that were irrelevant to work performance-- just to label me. I was in the process of deciding whether (a) to get attorneys on the case-- most attorneys don't want to appeal performance reviews because there's no money in it-- (b) to offer a side bribe to someone with performance DB access, or (c) to just get another job. The winner was (c); (a) and (b) meant $10k+ for something that might not work and would only pay itself off if I were there for 5+ years. Also, HR investigated and found out there was no ding from California. Completely made up. So, I dug around and found out that a mysterious departure of someone (a serious CS heavyweight) who had this same manager was a case of outright bullying that had gone on between approximately Oct. 2010 and July 2011. More digging found a pattern; this particular manager had a pattern of lying. In one case, he was actually reported to HR for repeatedly (and probably intentionally, though he denied it) using last-minute 1:1 reschedulings to conflict with someone's therapy. That was before I came to Google. Predictably, HR did nothing that time, too. This was a manager who had a years-long history of bad behavior, especially toward people with (otherwise manageable) health problems. It wasn't even hard for me to piece together the story, because so many people knew that it was going on. If he didn't see you as vulnerable, he was very affable and supportive, but if he smelled blood, he attacked. He actually admitted, in one proceeding, that he enjoyed "testing" an employee with panic disorder to find triggers. In my case, I'm fairly normal but I do have hypergraphia and can tell a decade-long story (with increasingly high levels of function; from 2002-09 I had a serious trolling problem, now I focus on writing coherent and useful stuff) about that. I don't blow whistles over small shit. This was a big fucking rat. When Google stops allowing Evil, I will stop attacking it.