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It seems mildly insulting that someone of his talent is a "paid intern" after winning a $150,000 prize although I'm sure the money is better than most people ea

by flocial 12y ago

It seems mildly insulting that someone of his talent is a "paid intern" after winning a $150,000 prize although I'm sure the money is better than most people earn "full-time". Ironically, no matter how hard Project Zero works we are probably all subject to the biggest security hole of all, a backdoor to US Government, that encompasses not only software but hardware components. Note: Apologies for not linking to the source, Wired http://www.wired.com/2014/07/google-project-zero/ http://www.wired.com/2014/07/google-project-zero/

jug5 12y ago
Definitely insulting that he's an intern.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Every intern I've worked with at Google was either a PhD candidate or post-doc at a prestigious institution. There's nothing wrong with being an intern and in many ways the fire-and-forget nature of their projects -- and total absence of career concerns, yak shaving, and red tape -- can lead to fine outcomes that aren't typical for full-time engineers.
stephencanon 12y ago
At many tech companies, “intern” is just HR’s means of designating “someone who will be employed for a fixed time period before returning to university”, rather than a reflection of their skills or salary (even if most interns are relatively less experienced). I don’t know if this is the case at Google or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
icebraining 12y ago
How about we let him decide whether it's "insulting" for himself?
tptacek 12y ago
Is he in school? Then he probably asked to be an intern. Watson Ladd is an intern at Matasano this summer, despite being cryptographically more competent than any 2 other Matasano team members. Why? Because he asked to be an intern; he's in grad school, and presumably plans on being a professor in the long term. Google isn't a bad place for a software security person to work. They have one of the best teams in the industry. It is very unlikely that they're trying to insult the guy.

by flocial 12y ago

jug5 12y ago

Definitely insulting that he's an intern.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Every intern I've worked with at Google was either a PhD candidate or post-doc at a prestigious institution. There's nothing wrong with being an intern and in many ways the fire-and-forget nature of their projects -- and total absence of career concerns, yak shaving, and red tape -- can lead to fine outcomes that aren't typical for full-time engineers.

stephencanon 12y ago

At many tech companies, “intern” is just HR’s means of designating “someone who will be employed for a fixed time period before returning to university”, rather than a reflection of their skills or salary (even if most interns are relatively less experienced). I don’t know if this is the case at Google or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

icebraining 12y ago

How about we let him decide whether it's "insulting" for himself?

tptacek 12y ago

Is he in school? Then he probably asked to be an intern. Watson Ladd is an intern at Matasano this summer, despite being cryptographically more competent than any 2 other Matasano team members. Why? Because he asked to be an intern; he's in grad school, and presumably plans on being a professor in the long term. Google isn't a bad place for a software security person to work. They have one of the best teams in the industry. It is very unlikely that they're trying to insult the guy.