The author complains that she was dissatisfied with her offer six years prior but took the job anyway. Then it turns into a rant about how she was robbed of her entitlements.
"But what happens when the economy improves? Those wounds will never heal. Anyone with half a brain will say "hey, these guys are evil!" and will bail for greener pastures."
Because they don't have bagels in the microkitchen Google is evil?
As someone who works at Google, I can assure you that the microkitchens are overflowing with drinks, snacks, fruits, coffees, and candies, The cafeterias are plentiful(24 in mountain view alone) and the food is incredibly delicious, even for a foodie like myself.
Plus, the pay is very competitive. The author must not have stuck around for this:
I wouldn't go so far as to call Google "evil" for reducing perks, but the microkitchens were a lot better before. They used to be overflowing with goodies, many perishable. After the bean-counter moment it was all dry cereal and prepackaged snacks.
For me it was just a "shrug, whatever" moment. I realized that as a growing public company Google wanted to control costs more.
And I might be weird, but excessive perks creep me out a little. I worry about it warping my mind too much. One day during my time at Google, I was in a grocery store and felt mild outrage at the thought that they were going to charge me for food.
Once you're used to a perk, it's another fishhook the company has embedded into your flesh.
I imagine her main gripe would be that the free food was treated as a component of her compensation, and then withdrawn for the perfectly rational (but unrelated) reason of cutting costs.If someone did that to my salary (and it's happened a few times, for various reasons), that would generate a certain amount of ill-will.
It's also their fault. They made an offer they weren't planning on keeping. And they lose the most - an irate employee is a dead loss to an organization, but still gets a paycheck (until they more on or get fired, which takes a long time).
Well that's human nature people get far more upset about losing something losing $20 a day in free food feels much worse than gaining the same amount in pay.
"After the bean-counter moment it was all dry cereal and prepackaged snacks."
You must be going to different MKs than I do. My experience is the MKs have always had (at least since Dec 2008, when I started) plenty of seasonal fresh fruit, pre-made salads and sandwiches in addition to the dried cereals and pre-packaged snacks. <shrug>
The perks are nice but are far from the top of the list of things that I would miss about working here - working with world class people, the opportunity to work on huge problems at scale, the amount that's invested in internal tools and processes, a culture that allows and even encourages you to question management - those are the types of things that I would miss.
yeah, i've been working there a few months, and the perks are very nice, but the people i get to work with, and the deep belief in code quality, are what makes it such a pleasure to work there. (that said, i'd be seriously upset if the shuttles were taken away).
It was an advice article. I think many young graduates (that Google seems to like to recruit) should read it.
> Then it turns into a rant about how she was robbed of her entitlements.
I think you are being too hyperbolic there. It seems pretty clear that Google didn't break any laws and that the author thinks Google didn't break any laws. She made some wrong assumptions during her hiring and she is warning others not to make the same ones.
> Because they don't have bagels in the microkitchen Google is evil?
It is appropriate to use that word because Google set itself up for it by using it in its own mission statement. It is clearly a play on that. Had any other company been involved I bet the word "evil" wouldn't have been used.
Prior to the release of the first Android phone, Jobs acted almost as a mentor to Larry/Sergey. In fact, the two companies were so closely aligned that there was an antitrust investigation:
The millions of people that have joined Google+ and the throngs of people that have buzzed about it would beg to differ with the author who is obviously is trolling.
Also, he conveniently omitted from the article the fact that he's a visiting researcher at Microsoft. Possible conflict of interests?
The fact that it's a smartphone, or that it's running Windows 7, or that it was developed in Silverlight doesn't seem to have anything to do with the fact that we're looking at a glorified microscope.
Surely there's a cheaper way to get a microscopic image of a blood sample in Africa than flooding villages with Windows smartphones.
If this "glorified microscope" allows people to do their jobs tangibly better -- in this case, detect malaria -- then what exactly is the cost problem in your mind? We're not talking about gold-plated custom-designed malaria detection devices... we're talking about (commodity) smartphones with a small lens affixed and some software installed.
Do we know that it helps people do their jobs better? The article left me with this question: Is this different than other microscopes that you could use in the field, and if so, how? Does this make it easier/cheaper for the trained personnel to detect malaria? Maybe it does--I'm just not clear on that point after having read the article.
The real point is that now the mobile worker doesn't have to carry a phone + a large microscope. The mobile phone is continuing to replace more and more objects. Radio, tv, camerea, video, internet browser, and now microscope. Many more devices will be adapted to take advantage of the phones computation capability as well as things like GPS, internet etc. BTW, if that mobile health worker has to make a choice between purchasing a microscope and purchasing a phone, they are probably going to purchase the phone.
It would make a lot more sense from a revenue standpoint than when they purchased YouTube. Viacom has beef with Google TV so I wonder what would happen to all the Viacom offerings on Hulu if that were to happen.
Haha. I think Apache is the only popular webserver nowadays that actually still can't beat the C10k problem [1] without an extravagant amount of system resources. Process- and thread-based concurrency sucks for HTTP(S).
"But what happens when the economy improves? Those wounds will never heal. Anyone with half a brain will say "hey, these guys are evil!" and will bail for greener pastures."
Because they don't have bagels in the microkitchen Google is evil?
As someone who works at Google, I can assure you that the microkitchens are overflowing with drinks, snacks, fruits, coffees, and candies, The cafeterias are plentiful(24 in mountain view alone) and the food is incredibly delicious, even for a foodie like myself.
Plus, the pay is very competitive. The author must not have stuck around for this:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-11-09/tech/30024423...
It's unfortunate that her experience didn't end well, but this article comes across as hyperbolic and catty.