11 ms·

How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)

228 points by alnis 13y ago

linux_devil 13y ago
>"People read the airbrushed versions of Google technologies in talks and academic papers and think that Google has some amazingly large computer lab with amazingly powerful technology." Latest acquisition of "Boston Dynamics" and team working at "Google X" and other projects lead to second thought . In the end it's choice of people , we should not have say in what they should or shouldn't.
nipponese 13y ago
RIP
ihodes 13y ago
This article always struck me as being composed of two distinctly different opinions. One, Aaron's assertion that employees at Google are being infantilized. Two, that Google's mission and their overall morale and sense of purpose has changed. Two may be true; I can't speak but anecdotally to this (and nor could he). But One always struck me as very mean-spirited and unnecessary. As if told by the father in Peter Pan, or Scrooge. As if Google's engineers should be wearing suits (like the "lowlifes" he so despises?) and sitting in Aeron chairs, only, and forgetting about such silly things as dinosaurs and space travel.
- walid 13y ago
  You do know that one of Aaron's strengths, or at least a point of focus, was gamification. Looking at this article in that light you realize that he was trying to stir up a conversation. He also didn't seem to bother to be nice, at least when he had an opposing opinion.
  - pjscott 13y ago
    I think the word for that is "trolling." And you're right: the article does make more sense when looked at that way.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      > I think the word for that is "trolling." There is a difference between stirring up a conversation you think needs to be had, by simply not beating around the bush in regards to an opinion you actually hold -- and pretending to have an opinion you know to be controversial, just so people waste their energy discussing something you couldn't care less about. Calling anything you disagree with, or anything written without caring how others might take it, a "troll" is at best mistaken, at worst a nice try.
    - judk 13y ago
      The word for it is "contrarian", trying to make a name for himself by declaring himself opposite of the popular #1 (Google)
jacob019 13y ago
read this before noticing it was written in 2006 by Aaron Schwartz. That certainly colors the perspective. I wonder how much has changed.
- ex-googler1 13y ago
  not much. i quit a few months ago and so happy to be out of that insane place. they compare your work against your coworkers, so its constant competition, even if you meet your "goals". they also have zero work/life balance. all that free food and google shuttles wear off after a couple of months. then their non-stop work life settles in and you realize you made a horrible decision by accepting the job offer. the only bright side is you get stock options and have a great company on your resume.
  - amaks 13y ago
    Apparently you haven't worked for Microsoft. Google is engineer's heaven compared to MS.
    - benched 13y ago
      The Microsoft experience varies a lot throughout the organization. I was on a workaholic team for a year and it was a nightmare. The other four years, though, my typical day was from 10:30-4:00, and whenever I didn't feel like going in I'd "work from home" - typically on my XBox. The majority of the MS people I know have similar work ethics. (Though, it should be noted, we did get our work done. I got the highest review ratings every year I was there.)
    - ksk 13y ago
      >Google is engineer's heaven compared to MS. How so? I'd be crushed at the thought of using my skills to get people to click on ads, or coming up with new ways to mine their data.
      - ksk 13y ago
        On second thoughts, I realize this is bit of a generalization but then again, I was replying to a generalization :P
pcvarmint 13y ago
I thought it looked creepy, like an adult daycare center. I was approached twice and interviewed twice by Google but I don't think I'd fit that culture. No offices -- just open spaces. A meritocracy where you are evaluated by your peers generally, rather than by a boss or customer for your merits in a particular job. Where you don't even know what you will be working on until you're hired, as if that gives you a choice. Lots of silly signs hanging, some of which would be trademark violations if displayed in public (Bombay Sapphire, etc.). Too academic (from Stanford days?) for my tastes.
- derwiki 13y ago
  I'm surprised at how polarizing no offices vs open offices is. My first job at IBM, I had an office with two co-workers. They were great, but on days they were out it was sooo isolating. When I quit and took a job at a start up in SF with an open office plan, I loved it immediately. I could look across the room and see if the systems guy was there or getting coffee, instead of pinging into the Sametime void. So, I'm clearly on the open office side of the camp. What are the main arguments for offices? Peace and quiet and the ability to focus?
  - 10098 13y ago
    I've worked in open-space offices most of my career and I hate it a lot. When I'm debugging or writing new code, I need concentration. Open space takes it away. There's too much going on. Someone might be talking to someone else. People might just be moving around. And if you desk is in the proximity of the kitchen (mine once was), you're screwed because you're definitely not getting any concentration with all the chatter that usually goes on around the kitchen table. Yeah, sometimes you can block the noise out by putting on headphones and playing some repetitive techno/trance, but sometimes even music can get distracting. The supposed benefit of open space is that if you have a question, you can just go and ask that person. But we have IM for that. Not to mention the fact that when you're asking the question personally, they have to stop whatever they are doing and answer straight away. That, by the way, is another concentration killer. I've come to the conclusion that my ideal working space has 2-3 people besides me in it. 4-5 is a little crowded, but OK, anything beyond 6 is bad.
10098 13y ago
Growing up is overrated anyway.
psbp 13y ago
The Google = slimy politician comparison really undercuts the detached perspective that he's hoping to impart to Googlers or potential Googlers.
hawkharris 13y ago
Right after college, I was enticed by these perks: free food, laundry services, etc. After a few years in industry, I became more interested in the less sexy but more substantive benefits like a competitive salary, a 401K and good medical coverage. College-like perks and grown-up perks are not always mutually exclusive. My understanding is that Google pays developers well and offers great benefits. However, my experience has been that some tech companies emphasize their college-like benefits in lieu of providing strong adult benefits. "Stock options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?" If a company is going to play up its college-like perks, it should also bring to the table substantive financial and health-related benefits. Otherwise I can see how it would be difficult to retain young developers as their priorities change.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  "Stock options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?" If I want a beanbag chair at my desk, I'll buy myself a beanbag chair, thankyouverymuch. :)
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    Or both, or the company allows employees to reimburse their own ergonomic chair purchase. I actually prefer the latter if I can't find one I like from whatever the office provides.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - praptak 13y ago
    Still a fridge always full of good food is a perk that's comparably hard to get by oneself. There's still the question whether it is desirable (getting fat is a real problem) but the point remains: some perks can be much more effectively provided by the employer. On the other hand I hate all kinds of the mandatory fun activities at work. These work as antiperks for me.
luu 13y ago
Funny, my experience is the opposite on literally every concrete assertion about people and motivations. Looking at my team, and the broader team under my director, only one was hired "straight out of college". Well, if you consider fresh PhDs to be "straight out of college", there are a few, but I doubt Aaron meant folks approaching 30 with kids on the horizon when he was talking about people just out of college. Perhaps a couple are cynical, but I wouldn't call any childish or enthusiastically adolescent, which isn't too surprising, considering that the median employee within two levels of management of me is mid-thirties with two kids. We have a couple of visiting scientists (professors at major research universities), and they were surprised by what we're doing, so perhaps the secrecy doesn't do such a bad job of keeping things inside the company after all. I don't doubt Aaron's experience, but it's exactly what you'd expect due to selection bias. How old was Aaron when he wrote that, 20? He probably wasn't hanging out with the median person from my team. There's nothing wrong with that. But, all things considered, that essay contains a lot of awfully strong assertions.
- presorted 13y ago
  Being infantile means that you are an adult that behaves regressively. People with kids, and in their mid-thirties, can be infantile. I think that Aaron knew what he was saying. The problem is how do you judge whether someone is infantile, because you must either judge relative to yourself, or relative to a role model. If we are to believe Aaron, then we must believe that he could distinguish between a mature adult and regressive behavior --- and if we are to believe you, then we must believe the same of you. And if I'm to play the judge, then I need to know this myself, and I've found it to be a complex topic, and since it involves growth, it is a lifelong pursuit. Perhaps the one objective statement we can make is that we eventually must become independent of our parents and the safety of the parental home.
- madaxe_again 13y ago
  I'm personally aware of a very incapable 22 year old, fresh graduate, who has been hired for north of $200k. I'm also aware of a whole bunch of other folks who have been variously hired within months of graduation, so I'd wager there's some selection bias from your corner too.
raldi 13y ago
A month earlier, Aaron wrote about his experiences working in a more traditional kind of office: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace > Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I simply couldn’t take it. By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying. So I'm not sure what kind of office would have ever met his approval.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  Presumably one that is somewhere between those two extremes...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - raldi 13y ago
    I actually have direct personal experience with both of his "extremes" -- I worked in the office he described as "gray" from 2008 to 2011, and I've been working in various Google offices ever since. There's really not that much of a gap between the two.
- shmerl 13y ago
  This one doesn't look gray: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-amazing-office-space-in-san-francisco-2012-3?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-amazing-offic...
  - jrockway 13y ago
    This, incidentally, is the same building that Google San Francisco is in.
    - aiiane 13y ago
      Not quite. Same complex, but we're the building next door.
charleslmunger 13y ago
I don't think this is really accurate. It's not about treating people like kids, it's about rejecting the attitude found at dilbert-style corporations. The T-Rex skeleton and the shark fins are there because they're cool. Google has monorail cars as meeting rooms in the Sydney office [1] - because an engineer requested it. It shows that management listens to employees. It gives people the confidence to propose somewhat outlandish ideas, because if management will buy a monorail because an employee requests it, management will allocate resources to things that actually matter because employees request it. Those stories don't get publicized, but I've seen it happen multiple times. Also, the idea that all google employees are young kids just out of college who are being shielded from "the real world" by free food and buses is silly, many of my coworkers are married with kids. [1] https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE I work for google, but I'm not speaking on their behalf.
- pvdm 13y ago
  The article is from 2006. Things evolve.
  - minwcnt5 13y ago
    I was there in 2006. It wasn't accurate then either.
- judk 13y ago
  And posting with your real name! (Or impersonating a Googler)
shpx 13y ago
Something that sounds like an ideal is nothing like what you would expect it to be? That's like every other thing in the world ever, isn't it?
blazespin 13y ago
Simply not true in 2013. They are aggressively hiring engineers of all sorts. College degrees are less relevant. Google, of all companies, have developed some of the finest talent recognition software in the valley.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Google, of all companies, have developed some of the finest talent recognition software in the valley. Maybe they have, but we won't know without hard evidence. Your assertion doesn't make it so. I like Google, I've eaten in their cafeterias (many friends work there), and I use several of their products. And ... I'm aware that essentially all of their revenue comes from AdWords and AdSense. Everything else is subsidized by those two products. No other major Google product has had to compete in the marketplace on its own merits. So, objectively, it's hard to measure how talented their people are. (You're not going to convince me that Google has the world's most talented UI designers.)
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    To be fair, with the exception of hardware and retail companies, almost all internet era companies make their revenue from selling ads because people have a negative reaction to roadblocks and paywalls. Facebook is just as beholden to ads to Google is. I would argue that most of the Google products that are successes today in terms of users: Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps, Search, etc have competed on the same merits as similar products from competitors. Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, for example, are subsidized by other products as well. I don't think Google has a monopoly on talented individuals, but I do think Google has a better culture than other companies. You can have the smartest people, but a shitty internal culture can act to break their innovation, not multiply it. I've worked at IBM and Oracle and definitely, very smart people at Oracle that I knew of were hampered and stymied by a suffocating corporate layer.
  - blazespin 13y ago
    This is like saying essentially all of microsoft's revenue comes from selling things. Google gets paid via ads.
nrubin 13y ago
Hey, did you also here that there are NO trees on their campus?
- IvyMike 13y ago
  They've all been replaced by hash tables.
fromdoon 13y ago
This is typical western philosophical bullsh. As life becomes easier in Western world, people have more time to fret about such inconsequential things. Please carry on!
ChristianMarks 13y ago
The tl;dr is Google Google Goo.
mlyang 13y ago
Creatives (designers, engineers, etc.) with optionality (at the caliber that Google would hire) pine for freelance-like working conditions (not referring to pay, but rather creative control, flexible hours, and amenities). These tech firms try to absorb as many of those benefits as possible to woo over employees. In Google's early days, maybe employees had greater creative control over their projects-- hence creating more autonomous and creative working conditions. However, as a company scales, you inevitably lose your creative control and become a cog in the larger machine. No perks can veil this, hence the changing of Googlers' mentalities. Unless you're at the top of one of these large firms, I have a really hard time imagining any creative and truly autonomous person willing to work for more than a year at any of these institutions before breaking free and either founding a startup, joining an early stage startup, or freelancing.
jrockway 13y ago
I guess on some level this is true. Is there some place where you can work and get money for doing whatever you want, and defying authority whenever you want? If so, sign me up! Over in the real world, working for an employer like Google is a risk hedge. If your idea for a project this quarter turns out to not be useful, you don't run out of money and end up living in a cardboard box. You learn from your experience, try again, and your family gets food on the table. You can say it's childish to hedge risk, but you can also say it's very adult to hedge risk. Maybe you are a super genius that can code up a solution to a really hard problem all by yourself. But what if the market doesn't like it? Too bad, you're in the same place as the guy who sits at home all day, smokes pot, and watches daytime TV. The market decided: you suck. I agree with Aaron that we could always use more computers. Sometimes during peak hours, the batch scheduler will only give me a few hundred machines to run my MapReduce on. What am I, a farmer? Ultimately, I like working at Google and I like having toys in the office. I have Nerf guns. I use Hakase from Nichijou as my profile picture. At the same time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. And I feel that I'm evaluated (and compensated) fairly. Does that make me infantile? Maybe so. But I like it. My real fear of leaving Google is the time I'll have to spend writing all the infrastructure from scratch. And finding someone else that can afford my hourly rate.
- choosewisely 13y ago
  >> At the same time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. Ah, you must be one of the stars getting people to click on ads, even more. No matter how you spin it, you make money by what can rightfully be characterized as fraud (1,2,3), or confusing ads with unbiased content(if there's still a thing like unbiased content at Google) while ripping your users off. But whatever makes you feel better 1. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-to-be-evil-during-the-holidays/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-to... 2. http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results 3. http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_results_LyPpxMbp9gwbEsGnCpnn0J http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_re...
  - 13y ago
atgm 13y ago
Who maintains/pays for the site now? I tried going to the top page, expecting some kind of obituary or explanation as to why the site is still up, but the blurb there makes it sound like Aaron stepped out for a week and will be updating again soon, except for the last updated note in the corner. I did a whois lookup out of curiosity, but the contact information all refers to contactprivacy.com, which is apparently set up to allow people to register domains privately.
- bensw 13y ago
  Pretty sure Sean B. Palmer is taking care of it (or at least has taken care of it so far)
  - atgm 13y ago
    Looks like you're probably right. I googled him and found http://inamidst.com/sbp/ http://inamidst.com/sbp/, which says "I’m taking care of Aaron’s sites and data, so email me if you have any queries about that." I initially wondered about it because it was actually really disturbing when I considered the fungible nature of websites and the possibility of someone posting "past articles" as Aaron.
cyphunk 13y ago
Google is a mammoth. Generalising it would be similar to doing the same of a whole country. I do not work there but know many that have that speak so highly of its foundations. Like some sort of new form of knowledge discovery and expansion of thought. While it may be infantile this could just as well be seen as an advantage, at least for a while to come. It is one of the frontiers of innovation for company building (and nation building for that matter): keeping people feeling, thinking and innovating like children. However, Aaron was right and this is not enough to keep some great talent from slipping through. I had two run-ins with Google HR. Once after they purchased a company that had a product that I was a primary architect and programmer for. Part of the reason the process staled was because I explained "I consider programming like hammering nails. I program. I am not a programmer". I found their questions on what languages I program with to be silly. The other reason it staled had to do with their inability to discuss practical "projects" we could "work on together". It's as if Google is an Amish parent wanting to offer you their daughter in marriage with you committing before even getting a decent look at her. To their credit the words "projects" and "work on together" coming from a potential hire are foreign to all companies. But if Google wants to avoid becoming Xerox in 30 years they would do well to understand this language and hire more like Al Qaeda rather than Ikea. Developing a more network based structure is not that difficult to envision. For starters get rid of "%20 time", it's a joke. Instead I could imagine something more like: %25 on mandated work, %25 on google projects (what used to be %20 time), %50 time on projects entirely of your choosing that would be handled like an investment (with yearly reviews of direction as a board of a company would) and finally abolishment of most vacation days with vacation taken at will from the %50 and in any form (clustered, by day, half days, whatever). Full time creativity is a form of cognitive dissidence fostered only by industrial era thinking. Creative workers should be given the option to take minor or major pay cuts dynamically and at will in order to replenish their energy. Whereas today, asking for extra time off, even with a cut in pay, carries a lot of guilt for most. Such a structure as described, when monitored, also provides valuable feedback on the health of the employee and company. When you get something like this Google, hit me up on Pond.
- cyphunk 13y ago
  Another 2c: Google[x] might be the founders way to avoid the sloth of a mammoth structure but it may also be the one thing that turns them into Xerox. To prevent that expressly avoid the patent-chest-trap and future reliance on this over innovation in product based wealth. If your investors cant give up on future patent wealth secretly plow efforts into reducing the effectiveness of patent-chests for all.
lowglow 13y ago
Hm. I feel like Google is following Diamond Age's tips on how to train their engineers. There's a pretty great passage in there about this, and you owe it to yourself to read it. It reads more like a prophecy than a sci-fi book, but it's super good. :)
cromwellian 13y ago
I'm 42. Most of the people I work with are in the 30s and 40s and have children. The stereotype of Google hiring nothing but Stanford grads has been over for a while. As much as I like Aaron, here he is guilty of excessive generalization. Even in 2006 the claims don't match reality. I lived through the first dot.com boom in CA, where companies were falling hand over fist to offer perks, many of them financially unsustainable, because there was a huge competition to acquire and keep talent, as well as keep them in the office for long hours with the promise of striking it rich on what were often worthless stock options. Google is pretty clear and upfront about what the compensation will be. Everything I was told about what to expect about stock grants, year bonuses, and benefits, has more or less hit the predicted windows. I was never really oversold on what my compensation would be and I was able to do financial planning around it because it was so transparent. I also don't see what's wrong with 'infantilizing'. We lose creativity as we become adults because of the sheer numbers of rules, responsibilities, and requirements placed on us. If you want people to do good research or engineering, take away as much as possible impediments, like worry over money, laundry, or corporate politicking. Do we also talk about Phd students and tenured professors in research labs being "infantilized" by an academic environment often isolated from the outside world? I don't view it as necessarily a bad thing. Although I guess you could claim that Einstein still did good work while working at the Patent Office. All in all the essay is a rather convoluted and weak critique of Google culture and hiring practices based on anecdotal observations that don't match reality.
- alvarosm 13y ago
  You're comfortable in the Matrix, good for you. Just don't evangelize please.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    Stating facts to correct erroneous claims isn't evangelization. What is the moral of this story anyway? That your workplace shouldn't offer you free food, or have fun areas with cool statues, because a replica of SpaceShip One will "infantilize you"? And this is supposed to scare people into going to a "grown up" workplace and grey suits and expensive shitty food? I used to pay high prices to eat lunch at IBM Cafeterias, and it was terrible food. But this infantilized me less?
icambron 13y ago
I don't work at Google and from where I sit now, it's hard to imagine myself wanting to work for Google, but this complaint that it's infantalizing its employees is ridiculous. Making your own food and doing your own laundry are not substantial life challenges. Growing up is not about learning to do chores you don't actually have to do. (When you make enough money to pay someone to mow your lawn, are you back to being a little kid?) The whole article is premised on the idea that the status quo in which most adults do have to do (or choose to do) their laundry is somehow intrinsically superior, which is just silly. Think of all the other services you don't do yourself, or even that your grandparents do but which now come in the form of a household appliance. Why do some services go in the bucket labeled "self-sufficiency" and all the other ones don't? Growing up is also not about throwing out the brightly colored things and getting rid of the spaceship models. Why would you think that? Because someone told you to act like a Real Adult? Because when you grow up, you need to trade in your dinosaurs for responsible abstract art or else...well, what, exactly? Growing up is about taking responsibility for yourself. That's basically it. Maybe Google is preventing that too, but this article doesn't make that case.
- maximumsteve 13y ago
  Perhaps not everyone feels this way, but I think that there are a large amount of employees that feel like they've failed by not being completely self-sufficient(i.e. contract or own their own business). They can still be easy to work with, productive, etc., but they may view their job trying to feed them and do their laundry as an encroachment on their personal life and perhaps even a vie for more of their time by 'no longer having an excuse'. Of course, this goes unsaid because 'they're just providing services you're too good to do yourself.' In addition, expecting someone with administrative aspirations to play in a ball pit could be considered downright offensive, thanks to its perceived condescension and lack of any real interest.
- colanderman 13y ago
  maximumsteve, your posts show up as dead (meaning no-one without "showdead" turned on can see them). Not sure why, you seem perfectly coherent. I suggest starting a new account.
rusabd 13y ago
If I had a talent I would write about companies treating their employees like criminals
imanant 13y ago
That is what you would expect it to be, too. I see them dominating the world for next 2 years at least but where they go there will determine how strong the vision is of the founders.
6d0debc071 13y ago
You can't judge infantile behaviour from the presence of dinosaurs. I'm a woman in my mid 20s, I still have a fluffy snake from when I was 12 that I like to stroke when I'm thinking. Oh no! People derive pleasure from things you no-longer do. There's a difference between being mature and being solemn. Far too often I see the latter being treated as the former. Being mature is about responsibility, managing your own life, growing to understand what you enjoy and how you relate to others. A lot of people who think they're very adult, just because they don't have fluffy snakes and the like any more... a lot of them I don't see as adults; who've thought about their happiness and responsibilities; I see sad teenagers.
DavidWanjiru 13y ago
In times like these, I'm minded to beware the echo chamber. Coz I'm very poor at telling when I've fallen into one.
general_failure 13y ago
Very silly article. There are so many things wrong but i will comment on the first para. T any about living your life when most people seem to be outsourcing even bringing up children in the bay area since they have to work. Laundry and food are hardly about living your life.
n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
I recently got an interview with Google (didn't get it), I'd kill to work with them. Even if they pay a bit less than what I'm currently getting, if it means I'll work on something less boring than what I'm doing now (typical business corporate bs where I'm working pretty much by myself).
smtddr 13y ago
I thought HN's algo drove controversial stories off the front page. This is generating a bunch of arguments and yet it's still here. There are other stories I've commented on that get knocked off the front page with less drama than I'm seeing here.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
Claims that other people are "infantile" are almost always just a pissing contest. It's an easy way to put someone down since being infantile is hard to define, and making that claim already sets you up as the more mature person in the conversion. And the idea that having stuff done for you is equivalent to being treated like a kid says more about the psychological issues of the author than reality. Our entire economy is based around exchanging services for money. Google takes it to a (slightly) higher level, although the only perk that people use in real life is the food.
jstark 13y ago
counterpoint: growing up != performing life-taking tasks like laundry.
niketdesai 13y ago
I transferred to the Motorola division so I kind of have both perspectives while being at Google. In some regard, a lot of Googlers don't even know how good they have it. What Google manages to do pretty well is pick the right people for 'the company' and then acclimatize them extremely fast to everything: process, tools, lifestyle and sometimes koolaid. In doing so are we infants? Perhaps. But fundamentally this is no different than what all children go through (acclimatization to their environment). I'm not sure working for some crummy company, or a startup means one life is better than the other - they are different. And if you're lucky enough to be able to choose that then that is awesome.
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  So what's the moto side like?
  - niketdesai 13y ago
    In what regard -- the question is too broad for me to generally answer meaningfully.
auvrw 13y ago
> Even the suburban desert of Mountain View is better. haha, i think mountain view is actually quite a quaint little town compared to sun-beat santa clara, which really isn't so bad either. (aaah, i miss the weather, i do.) but heck, the late aaron swartz lamenting an HR tact that pervades so many of the companies, software and otherwise, hiring math & science "types?" holiday stylesheet or no, it's a depressing read.
enneff 13y ago
Working at Google I feel the opposite of infantilised. I am given nearly total autonomy to do my job how I see fit (and shouldn't i? Nobody knows my job better than me). I can book business travel, order essential equipment, and even start new work spontaneously without wasting time seeking approval. I set my own goals and am the judged by how well I meet them. I feel that traditional offices are more infantlilising in that they assume most workers need explicit instructions to get their work done and must seek approval to do anything out of the ordinary. Aaron here is distracted by the shiny things. As an employee you very quickly become accustomed to the benefits and spend more time just getting work done.
tmsh 13y ago
Infantilizing not infantile. Loss of potential given the strong potential of many Googlers. His insight into opportunity costs is bright if slightly imperfect, as always, I'd say. This is more a complaint against people not solving hard problems enough (a la Steve Yegge) than a complaint against bean bags - those are just metaphors.

228 points by alnis 13y ago

>"People read the airbrushed versions of Google technologies in talks and academic papers and think that Google has some amazingly large computer lab with amazingly powerful technology." Latest acquisition of "Boston Dynamics" and team working at "Google X" and other projects lead to second thought . In the end it's choice of people , we should not have say in what they should or shouldn't.

nipponese 13y ago

RIP

ihodes 13y ago

This article always struck me as being composed of two distinctly different opinions. One, Aaron's assertion that employees at Google are being infantilized. Two, that Google's mission and their overall morale and sense of purpose has changed. Two may be true; I can't speak but anecdotally to this (and nor could he). But One always struck me as very mean-spirited and unnecessary. As if told by the father in Peter Pan, or Scrooge. As if Google's engineers should be wearing suits (like the "lowlifes" he so despises?) and sitting in Aeron chairs, only, and forgetting about such silly things as dinosaurs and space travel.

walid 13y ago
You do know that one of Aaron's strengths, or at least a point of focus, was gamification. Looking at this article in that light you realize that he was trying to stir up a conversation. He also didn't seem to bother to be nice, at least when he had an opposing opinion.
- pjscott 13y ago
  I think the word for that is "trolling." And you're right: the article does make more sense when looked at that way.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    > I think the word for that is "trolling." There is a difference between stirring up a conversation you think needs to be had, by simply not beating around the bush in regards to an opinion you actually hold -- and pretending to have an opinion you know to be controversial, just so people waste their energy discussing something you couldn't care less about. Calling anything you disagree with, or anything written without caring how others might take it, a "troll" is at best mistaken, at worst a nice try.
  - judk 13y ago
    The word for it is "contrarian", trying to make a name for himself by declaring himself opposite of the popular #1 (Google)

jacob019 13y ago

read this before noticing it was written in 2006 by Aaron Schwartz. That certainly colors the perspective. I wonder how much has changed.

ex-googler1 13y ago
not much. i quit a few months ago and so happy to be out of that insane place. they compare your work against your coworkers, so its constant competition, even if you meet your "goals". they also have zero work/life balance. all that free food and google shuttles wear off after a couple of months. then their non-stop work life settles in and you realize you made a horrible decision by accepting the job offer. the only bright side is you get stock options and have a great company on your resume.
- amaks 13y ago
  Apparently you haven't worked for Microsoft. Google is engineer's heaven compared to MS.
  - benched 13y ago
    The Microsoft experience varies a lot throughout the organization. I was on a workaholic team for a year and it was a nightmare. The other four years, though, my typical day was from 10:30-4:00, and whenever I didn't feel like going in I'd "work from home" - typically on my XBox. The majority of the MS people I know have similar work ethics. (Though, it should be noted, we did get our work done. I got the highest review ratings every year I was there.)
  - ksk 13y ago
    >Google is engineer's heaven compared to MS. How so? I'd be crushed at the thought of using my skills to get people to click on ads, or coming up with new ways to mine their data.
    - ksk 13y ago
      On second thoughts, I realize this is bit of a generalization but then again, I was replying to a generalization :P

pcvarmint 13y ago

I thought it looked creepy, like an adult daycare center. I was approached twice and interviewed twice by Google but I don't think I'd fit that culture. No offices -- just open spaces. A meritocracy where you are evaluated by your peers generally, rather than by a boss or customer for your merits in a particular job. Where you don't even know what you will be working on until you're hired, as if that gives you a choice. Lots of silly signs hanging, some of which would be trademark violations if displayed in public (Bombay Sapphire, etc.). Too academic (from Stanford days?) for my tastes.

derwiki 13y ago
I'm surprised at how polarizing no offices vs open offices is. My first job at IBM, I had an office with two co-workers. They were great, but on days they were out it was sooo isolating. When I quit and took a job at a start up in SF with an open office plan, I loved it immediately. I could look across the room and see if the systems guy was there or getting coffee, instead of pinging into the Sametime void. So, I'm clearly on the open office side of the camp. What are the main arguments for offices? Peace and quiet and the ability to focus?
- 10098 13y ago
  I've worked in open-space offices most of my career and I hate it a lot. When I'm debugging or writing new code, I need concentration. Open space takes it away. There's too much going on. Someone might be talking to someone else. People might just be moving around. And if you desk is in the proximity of the kitchen (mine once was), you're screwed because you're definitely not getting any concentration with all the chatter that usually goes on around the kitchen table. Yeah, sometimes you can block the noise out by putting on headphones and playing some repetitive techno/trance, but sometimes even music can get distracting. The supposed benefit of open space is that if you have a question, you can just go and ask that person. But we have IM for that. Not to mention the fact that when you're asking the question personally, they have to stop whatever they are doing and answer straight away. That, by the way, is another concentration killer. I've come to the conclusion that my ideal working space has 2-3 people besides me in it. 4-5 is a little crowded, but OK, anything beyond 6 is bad.

10098 13y ago

Growing up is overrated anyway.

psbp 13y ago

The Google = slimy politician comparison really undercuts the detached perspective that he's hoping to impart to Googlers or potential Googlers.

hawkharris 13y ago

Right after college, I was enticed by these perks: free food, laundry services, etc. After a few years in industry, I became more interested in the less sexy but more substantive benefits like a competitive salary, a 401K and good medical coverage. College-like perks and grown-up perks are not always mutually exclusive. My understanding is that Google pays developers well and offers great benefits. However, my experience has been that some tech companies emphasize their college-like benefits in lieu of providing strong adult benefits. "Stock options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?" If a company is going to play up its college-like perks, it should also bring to the table substantive financial and health-related benefits. Otherwise I can see how it would be difficult to retain young developers as their priorities change.

sliverstorm 13y ago
"Stock options? Who needs stock options when you have beanbag chairs?" If I want a beanbag chair at my desk, I'll buy myself a beanbag chair, thankyouverymuch. :)
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Or both, or the company allows employees to reimburse their own ergonomic chair purchase. I actually prefer the latter if I can't find one I like from whatever the office provides.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- praptak 13y ago
  Still a fridge always full of good food is a perk that's comparably hard to get by oneself. There's still the question whether it is desirable (getting fat is a real problem) but the point remains: some perks can be much more effectively provided by the employer. On the other hand I hate all kinds of the mandatory fun activities at work. These work as antiperks for me.

luu 13y ago

Funny, my experience is the opposite on literally every concrete assertion about people and motivations. Looking at my team, and the broader team under my director, only one was hired "straight out of college". Well, if you consider fresh PhDs to be "straight out of college", there are a few, but I doubt Aaron meant folks approaching 30 with kids on the horizon when he was talking about people just out of college. Perhaps a couple are cynical, but I wouldn't call any childish or enthusiastically adolescent, which isn't too surprising, considering that the median employee within two levels of management of me is mid-thirties with two kids. We have a couple of visiting scientists (professors at major research universities), and they were surprised by what we're doing, so perhaps the secrecy doesn't do such a bad job of keeping things inside the company after all. I don't doubt Aaron's experience, but it's exactly what you'd expect due to selection bias. How old was Aaron when he wrote that, 20? He probably wasn't hanging out with the median person from my team. There's nothing wrong with that. But, all things considered, that essay contains a lot of awfully strong assertions.

presorted 13y ago
Being infantile means that you are an adult that behaves regressively. People with kids, and in their mid-thirties, can be infantile. I think that Aaron knew what he was saying. The problem is how do you judge whether someone is infantile, because you must either judge relative to yourself, or relative to a role model. If we are to believe Aaron, then we must believe that he could distinguish between a mature adult and regressive behavior --- and if we are to believe you, then we must believe the same of you. And if I'm to play the judge, then I need to know this myself, and I've found it to be a complex topic, and since it involves growth, it is a lifelong pursuit. Perhaps the one objective statement we can make is that we eventually must become independent of our parents and the safety of the parental home.
madaxe_again 13y ago
I'm personally aware of a very incapable 22 year old, fresh graduate, who has been hired for north of $200k. I'm also aware of a whole bunch of other folks who have been variously hired within months of graduation, so I'd wager there's some selection bias from your corner too.

raldi 13y ago

A month earlier, Aaron wrote about his experiences working in a more traditional kind of office: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/officespace > Gray walls, gray desks, gray noise. The first day I showed up here, I simply couldn’t take it. By lunch time I had literally locked myself in a bathroom stall and started crying. So I'm not sure what kind of office would have ever met his approval.

sanderjd 13y ago
Presumably one that is somewhere between those two extremes...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- raldi 13y ago
  I actually have direct personal experience with both of his "extremes" -- I worked in the office he described as "gray" from 2008 to 2011, and I've been working in various Google offices ever since. There's really not that much of a gap between the two.
shmerl 13y ago
This one doesn't look gray: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-amazing-office-space-in-san-francisco-2012-3?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-mozillas-amazing-offic...
- jrockway 13y ago
  This, incidentally, is the same building that Google San Francisco is in.
  - aiiane 13y ago
    Not quite. Same complex, but we're the building next door.

charleslmunger 13y ago

I don't think this is really accurate. It's not about treating people like kids, it's about rejecting the attitude found at dilbert-style corporations. The T-Rex skeleton and the shark fins are there because they're cool. Google has monorail cars as meeting rooms in the Sydney office [1] - because an engineer requested it. It shows that management listens to employees. It gives people the confidence to propose somewhat outlandish ideas, because if management will buy a monorail because an employee requests it, management will allocate resources to things that actually matter because employees request it. Those stories don't get publicized, but I've seen it happen multiple times. Also, the idea that all google employees are young kids just out of college who are being shielded from "the real world" by free food and buses is silly, many of my coworkers are married with kids. [1] https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE https://plus.google.com/+PaulCowan/posts/Sfm9SpV4eCE I work for google, but I'm not speaking on their behalf.

pvdm 13y ago
The article is from 2006. Things evolve.
- minwcnt5 13y ago
  I was there in 2006. It wasn't accurate then either.
judk 13y ago
And posting with your real name! (Or impersonating a Googler)

shpx 13y ago

Something that sounds like an ideal is nothing like what you would expect it to be? That's like every other thing in the world ever, isn't it?

blazespin 13y ago

Simply not true in 2013. They are aggressively hiring engineers of all sorts. College degrees are less relevant. Google, of all companies, have developed some of the finest talent recognition software in the valley.

auctiontheory 13y ago
Google, of all companies, have developed some of the finest talent recognition software in the valley. Maybe they have, but we won't know without hard evidence. Your assertion doesn't make it so. I like Google, I've eaten in their cafeterias (many friends work there), and I use several of their products. And ... I'm aware that essentially all of their revenue comes from AdWords and AdSense. Everything else is subsidized by those two products. No other major Google product has had to compete in the marketplace on its own merits. So, objectively, it's hard to measure how talented their people are. (You're not going to convince me that Google has the world's most talented UI designers.)
- cromwellian 13y ago
  To be fair, with the exception of hardware and retail companies, almost all internet era companies make their revenue from selling ads because people have a negative reaction to roadblocks and paywalls. Facebook is just as beholden to ads to Google is. I would argue that most of the Google products that are successes today in terms of users: Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps, Search, etc have competed on the same merits as similar products from competitors. Yahoo Mail or Hotmail, for example, are subsidized by other products as well. I don't think Google has a monopoly on talented individuals, but I do think Google has a better culture than other companies. You can have the smartest people, but a shitty internal culture can act to break their innovation, not multiply it. I've worked at IBM and Oracle and definitely, very smart people at Oracle that I knew of were hampered and stymied by a suffocating corporate layer.
- blazespin 13y ago
  This is like saying essentially all of microsoft's revenue comes from selling things. Google gets paid via ads.

nrubin 13y ago

Hey, did you also here that there are NO trees on their campus?

IvyMike 13y ago
They've all been replaced by hash tables.

fromdoon 13y ago

This is typical western philosophical bullsh. As life becomes easier in Western world, people have more time to fret about such inconsequential things. Please carry on!

ChristianMarks 13y ago

The tl;dr is Google Google Goo.

mlyang 13y ago

Creatives (designers, engineers, etc.) with optionality (at the caliber that Google would hire) pine for freelance-like working conditions (not referring to pay, but rather creative control, flexible hours, and amenities). These tech firms try to absorb as many of those benefits as possible to woo over employees. In Google's early days, maybe employees had greater creative control over their projects-- hence creating more autonomous and creative working conditions. However, as a company scales, you inevitably lose your creative control and become a cog in the larger machine. No perks can veil this, hence the changing of Googlers' mentalities. Unless you're at the top of one of these large firms, I have a really hard time imagining any creative and truly autonomous person willing to work for more than a year at any of these institutions before breaking free and either founding a startup, joining an early stage startup, or freelancing.

jrockway 13y ago

I guess on some level this is true. Is there some place where you can work and get money for doing whatever you want, and defying authority whenever you want? If so, sign me up! Over in the real world, working for an employer like Google is a risk hedge. If your idea for a project this quarter turns out to not be useful, you don't run out of money and end up living in a cardboard box. You learn from your experience, try again, and your family gets food on the table. You can say it's childish to hedge risk, but you can also say it's very adult to hedge risk. Maybe you are a super genius that can code up a solution to a really hard problem all by yourself. But what if the market doesn't like it? Too bad, you're in the same place as the guy who sits at home all day, smokes pot, and watches daytime TV. The market decided: you suck. I agree with Aaron that we could always use more computers. Sometimes during peak hours, the batch scheduler will only give me a few hundred machines to run my MapReduce on. What am I, a farmer? Ultimately, I like working at Google and I like having toys in the office. I have Nerf guns. I use Hakase from Nichijou as my profile picture. At the same time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. And I feel that I'm evaluated (and compensated) fairly. Does that make me infantile? Maybe so. But I like it. My real fear of leaving Google is the time I'll have to spend writing all the infrastructure from scratch. And finding someone else that can afford my hourly rate.

choosewisely 13y ago
>> At the same time, I feel like I'm doing impactful work, with some very smart people. Ah, you must be one of the stars getting people to click on ads, even more. No matter how you spin it, you make money by what can rightfully be characterized as fraud (1,2,3), or confusing ads with unbiased content(if there's still a thing like unbiased content at Google) while ripping your users off. But whatever makes you feel better 1. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-to-be-evil-during-the-holidays/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/18/for-google-it-pays-to... 2. http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results http://www.seobook.com/consumer-ad-awareness-search-results 3. http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_results_LyPpxMbp9gwbEsGnCpnn0J http://www.afr.com/p/technology/google_top_product_search_re...
- 13y ago

atgm 13y ago

Who maintains/pays for the site now? I tried going to the top page, expecting some kind of obituary or explanation as to why the site is still up, but the blurb there makes it sound like Aaron stepped out for a week and will be updating again soon, except for the last updated note in the corner. I did a whois lookup out of curiosity, but the contact information all refers to contactprivacy.com, which is apparently set up to allow people to register domains privately.

bensw 13y ago
Pretty sure Sean B. Palmer is taking care of it (or at least has taken care of it so far)
- atgm 13y ago
  Looks like you're probably right. I googled him and found http://inamidst.com/sbp/ http://inamidst.com/sbp/, which says "I’m taking care of Aaron’s sites and data, so email me if you have any queries about that." I initially wondered about it because it was actually really disturbing when I considered the fungible nature of websites and the possibility of someone posting "past articles" as Aaron.

cyphunk 13y ago

Google is a mammoth. Generalising it would be similar to doing the same of a whole country. I do not work there but know many that have that speak so highly of its foundations. Like some sort of new form of knowledge discovery and expansion of thought. While it may be infantile this could just as well be seen as an advantage, at least for a while to come. It is one of the frontiers of innovation for company building (and nation building for that matter): keeping people feeling, thinking and innovating like children. However, Aaron was right and this is not enough to keep some great talent from slipping through. I had two run-ins with Google HR. Once after they purchased a company that had a product that I was a primary architect and programmer for. Part of the reason the process staled was because I explained "I consider programming like hammering nails. I program. I am not a programmer". I found their questions on what languages I program with to be silly. The other reason it staled had to do with their inability to discuss practical "projects" we could "work on together". It's as if Google is an Amish parent wanting to offer you their daughter in marriage with you committing before even getting a decent look at her. To their credit the words "projects" and "work on together" coming from a potential hire are foreign to all companies. But if Google wants to avoid becoming Xerox in 30 years they would do well to understand this language and hire more like Al Qaeda rather than Ikea. Developing a more network based structure is not that difficult to envision. For starters get rid of "%20 time", it's a joke. Instead I could imagine something more like: %25 on mandated work, %25 on google projects (what used to be %20 time), %50 time on projects entirely of your choosing that would be handled like an investment (with yearly reviews of direction as a board of a company would) and finally abolishment of most vacation days with vacation taken at will from the %50 and in any form (clustered, by day, half days, whatever). Full time creativity is a form of cognitive dissidence fostered only by industrial era thinking. Creative workers should be given the option to take minor or major pay cuts dynamically and at will in order to replenish their energy. Whereas today, asking for extra time off, even with a cut in pay, carries a lot of guilt for most. Such a structure as described, when monitored, also provides valuable feedback on the health of the employee and company. When you get something like this Google, hit me up on Pond.

cyphunk 13y ago
Another 2c: Google[x] might be the founders way to avoid the sloth of a mammoth structure but it may also be the one thing that turns them into Xerox. To prevent that expressly avoid the patent-chest-trap and future reliance on this over innovation in product based wealth. If your investors cant give up on future patent wealth secretly plow efforts into reducing the effectiveness of patent-chests for all.

lowglow 13y ago

Hm. I feel like Google is following Diamond Age's tips on how to train their engineers. There's a pretty great passage in there about this, and you owe it to yourself to read it. It reads more like a prophecy than a sci-fi book, but it's super good. :)

cromwellian 13y ago

I'm 42. Most of the people I work with are in the 30s and 40s and have children. The stereotype of Google hiring nothing but Stanford grads has been over for a while. As much as I like Aaron, here he is guilty of excessive generalization. Even in 2006 the claims don't match reality. I lived through the first dot.com boom in CA, where companies were falling hand over fist to offer perks, many of them financially unsustainable, because there was a huge competition to acquire and keep talent, as well as keep them in the office for long hours with the promise of striking it rich on what were often worthless stock options. Google is pretty clear and upfront about what the compensation will be. Everything I was told about what to expect about stock grants, year bonuses, and benefits, has more or less hit the predicted windows. I was never really oversold on what my compensation would be and I was able to do financial planning around it because it was so transparent. I also don't see what's wrong with 'infantilizing'. We lose creativity as we become adults because of the sheer numbers of rules, responsibilities, and requirements placed on us. If you want people to do good research or engineering, take away as much as possible impediments, like worry over money, laundry, or corporate politicking. Do we also talk about Phd students and tenured professors in research labs being "infantilized" by an academic environment often isolated from the outside world? I don't view it as necessarily a bad thing. Although I guess you could claim that Einstein still did good work while working at the Patent Office. All in all the essay is a rather convoluted and weak critique of Google culture and hiring practices based on anecdotal observations that don't match reality.

alvarosm 13y ago
You're comfortable in the Matrix, good for you. Just don't evangelize please.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Stating facts to correct erroneous claims isn't evangelization. What is the moral of this story anyway? That your workplace shouldn't offer you free food, or have fun areas with cool statues, because a replica of SpaceShip One will "infantilize you"? And this is supposed to scare people into going to a "grown up" workplace and grey suits and expensive shitty food? I used to pay high prices to eat lunch at IBM Cafeterias, and it was terrible food. But this infantilized me less?

icambron 13y ago

I don't work at Google and from where I sit now, it's hard to imagine myself wanting to work for Google, but this complaint that it's infantalizing its employees is ridiculous. Making your own food and doing your own laundry are not substantial life challenges. Growing up is not about learning to do chores you don't actually have to do. (When you make enough money to pay someone to mow your lawn, are you back to being a little kid?) The whole article is premised on the idea that the status quo in which most adults do have to do (or choose to do) their laundry is somehow intrinsically superior, which is just silly. Think of all the other services you don't do yourself, or even that your grandparents do but which now come in the form of a household appliance. Why do some services go in the bucket labeled "self-sufficiency" and all the other ones don't? Growing up is also not about throwing out the brightly colored things and getting rid of the spaceship models. Why would you think that? Because someone told you to act like a Real Adult? Because when you grow up, you need to trade in your dinosaurs for responsible abstract art or else...well, what, exactly? Growing up is about taking responsibility for yourself. That's basically it. Maybe Google is preventing that too, but this article doesn't make that case.

maximumsteve 13y ago
Perhaps not everyone feels this way, but I think that there are a large amount of employees that feel like they've failed by not being completely self-sufficient(i.e. contract or own their own business). They can still be easy to work with, productive, etc., but they may view their job trying to feed them and do their laundry as an encroachment on their personal life and perhaps even a vie for more of their time by 'no longer having an excuse'. Of course, this goes unsaid because 'they're just providing services you're too good to do yourself.' In addition, expecting someone with administrative aspirations to play in a ball pit could be considered downright offensive, thanks to its perceived condescension and lack of any real interest.
colanderman 13y ago
maximumsteve, your posts show up as dead (meaning no-one without "showdead" turned on can see them). Not sure why, you seem perfectly coherent. I suggest starting a new account.

rusabd 13y ago

If I had a talent I would write about companies treating their employees like criminals

imanant 13y ago

That is what you would expect it to be, too. I see them dominating the world for next 2 years at least but where they go there will determine how strong the vision is of the founders.

6d0debc071 13y ago

You can't judge infantile behaviour from the presence of dinosaurs. I'm a woman in my mid 20s, I still have a fluffy snake from when I was 12 that I like to stroke when I'm thinking. Oh no! People derive pleasure from things you no-longer do. There's a difference between being mature and being solemn. Far too often I see the latter being treated as the former. Being mature is about responsibility, managing your own life, growing to understand what you enjoy and how you relate to others. A lot of people who think they're very adult, just because they don't have fluffy snakes and the like any more... a lot of them I don't see as adults; who've thought about their happiness and responsibilities; I see sad teenagers.

DavidWanjiru 13y ago

In times like these, I'm minded to beware the echo chamber. Coz I'm very poor at telling when I've fallen into one.

general_failure 13y ago

Very silly article. There are so many things wrong but i will comment on the first para. T any about living your life when most people seem to be outsourcing even bringing up children in the bay area since they have to work. Laundry and food are hardly about living your life.

n1ghtmare_ 13y ago

I recently got an interview with Google (didn't get it), I'd kill to work with them. Even if they pay a bit less than what I'm currently getting, if it means I'll work on something less boring than what I'm doing now (typical business corporate bs where I'm working pretty much by myself).

smtddr 13y ago

I thought HN's algo drove controversial stories off the front page. This is generating a bunch of arguments and yet it's still here. There are other stories I've commented on that get knocked off the front page with less drama than I'm seeing here.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

Claims that other people are "infantile" are almost always just a pissing contest. It's an easy way to put someone down since being infantile is hard to define, and making that claim already sets you up as the more mature person in the conversion. And the idea that having stuff done for you is equivalent to being treated like a kid says more about the psychological issues of the author than reality. Our entire economy is based around exchanging services for money. Google takes it to a (slightly) higher level, although the only perk that people use in real life is the food.

jstark 13y ago

counterpoint: growing up != performing life-taking tasks like laundry.

niketdesai 13y ago

I transferred to the Motorola division so I kind of have both perspectives while being at Google. In some regard, a lot of Googlers don't even know how good they have it. What Google manages to do pretty well is pick the right people for 'the company' and then acclimatize them extremely fast to everything: process, tools, lifestyle and sometimes koolaid. In doing so are we infants? Perhaps. But fundamentally this is no different than what all children go through (acclimatization to their environment). I'm not sure working for some crummy company, or a startup means one life is better than the other - they are different. And if you're lucky enough to be able to choose that then that is awesome.

sirkneeland 13y ago
So what's the moto side like?
- niketdesai 13y ago
  In what regard -- the question is too broad for me to generally answer meaningfully.

auvrw 13y ago

> Even the suburban desert of Mountain View is better. haha, i think mountain view is actually quite a quaint little town compared to sun-beat santa clara, which really isn't so bad either. (aaah, i miss the weather, i do.) but heck, the late aaron swartz lamenting an HR tact that pervades so many of the companies, software and otherwise, hiring math & science "types?" holiday stylesheet or no, it's a depressing read.

enneff 13y ago

Working at Google I feel the opposite of infantilised. I am given nearly total autonomy to do my job how I see fit (and shouldn't i? Nobody knows my job better than me). I can book business travel, order essential equipment, and even start new work spontaneously without wasting time seeking approval. I set my own goals and am the judged by how well I meet them. I feel that traditional offices are more infantlilising in that they assume most workers need explicit instructions to get their work done and must seek approval to do anything out of the ordinary. Aaron here is distracted by the shiny things. As an employee you very quickly become accustomed to the benefits and spend more time just getting work done.

tmsh 13y ago

Infantilizing not infantile. Loss of potential given the strong potential of many Googlers. His insight into opportunity costs is bright if slightly imperfect, as always, I'd say. This is more a complaint against people not solving hard problems enough (a la Steve Yegge) than a complaint against bean bags - those are just metaphors.