The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!
> The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough
I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they can get into, because they generally don't have many data points, and go interview anyway. Let them figure out whether you are smart enough or not; don't self-eliminate. Never let the widespread propaganda lead you to believe that everyone hired by a successful company in the valley is a genius. They collectively hire many thousands of people; it's hard to believe they are all geniuses.
The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.
This is the case at most companies. It's rather ironic that the interview can be a brain-wracking exercise in futility and problems that will never be encountered or dealt with on the job. The fact that the two are generally unrelated does lead to both bad candidates being hired and good ones pass up. I assume this is what people mean when they say they are not "smart enough" to pass an interview with Google or another company (unless they really do think they're not smart enough and somehow their job is incredibly tougher at Google than somewhere else). They don't want to play the interview game and may not actually know a lot of the answers and tricks of the game which leads them to think they are not smart enough to work at Google when they're just not experienced in the interview game.
Honestly, I used to think the same way. I am a college dropout that has about 3 years professional experience (thoigh I have been programming since I was a kid) and I suddenly have a Google recruiter coming after me and trying to get me to interview. I have worked with a guy who now works at Google and some people who interviewed at one time or another. They say the same thing as the parent post; Google hires good programmers, and they happen to have some geniuses. Don't quit the race before you even start it.
Did you actually interview with them? I have Computer Science education, 10+ years of industry experience, am very familiar with most of the Cormen book and have been programming since I was a kid. I was interviewing with Google twice (after their recruiters reached out to me) and haven't made the bar.
Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.
> Don't think that the fact of recruiter getting in touch mean anything -- they are playing their own numbers game.
Exactly. In some conversations I've had with fellow dev's they seem to equate a message from a recruiter with a job offer. I never understood this. Sure, I get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn but it's prob. the same generic letter blasted to hundreds or even thousands of candidates. The quality of your online profiles (SEO?) as a programmer is directly related to the volume of messages you get from recruiters.
I don't make the mistake of thinking a recruiter calling me on several occasions, attempting to get me to interview is a job offer. What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am. Maybe that's just an overzealous recruiter trying to fill numbers. Maybe Google has relaxed standards outside of what people usually think. One of the first things I said to the recruiter was something along the lines of "Are you sure you have the right guy?"[0] followed up with "I'm not quite sure that I am qualified". Between talking to the recruiter and people who work there or passed the interview, it sure doesn't seem like they are only looking for geniuses.
I'm just trying to offer a point of data regarding what Google by proxy of their recruiters, looks for. The recruiter himself has been working for Google for quite a while, so either he really knows how to game the system, is currently desperate, or Google doesn't have as extreme standards as one would think.
> What I find surprising is that the recruiter still wants me to interview even after I explained who and what I am.
Did you tell him that you're a psychopath? My point is that if a recruiter reaches out to you, it probably means your online identity matches their criteria for potential candidate. Now this criteria can be as simple as oh neat he uses haskell to I'm impressed by his contributions to project X, Y, Z. So unless you tell him something that is completely contradictory to his superficial impression of you there's no reason he should tell you NOT to interview with the company.
Also, I feel like whatever reason the recruiter decided to contact you (Github / nice linkedin profile) has very little to do with the companies hiring bar. It's a terrible proxy for measuring how a company hires. It's at best an indication of the technologies you'll potentially be working with. For example, if you only have java listed chances are you prob. would have never gotten that phone call. You should try it as an experiment.
Want to know where the bar actually is? Go for an interview. Of course, what they mean by interview is usually 1-2 rounds of phone interviews. So in essence you're still pretty far from being seriously considered as a candidate.
I don't think it really matters to the recruiter if you are qualified, or if they are judged on how many people they source end up getting offers. They are just there to get you in the door.
I suppose that would depend on how the recruiters operate. I'd imagine that at Google's size, they probably have recruiters just feeding people into the pipeline. I tend to assume people aren't just doing a shitty job, in this case throwing people at a wall and seeing what sticks, despite how much it clashes with my "imposter syndrome" mentality.
I had a Google recruiter call me after "finding my resume". They then asked me to send them my resume. I told them to Bing my name to get the latest copy of my resume. Not heard back from them since. :/
Not just google, though. I routinely use the word 'bing' instead of 'google' when I tell people to search for stuff, mostly just to see the reactions. It's quite odd - some people laugh, some people actually get hostile. Someone asked me if Bing would work their Yahoo. I told them to just keep doing what they were doing and not worry about it.
made the same experience. they also said they have different interview ways if someone does not have a degree in cs, math or anything what would give a more theoretical background. which is my case.
still i am currently happy where i am and i am not really willing to relocate to any of their dev centers in Europe.
Think about the sociology of this: would you really expect a Google employee to say "Yes, we are almost all geniuses"?
There is a lot of social pressure to attribute one's success to hard work (except of you're a White male ;-) ), luck, good mentorship, experience, meta-skills etc. rather than intelligence.
Just want to note that, ethics are not just simply things people have been doing for years, but in fact human progress/efficiency measures built into social behavior.
Such a ignorance towards ethics is like debt: initially you grow, keep doing it, and soon enough you take a nosedive.
It's not enough to be smart, you have to convince them that you're smart. And if the recruiters dislike you for whatever reason, there's nothing you can do about it.
I think Google's recruiters realize that some really smart people have certain personality types that may mean they don't perform well in classical interviews.
>The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough.
But as long as the hiring process keeps the same as of it is now, it can be hacked not that difficultly by keep practicing on coding exercises (e.g. http://oj.leetcode.com/). All of my friends spent several weeks working on the coding exercises got into Google (for those cared to apply). Several of them are really not that "smart" and they are below-average in project-coding & general computer science understanding (sorry my friends), but repeatedly working on coding exercises and even memorize some common problems' solution just works for Google or Facebook's hiring process.
That process of cracking the coding exercises can be boring, though. I would be immediately returning to do my side-project even after I do one or two coding exercise. Not worth of the time at least for me; there are tons of great companies packed with people smarter than the average Googlers and they don't emphasize on algorithm in hiring process that much, why not work for them?
If that's true then Google's hiring process is as broken as everyone's. If below average people are hired by your process then it's the process that sucks. Of course if you keep doing that then eventually your company will suck too.
Google in the beginning made hiring PhD types a priority but that has absolutely changed in recent years. It would be truly surprising if they would turn down someone with an exceptional list of open source projects or working experience.
I won't work for them because they're increasingly becoming more and more evil. As an example, they've been secretly building ad profiles of Google Apps for Education student users even if ads were turned off by the administrator to show them ads on other Google sites. They give schools free Chromebooks and all, but they should atleast declare what kind of profiling they're doing to the students who are forced to use the Google cloud for student email. They denied it when asked, but couldn't get their employees and lawyers to lie in federal court, silently removed language about not tracking from their site and finally a few days ago turned it off! If not for a lawsuit, this tracking would've not come to light. Couple that with massive spending on lobbying compared to Apple and MS makes me feel uneasy. The below article makes me wonder if they use paying Google Apps for Business email accounts to build ad profiles too? Anyone know?
"As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.
In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising."
"A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes, including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned off—even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads. The company would not say whether those email scans are used to help build profiles of students or other Apps for Education users, but said the results of its data mining are not used to actually target ads to Apps for Education users unless they choose to receive them."
...
"Student-data-privacy experts contend that the latter claim is contradicted by Google’s own court filings in the California suit. They describe the case as highly troubling and likely to further inflame rising national concern that protection of children’s private educational information is too lax."
"Mr. Thiele said his district has used Google Apps for Education since 2008. Officials there have always been aware that the company does “back-end processing” of students’ email messages, he said, but the district’s agreement with Google precludes such data from being used to serve ads to students or staff members.
As long as the company abides by those terms, Mr. Thiele said, “I don’t have any problem with it.”
In an emailed statement provided to Education Week, Bram Bout, the director of Google Apps for Education, said that “ads in Gmail are turned off by default for Google Apps for Education and we have no plans to change that in the future.”"
...
"Those plaintiffs in the California lawsuit allege that Google treats Google Apps for Education email users virtually the same as it treats consumer Gmail users. That means not only mining students’ email messages for key words and other information, but also using resulting data—including newly created derivative information, or “metadata”—for “secret user profiling” that could serve as the basis for such activities as delivering targeted ads in Google products other than Apps for Education, such as Google Search, Google+, and YouTube."
"The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around 2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’ inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off."
"While the allegations by the plaintiffs are explosive, it’s the sworn declarations of Google representatives in response to their claims that have truly raised the eyebrows of observers and privacy experts.
Contrary to the company’s earlier public statements, Google representatives acknowledged in a September motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ request for class certification that the company’s consumer-privacy policy applies to Apps for Education users. Thus, Google argues, it has students’ (and other Apps for Education users’) consent to scan and process their emails."
"In November, Kyle C. Wong, a lawyer representing Google, also argued in a formal declaration submitted to the court in opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification that the company’s data-mining practices are widely known, and that the plaintiffs’ complaints that the scanning and processing of their emails was done secretly are thus invalid. Mr. Wong cited extensive media coverage about Google’s data mining of Gmail consumer users’ messages, as well as the disclosures made by numerous universities to their students about how Google Apps for Education functions."
You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts:
Thanks for pointing to this. I am a grad student. My institution recently moved to Apps for Education and away from an in-house system, which I was not very happy about. Privacy for my data (including communications with the undergrads I teach) was, and remains, one of my concerns.
There's an awful lot of very slippery language in this post:
"So, if you’re a student logging in to your Apps for Education account at school or at home, when you navigate to Google.com, you will not see ads." Great -- but does anyone see ads on the google.com homepage? Seeing ads is not the issue; the issue is how Google is collecting and processing data. So:
"We’ve permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes." I was with you until that last qualifier, "for advertising purposes." That just makes me wonder what sort of "collection" and "use" purposes Google is reserving for itself. What's really off the table here? Even if "ads scanning" is turned off, what protections are in place to make sure that no one, including Google itself, has the ability to use the data associated with Apps for Education accounts in privacy-violating or nefarious ways? The technology the post actually mentions, like HTTPS, is all about the channel between users' computers and Google's servers. But are there any protections to keep student data from being abused by Google employees?
This last possibility is an important one, as many of my students may one day be applying for jobs at Google. What assurance do they have that the person who hires them or their future manager will not, in a moment of weakness, troll through their email from their undergrad days? see the photos they sent to friends? read the papers they wrote and stored on Google Drive?
I understand that much of the language here is probably slippery for legal reasons, and to keep the explanations simple, not because it is hiding some bad intent on Google's part. But good intentions are not enough when you are asking to be trusted with other people's data, especially student data.
Not this FUD again. If Googlers are so smart why are they not rich?
There are lots of professions that the average Googler couldn't get into which makes more $ (e.g. finance, doing a profitable startup). If you ask an average Google, they would give similar ethics-based reasons like OP (e.g. Wall street is bad.)
Get off your high horse, you are not smart, you just gamed the interview process. If you are smart, quit and start a company.
Mm. These sort of posts ("Why I won't work for Google", "Why I won't sign your NDA", "Why I won't do your technical interview") often come across as having a different agenda, and not necessarily one based on insecurity.
I'm still waiting on proof from Snowden as to Apple/Google/Facebook's direct, illegal cooperation with the NSA. So far, all I've seen proof of is compliance with warrants(which admittedly are questionable, but Google has a direct financial gain in fighting them, not helping them), claims that they've fought them, and evidence that the NSA is both tapping the trunk as well as decrypting SSL'd communications.
This isn't just about the NSA, PRISM, etc. It's about surveillance as a business model and as the core purpose of the service. Mass surveillance by advertisers and potentially much creepier private sector entities (astroturf PR firms, think tanks, political parties, ideological pressure groups, insurers, private "intelligence" firms, etc.) is just as violating and potentially worse in the long term than surveillance by the NSA and its kin.
The surveillance-based "free" business model is not our friend.
I suppose, but his arguments are primarily couched in the notion of 'what nefarious thing can be used with your private data', of which Google's committed a grand number of... zero, bad things with. And as far as any evidence whatsoever has shown, they've actually fought FOR your privacy from the government.
Are you trusting them with it? Most definitely. But you're using their services, that trust is implicit. The same way that it's implicit that your bank has your money, or that your phone carrier holds your calls. To ask them to absolve themselves of any ability to snoop is literally to cancel out their reason for existence.
Go to 4 minutes into that video. It's his first interview post-reveal, in Hong Kong.
"Beyond that we've got Prism, which is a demonstration of how the US Government co-opts US corporate power to its own ends. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA, and provide the NSA with direct access to the back ends of all of the systems you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud. And even just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life. And they give the NSA direct access that they don't need to oversee so they can't be held liable for it. I think that's a dangerous capability for anyone to have, but particularly for an organization that's demonstrated time and time again that they'll work to shield themselves from oversight."
Thank you, I stand corrected. That's the first time I've seen Snowden make the direct-access claim. Disappointing to see that it wasn't only Greenwald who didn't read the PRISM document carefully.
Do we know everything now? Certainly not. NSA has resources that nobody knows about and I'm 100% certain that they have direct access to your data in ways that nobody has ever imagined.
In fighting overbroad warrants, via the National Security Letters. Having NSLs at all significantly increases consumer distrust in Google, and gives them literally zero gains in return. It even costs them work, if you're looking at the small stuff. They don't get anything out of it.
NSLs and warrants are completely different things. Warrants are (or can be) for the contents of messages, and must be signed by a judge. NSLs only cover metadata, and only require an FBI agent's signature. An NSL is a type of subpoena, not a type of warrant.
Also, fighting them takes work too. Much more work (done by more highly-paid individuals) than complying with them. The PR angle may make it a net gain, but I don't think there's a slam-dunk case for that being true. What about consumers who believe NSLs are a necessary tool to fight terrorists?
> NSLs and warrants are completely different things. Warrants are (or can be) for the contents of messages, and must be signed by a judge. NSLs only cover metadata, and only require an FBI agent's signature. An NSL is a type of subpoena, not a type of warrant.
Are we sure that's all NSL's cover? I've been told repeatedly that we can't be told what is required under the NSLs by their very nature(despite being overturned by the Supreme Court). Also, I was under the impression a subpoena also requires a judge's approval.
Regardless, while the two(a subpoena and a warrant) are different, in this case their nature is more than a bit similar, considering subpoenas generally are used to produce information, whereas warrants are to be able to reasonably search for information- which on a server, the two are only differentiated by who is accessing the data and how.
>I've been told repeatedly that we can't be told what is required under the NSLs by their very nature(despite being overturned by the Supreme Court).
NSL power is defined by law, and is limited to metadata, not content. I suspect what they meant is that specific details about whose information is being requested, and how many requests are received, can't be released.
>Also, I was under the impression a subpoena also requires a judge's approval.
An administrative subpoena is a type of subpoena that does not need to be signed by a judge. An NSL is a type of admin subpoena that the FBI uses for national security matters, but the FBI uses admin subpoenas in other investigations, too. Many other federal agencies also have admin subpoena power, and some states grant it to their agencies as well.
My opinion would be: We trust them with our data, if they prove untrustworthy (ultimately) we'd stop using their service/giving them the data they need.
They absolutely do not want anyone asking about user info, or their "store everything here forever so we can index and show ads next to it" is in trouble.
On the other hand, Google doesn't want to piss off the Feds or the Military Industrial Complex. They spend a lot of money and have friends in high places.
From what I'm reading in other places this seems more like an oversight than malicious intent. It was present in iOS 7, then broke in later versions. The e-mails themselves are still fully encrypted, and the iPhone data itself can be encrpyted, the main trouble seems to be what's transmitted during sync, since the actual researcher[1] claims a valid workaround is simply disabling mail synchronization.
Perhaps a few people don't understand why OP takes this so seriously. This is the 'long game', the game for the betterment of human existence. (Cliche? yes, true enough? - probably)
If you still feel these huge corporations have our best interests at heart, you are being a touch naive.
They are not 'evil' ofc, but they're probably not the best idea for the future.
What is your best idea for the future? Do you think I or anyone else would find it palatable?
Here's the thing: the profit motive is the impulse of corporations, not the sum total of all behavior. There are great people in corporations that do amazing shit within corporate structures. Coca-Cola have done incredible social art installations recently - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_4vOUDImE
Google is a huge corporation based on the profit principle, but making coin has been the means for Page to fulfil his dreams of being remembered as our modern Tesla.
I think enabling enterprising people to do business may be the most positive thing Coca Cola does to the world.
For Google, it seems making money is not the end game. What they do have many positive fallouts, but I'm not sure they move the 'real' world forward as much as Microsoft (while openly evil, they brought a unified computing environment to the world) or Apple or even Amazon.
With all due respect, and thank you for the reply - I feel compelled to say this:
I used to think like that, however after many years of observing the complicit abuse corporations like these preside over - I can no longer hold that opinion.
If it is about Coca Cola, I have an idea of what kind of abuse or corporate behavior it has, and I don't think 'sugared water' is much needed in our world (I don't deny the value, I just think it's not a need). But even for such a company, there are some positive fallouts.
In the ranking of evil companies, I'm not sure they even come close to the French water groups or big medical corporations, but I might just lack information.
Edit: for Amazon and Microsoft, of course I get how bad they can behave. Amazon more so when it comes to distribution level workers and general social behavior. Microsoft I don't kniw if there are people ignorant of what they did the last decades.
There is nothing intrinsically american about this statement. If you think it is black and white, then fine, argue that point. By adding the phrase "In typical american fashion" you transform your post from a potentially valid point into a pointless petulant insult.
No, it's fine - as a person who's been surrounded by coding and logic since I was 6 years old (32 years ago). I'll choose the 'arbitrary' (from your perspective) choice. In my somewhat silly opinion -> All choices are arbitrary beyond 'i exist'.
There's plenty of people who still believe that, even inside of Google. Then there's the group of employees, known as the 'memegen consenus', who have come to realize that Google is not different from any other large corporation.
Color me cynical, but after witnessing things like the 'no poaching' settlement and the internal memo that calimed they didn't believe to have done anything wrong, I can't see why Google should be anybody's dream company.
Google's reputation is worse then Microsoft these days, so it seems the public is finally waking up.
> We witnessed Google sending cease and desist letters to the developers and maintainers of the popular Android CyanogenMod for violating some patents by modifying open source elements of an open source licensed project
Taking into account that this is not what happened between Google and Cyanogen I doubt about the knowledge of him
He doesn't even get the phrase "Don't be evil" right. He writes "Don't do evil" multiple times.
Then he is surprised that google reads email. How else are they supposed to find out if something is spam or not if they don't read it? And email isn't secure in the first place. Anyone that doesn't know that shouldn't be up for a technical job at an internet-based company in the first place.
It seems like his complaint is that google allegedly turned emails over to the government. Well then why is he bringing up the distraction of "google reads my mom's email!!!"?
My thoughts exactly. If this guy didn't care to look up that the toss-up was about gApps (Google's proprietary products), that casts doubt onto the rest of his piece.
I can't access the linked blogpost because the website is offline, but from the comments here I understand that the main reason the author is invoking for not working at Google is because of Snowden's revelations and Google implication with the NSA.
I think this is strange, we knew way before Snowden's revelations what Google did with the privacy of their users. That in itself should be enough to not want to work there, if you care about it. I know more than a handful of people (including me) who refused jobs from Google (often more than one time, for example I had to ask them to write down to not contact me again after the third time) before Snowden's revelations. The reasons were multiple: "don't be evil" is a joke, Google has been a big company for years now and not really a fun startupy place, it may happens that the job you want is not the kind of jobs that Google offers, and it's not even true anymore (or at least, it is less and less) that having worked at Google make your resume special.
The response doesn't seem convincing. By this standards he's not supposed to work for any corporation. I am a Google fanboy, I agree, and this might skew my opinion, but I am always open to debate.
Agreed. The response seems to conflate a bunch of different things and pretend it's all Google's fault. Snowden didn't blow the whistle on Google. Google can't control what the NSA is tapping or what court orders it gets. Maybe some people inside Google knew about inter-datacenter taps and didn't do anything about it, but once all of Google became aware, they started encrypting those links. Automatic indexing of email contents leaves Google open to subpoenas for information about that indexed content, but the emails would be there to subpoena either way. I don't understand the problem.
What has Google ever done to help TLAs wiretap anyone?
Encryption can be done in a matter where the private keys are stored in the user's end, making it far harder for the likes of the NSA to break the encryption.
One example of this is Jitsi's implementation of Off The Recording chatting. When using an XMPP server through Jitsi, the NSA may be able to read the cipher text sent but not the plaintext because the keys are stored on the chat participants computers. Not even the chat server owners know the chat plaintext.
Doesn't Perfect Forward Secrecy protect against that? I am not sure if Google have implemented it but according to the Wikipedia entry:
This means that the compromise of one message cannot lead to the compromise of others, and also that there is not a single secret value which can lead to the compromise of multiple messages.
I think the big problem with Google is their obsessive compulsiveness in collecting data. Searches, chat logs, locations, everything is collected because storage is cheap. The collect it to improve their services, sure, to better target their advertising, of course. And Google may strive to protect that data and not share it with others. However, all this data makes Google a gold mine for governments, and giving out the data is not really in their control.
There are other companies that have business models don't necessitate all this data collection. When these companies have to cooperate with governments, there's a limit to the amount of useful information they can hand out about their customers.
He could work for a corp that is small enough that it still seems like it is made of decent human beings.
My interview experience with G was more than enough to ensure I never seek to work there again.
And, the trauma of having all my media accounts force-Hoovered into G+ left me little choice but to revoke the last little bit of admiration I had for this once-cool-as-beans company.
He may make enough money freelancing that he doesn't need to work for any corporation. If you're good at what you do in the Software space, you can command very strong 6 figure salaries and only have to "work" part of the year to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle.
I only freelance for companies smaller than 15 people. Like the other person said, it could be anybody from an individual to a small team to a large corporation.
People tend to forget we are Google's product. Not their customers. Advertisers are their customers.
Plenty of tech companies don't sell souls for a living, therefore by working there you may not be required to also sacrifice yours for a paycheck.
Flip side; there are those who believe ads aren't evil. Google builds a lot of interesting tech. It's probably a great place for engineers. But one look at their financial reporting and it's still evident that advertising pays the bills.
I didn't acknowledge that. Renting the data doesn't mean third parties see it - since there would be no way for it to be 'returned'. Instead a program is executed on their behalf.
I think this unduly conflates his displeasure at the automated scanning of emails to target advertising and the NSA etc. bulk access to data. The former doesn't make the latter any more likely. All webmail services must hold their customers' emails, and they are therefore open to being read by a government or third party. Users could encrypt their emails, but it's very hard to do this while also making logging in and accessing anywhere fast easy for all users.
Any webmail service that stores email unencrypted on its servers is subject to subpoena / FISA requests, and there isn't much they can do about it.
They could roll out client-side encryption -- but there's little business incentive for them to do so on free accounts. That said, as an option for paying apps users, it would be quite valuable.
Automatic scanning of emails isn't ethically suspect in my opinion.
My reasons for not working at google right now are: lack of desire to engage in big company politics, the apparent softening of the 20% time policy, regular-corporate/long hours, and the commute I'd have to take. Otherwise it'd be near top of my list should I go back into full time business.
I'm by no means a fanboy. From what I understand the salary thing wasn't exactly a conspiracy, but it was an extremely poor policy. I don't think anybody has much to complain about in terms of the benefits package from google, though.
In terms of "big companies", their sins are relatively innocuous, and if I wanted to work in big tech they'd be #1 on my list given the technology & resources that they make available. I'd certainly never work for Apple, Facebook, Oracle or Microsoft. I'd need a lot of convincing to work for Amazon.
There you go: webmails, while extremely usable, help government snooping by their very nature. If e-mail was decentralized like it was meant to be, spying would be that much harder. (Yes, everyone could host their mail at home. Yes, it can be plug&play useable. No, no one bothered to sell the damn stuff, probably because webmails were more profitable —or believed to be.)
But when you think of it for like 2 seconds, automated scanning does help the NSA. Such software is easy to re-purpose. With the right subpoena, I give Google a week before it gives away a nice social graph of US dissidence to the NSA.
All mainstream modern technology companies are in a no win tragic situation. They are accountable to the state which overrides their ability to make any kind of actual independent decisions when the interests of the state are at stake. Going against this would be an exercise in futility and you may well end up in prison for doing so.
Getting angry at them for what they are forced at gunpoint to do is just wasted energy, though I do agree with seeking alternatives free from the influence of the state and not patronising companies that are forced to operate in those interests purely from the perspective of pragmatism.
All they can do is stick to the letter of the law. I think the harder the state clamps down and the more totalitarian it becomes, the more black market alternatives for mainstream services will come into being and the more pressure there will be for a truly free parallel economy to flourish.
> All mainstream modern technology companies are in a no win tragic situation.
Actually the big companies (and to a lesser degree other significant entities like Wikipedia) that essentially hold the keys to the Internet and have the money -- if anyone, they are in a position to change things. They have tremendous power. Think civil disobedience. Corporate disobedience? There are many legal as well as illegal things these corps could do to flip the bird at the state. And the result might be that they get heard, unlike all the EFF campaigners and individuals who can only complain on Internet forums.
A company called Qwest tried that, and its CEO ended up in prison on trumped-up charges of insider trading. Calls for other people to become martyrs for your favorite cause don't have a lot of moral authority in my book.
Not a great approach, see Lavabit and associated businesses. Or that telco executive who was imprisoned (Qwest, thanks rwallace) on trumped up charges due to not playing ball with the national security apparatus to the requisite degree of submission. You paint a target on your back taking this path in a big way, it's simply not worth the risk to insulate people from the consequences of their own political decisions.
All they can do is stick to the letter of the law.
That's not all that they can do. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. are some of the most powerful entities in the US besides the oil industry. They matter to the US economy, and for that reason they are clearly in a position to influence government decisions.
This has both positive and negative outcomes. Since trust in terms of privacy is important to Google et al., they are (probably) trying to prevent eavesdropping. This can be witnessed in Google's push to push SSL everywhere, their increased transparency with respect to information requests, and Facebook's lashing out at Obama over domestic spying.
On the other hand, some outcomes are detrimental as a result of a fierce battle between the technology companies, resulting e.g. in blocking of patent reform.
Influencing government decisions is typically done by lobbying, handing more power to the state by way of smothering them in funds. Yes you might get your pet project some extra attention, but it's likely that the funds you use to accomplish that objective will be used for heinous ends elsewhere. It's much like negotiating with terrorists from a game theoretic perspective.
Other alternatives are massive public awareness campaigns with regards to any given issue, but these appear to be losing potency as it becomes clear that basically everything the state is doing is broken from the perspective of citizens in some way, and they are not much interested in "fixing it" as it is working perfectly from the perspective of political parasites.
The only unalloyed good that can probably be done is financially contributing to improved security and other technological innovations that directly thwart the interests of the state. Doing so more advances the interests of their potential free market competitors than their own however.
Consider the massive power wielded by SpaceX with respect to the purchase of Russian rocket components. They prevailed by applying the right amount of pressure at the opportune time (viz a viz Ukraine).
In principle, this accomplishment could be replicated.
They're advancing the interests of the state in the all important "great game", effectively increasing their power. All due respect to SpaceX, the state needs to die, not be further empowered. Not a valid strategy.
Also, they engage in good old fashioned direct bribery;
The state must die is not a call to violence, I mean to say the institution of political authority must be annihilated, not the people that currently hold that authority.
I wish all individual humans within those institutions long happy productive lives after they stop threatening everyone outside those institutions with violence.
> That's not all that they can do. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. are some of the most powerful entities in the US besides the oil industry.
Above the oil industry and the US government there's the power driving the world (into oblivion): Wall Street (the financial services industry).
This is a lot longer than my response I gave the Google recruiter:
I appreciate you contacting me, but I'm currently in the process of
raising a funding round for my startup which precludes me from
looking at other opportunities right now. However; if you know any
investors in the IoT space, I would love to chat.
Funny thing is that in about 6 months, they are going to probably contact Him, and Me again.
> Thank you for your interest and taking the time to discuss employment opportunities, but at this time I have decided not to pursue a further relationship with Google as an employer. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.
"Unfortunately, Google is not a company i have any interest in working for. Thanks for getting in touch, though, and good luck with your hunt."
The impression i've formed is that Google is full of people who are quite smart, but think they're really smart, and have decided to build themselves a technical ecosystem that has no interaction with the rest of the world. That doesn't sound like fertile ground for personal growth.
Also, given that i am in London, it would have meant working on AdWords, which sounds dull.
I'm also in London. Last time (5-6 different Google recruiters over the last 6-7 years) I went through phone screening with the recruiter after she was very convincing when telling me why this time would be different (after I'd given her my "standard" paragraph by e-mail about why I generally think talking to Google is a waste of my time). This was for a management position, and she then got me set up for technical interview.
The guy in question gave me a bunch of totally idiotic questions about details about filesystem implementations, and clearly didn't like it when I pointed out to him that there wasn't one single answer to the questions he raised the way he'd asked them, and proceeded to give him an outline of the various solutions that applied for a few different filesystems. He wanted specific textbook details about a filesystem that was entirely irrelevant for the position.
My impression was that he was "textbook smart", and would answer questions about the specific stuff he'd studied very well - the questions he asked fit very well with that -, and would probably excel at brainteasers, but his interpersonal skills and broader understanding of the subjects he asked me about appeared to be so weak that had I been on the other side of the table, I'd never have considered hiring him.
I "failed" that interview, only to have the recruiter bring it up in some recruitment committee or something and get it set aside and get me through to the next step on the basis of the notes I sent her of all the issues I saw with the questions. But only after she spent a lot of time lamenting the process (this is a common team with Google recruiters - every one I've spoken to has been incredibly frustrated at their own processes).
But by then I'd lost interest - the guy in question was in the group I'd have managed, and I really did not like the thought of having to deal with him on a daily basis. Or the thought of a team staffed with similar people... Or the thought of working somewhere where the HR processes are so messed up that their recruiters spends half the time they talk to me apologising about how their recruitment works.
I know there are lots of great people at Google, but every interaction I've had with their recruitment process makes me less inclined to want to work there.
> Also, given that i am in London, it would have meant working on AdWords, which sounds dull.
That's the main reason I'll never apply to Google. Not that I won't get in, but that I won't have the political klout to actually get to work on some of the fun stuff.
They're employing tens of thousands of very bright people; yet the truly interesting stuff will have been done by a few hundred / thousand of those.
What reason do I have for believing that I'll be in that small percentage rather than the other 90+% doing boring grunt work...
Pretty well-written sentiment, only thing is that recruiters cast a pretty wide net and certainly wouldn't read through anyone's life story if presented with the opportunity.
However, I'm sure that if every person who gets contacted by a Google recruiter responds with a similar diatribe about their disillusionment with Google's ways, they just might take notice.
Just out of curiosity, what do you folks see as the difference between looking at text with the intent to correct spelling (like this text box does) versus looking at text to put an advertisement next to it?
(If I wanted to go reductio ad absurdum, what about looking at text to change <a href="...">foo</a> into a link?)
To be clear: I'm honestly curious, not trying to defend or advocate for one interpretation over another.
During spelling correction, there is not any need for any data to leave your computer. In fact, the spelling correction on this text box is a feature of your browser, not of news.ycombinator.com.
The whole point about serving targeted ads is aggregating multiple sources of data to build an extensive "customer" profile.
In my opinion, Google's activities are "evil" because they intentionally profile their consumers through parsing all their personal data (email, shopping history, etc). Furthermore, Google chooses to spy on their users through a matter that allows the NSA to collect entire profiles for Google's users. Google does this mainly for the money involved.
hmm having Google extend more effort after finding out that their data pipes to their servers were being spied upon by NSA seems to discount part of this
Compare Google and USPS..whereas the USPS has stated in public that their customer is the mass mailers(spammers) ..Google attempts a balance between two different customer groups..
I won't work for google, apple, or microsoft due to the illegal no-poaching agreements they made. I don't want to work for amazon because they are retail - engineering is overhead to be trimmed.
Through some weird twist of fate I find myself actually admiring Facebook, not the site, but the company.
I can't really explain why, but I agree with you re: Facebook. Of all the big ones, is the one I'd like to work for the most. Maybe is the amount of social experiment you could do, I dunno.
Re: Amazon, I think you are totally wrong. They are a tech company that happens to do Retail.
Most of the large tech companies mostly turn me off, though there are little glimmers of things they do that are positive. Ironically, I've been breaking my radio silence on G+ over the past couple of days discussing some of this in relation to Gundotra's exodus and the "death of G+" discussions (short answer: yes and no).
I just got accused of having favorable views of Facebook (I don't -- I think what the company does is detestable and Zuck's morals are beyond reprehensible .... except that the company's stand in breaking the wage-suppression collusion cabal was a stunning case of doing the right thing).
But in terms of a company which could tempt me ... there aren't many.
Personally, I want to fix them if possible. That is why I posted a wishlist for Satya on a blog's comments for example, and why I like to discuss Google with for example michaelochurch. On Facebook, I posted this: http://www.quora.com/What-has-happened-to-Mark-Zuckerbergs-o...
To be fair Google is a great company. But because of some actions they have taken they are not so outstandingly appealing as they were few years ago. Of course that's natural given their size. Many big companies are way worse. But still, they are now just another company that's good to their employees (many of whom are still quite passionate about it). No more, no less, that's all Google is.
the poor recruiter is the wrong person to rant to.
Why? If enough talented individuals reject a Google position (or more accurately, entry to Google's interview process) for moral reasons, the message will be sent up the chain of command.
Google thrives on talent. If it becomes hard to acquire new talent, they have a serious problem.
Well, for one thing, rejecting it at the point of a recruiter reaching out to you is a weak signal. Get through the hiring process and then reject the job offer, and it will become a much stronger signal. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that way fewer people reject job offers than turn down recruiters soliciting for a phone screen.
With only a little bit of sarcasm, I would also say that accepting the job offer, working loyally for some amount of time, and then quitting in protest would be a much stronger signal still.
Quite frankly if we put in a balance everything good and bad Google has ever done, the positive things they've done outweigh the negative things by a ton. I think that of all the tech companies Google is the most awesome. Seriously I am glad I don't have to pay an Apple tax or a Microsoft tax to develop mobile apps. I am grateful that Android is OSS just for that Google will always have my sympathy.
You are paying a Google tax. It's simply being paid on your behalf by advertisers, who get reimbursed from you when you buy products from companies who advertise on Google. If you don't buy any products that have advertising costs, then you are being subsidized by other consumers. In addition, we all are paying for the overhead inefficiencies of this indirect system, with all the middlemen and middle-pieces involved. Lastly, we all pay for the social costs of advertising. We'd all be better off if Google and the other so-called free web services nixed ads and just charged us straight up.
There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. We all have to start seeing this truth.
That comes as a surprise to me. Poor interview process? They have the world's best engineers at their disposal, don't they? A poor interview process would point otherwise.
"They have the world's best engineers at their disposal"
That's what they like telling the world. They probably employ a lot of smart people, because they can afford better work conditions and salaries.
However, they don't have the monopoly on smart engineers. You can't rank people from best to worse: everyone is different. You can certainly recognize that some people are smart, but there is more smart people outside of google than inside.
The notion that they "have the best" is ridiculous, because there is no such thing as "the best engineers".
I'd prefer saying they have optimized picking their engineers so that they have more chance of picking smart ones.
Industrial / Org psychology is a rather new sub discipline. It's still hard to beat a metric like general mental ability in predicting job performance across a variety of jobs.
A better Google is one you pay for and whose income and subsequently motivations align with the customer, not third parties.
The idea of Google being a virtual personal assistant who knows everything about you but who you can trust to keep that information private is very cool and I think more aligned with where Google really wants to go. The problem is that they need to rely on advertising for now which means you'll never really trust what that PA says and what it is telling others about you.
I think it's naive to be that proud. Sure Google isn't the best company in the world as far as its policies about costumer data and privacy but if OP's mother or friends are really concerned about their privacy they can opt out and use another equivalent service to Google Search, Gmail, etc. But then again most mainstream services if not all have their own dark policies, don't they?
If you want Google to leave you alone for the rest of eternity, all you have to do is go work there and enjoy the perks for a few months (the food is excellent and they pay quite well) and then try to find work more suitable to your skill set than what the Hogwarts Hat of blind allocation has assigned you to for the next 2 years of your life(1).
Since you will most likely have been assigned to a team no one wants to work on (hence the openings), the mere act of questioning the almighty G will enrage the inept mid-level management chain and they will in turn blacklist you with HR. Once you are blacklisted, you will be cordially invited to not let the portal barrier impact your posterior on the way out. And beyond occasional accidental profile views on linkedin, no more Google recruitment spam.
It worked for me. It can work for you.
1. Exceptions to this rule are when you are hand-picked for a moonshot, an acquihire, or for your specific skills, at which point, Google is an excellent place to work. Ignore everything I'm saying in these cases, you've hit the jackpot.
It's not so hard to get in touch with Google recruiters. You just need to get a not so bad score at their Codejam contest.
As a side note, about a year ago, a girl from Google called me from London for a job opportunity (in French, my mother tongue, it nicely surprised me). Anyway, I put the girl call down as I was waiting a call from my then girlfriend to meet up for our first date. We all seem to have different reasons to refuse a job opportunity from Google !
He made Patrick read way too much. I wouldn't work for Google because I consider it to be an extremely dangerous and immoral company. It's not the only one but it's up there at the top with the likes of Facebook and to some extent Microsoft, Oracle, Apple.
One could go on forever on this but an email to them is probably not the right place to do this (although he did publish it).
There are typical kinds of people. He seems to be very idealistic. And it's awesome and free advertisement for him as a person/hacker, where he (and his github projects) now can profit. He is in high dept towards google now :)
The informal Google motto has always been "Don't be evil.". Volumes could be written about the fine distinction between "Don't be evil." and the phrases it's often confused for, "Don't do evil." or "Do no evil.".
I mean, I get that he's trying to make a point here, and he clearly feels as strongly about this as he's written. But it sounds like an idealistic 13-year-old wrote the whole diatribe:
"Boo, how dare you you big jerk spy. Spying on my mom and friends. You just want money. Like a big fat bully jerk."
Seriously? All corporations are in pursuit of profit. I get the underlying issue he has, but only through the context of growing up with Google and seeing them grow to what they are now. His post is littered with tons of hard to believe idealistic BS.
Berating them for not closing down their service like Lavabit? Are you kidding? "Yes, let's shut down our 15+ year old company, one of the most profitable and successful in the world, just to prove a point" -- surely that's the rational thing to do. I'm not a fan of Google's "spying", but you need to look at the situation from the lense of this being how they (and Facebook, and probably any other web-based company that had the clout) are seizing a competitive advantage that almost no one else can provide. People are feeding them petabytes of data, and it's in their best interest to turn that information into financial gain. Yes, I think a big side-effect of that they appear to be intrusive and "evil", but to pretend that the company is the issue, and that only Google would take advantage of such a situation is comical, and incredibly naive. The writer of the article surely can understand that any other entity with such great access to user information would use it.
Profit is wonderful, even more so if earned through other means than tracking users' Internet activity unknowingly. Most users of the Internet don't know that Google sees them in most corners and much of the data collection remains.
Most users don't know how to defend themselves pro-actively. For example we have the disaster of people being connected with their political views in France[1]. The same (not really, hashed emails) vulnerability was then used by the Swedish Researchgruppen[2], an extremist leftwing organization, to publish who said what under the assertion of anonymity and as a direct followup leftwing journalists are now chasing outed "trolls" with baseball bats and cameras[3] for a TV show(!).
Nedless to say these individuals are being directly targeted and harmed due to what they wrote on the Internet. It's not the fault of Disqus or Gravatar, it's the consequence of uninformed users.
Now imagine the hoards of victims that will emerge in the shadows of a Google database leak. For it will leak, of course it will, it's only a matter of time. If data can get out of North Korea it can get out of Google.
The dangers are not necessarily what Google is doing but what Google enables others to do.
Google closed down their service in China in protest againt what they said was anti democratic; remaining in the US is a hypocrisy, although perfectly aligned with other propaganda.
You are right, this is very much government driven. I agree - we should remove the government. Google can lead the revolution by closing down or switch jurisdiction in protest. Their voice is heard, ours is not.
These are posts by workers in the tech field. Instead of dismissing it, you may want to consider if you are (a) a hopelessly powerless entity caught in a socio-economic regime that you can not in any way alter (e.g. "do no evil"); or (b) a member of a sub-set of society that actually has both the power and knowledge to get Nikola-Tesla-wanna-be-Page and fellow travelers to toe the required tech-ethical line.
Are you even serious?
I read your post. Its a nice fairytale. Let me explain to you what my dad has tought me:
We live under structured societies and under a specific set of rules we call LAW. (I most certainly disagree with that... but thats life and how it is)
Yes under my fantasy world everyone would have the same possibilities and everyone would be happy yada yada.
But under the Actual world we are living at ... Google is just another part. The set of LAWS that have been up there and been built for the past 200-300 years made it clear that Goverments are above those Laws and can do anything they like.
If it wasn't Google tracking your data, it would be someone else doing it cause thats how the world that they setted up works!
Do you think Google is happy with handing out info to goverments? No, its done cause they are forced to, and yes they can ask something in exchange. Thats the game of Power (Read Game of Thrones, you might understand that.)
So I suggest you to get out of that imaginary world of yours and live life (I don't say change your ideas), but if you really want to blame someone - BLAME YOURSELF, for voting for the politicians in your country and for not being able to force them into taking your opinion and stop spying on you.
Also regarding adSense and all the tracking... Well thats how business works, if you don't like it then its ok. Noone forced you to use google search or gmail or whatever it is that google has included in their adSense algorythm
>> We live under structured societies and under a specific set of rules we call LAW.
We don't, you do. I packed my backpack and moved to the 3rd world at 22 and haven't ever been back because I need chaos. There is practically no law where I am, and that was one of many reasons for abandoning your structured societies.
>> Read Game of Thrones, you might understand that
Amazing insult. "Read a book, you idiot! A really stupid one!" Thanks for the smile. :-)
>> So I suggest you to get out of that imaginary world of yours and live life (I don't say change your ideas), but if you really want to blame someone - BLAME YOURSELF, for voting for the politicians in your country and for not being able to force them into taking your opinion and stop spying on you.
I live in the jungle, life is great here! You should try it. I never voted for any politician. I will never blame myself for something that I didn't create.
>> Noone forced you to use google search or gmail or whatever it is that google has included in their adSense algorythm
Agree, but on the other hand the general public is uninformed about these matters. I consider customer unawareness to be quite a problem in general. How can we fix it? I don't think asking those that you disagree with to change is a good approach.
I'm not sure he's naïve enough to think that his not working at Google will change Google. Nor that if Google didn't do it others wouldn't either. He's saying that given their attributes, he chooses not to work there. I doubt he'd work for Microsoft either, for much of the same reasons.
This is no different to my own choice of not working for Oracle (or Google for that matter). I did work for Microsoft though, and have no regrets about that one. In fact it was one of my best experiences. Either way I know it changes nothing, beyond possibly being able to influence people close to me - but I like myself more for it.
Blame yourself? No, I'll blame the people who have more than 1/360,000,000th of a unit of political power in the country, i.e. the actual rich people and politicians who actually do these things that we hate. I will take 1/360,000,000th of the share of the blame, and nothing more.
This is absolutely not true. I interviewed, didn't get the position, and some time later another recruiter contacted me and I got hired there.
Like other posters said, it's something like a 6-12 month period and we're recontacting because we expect motivated people might have improved and want to try again.
Also, I know members of hiring committees, and they tell me that if you have a failed interview one year, and a pretty good interview the next, that is a stronger hire signal than a pretty good interview without the previous failed one. That is, it shows growth.
I was interviewed by Google in 2008, rejected. They contacted me again in 2010. I told them I wasn't interested at that time for personal reasons. They contacted me again in 2012. I interviewed again, I was given an offer.
I have heard of people that have applied for jobs at google multiple times and had interviews a couple times over the years before they got a job there.
Because one thing that has happened is recruiters leaving you hanging on, so, they'll ask for some info, then no further communication (even if you ask)
Cloudflare is not having any issue, it's just used here as a proxy to help with caching and static files. The real server hosting the application is down.
Google first approached me in 2010. Here is the relevant part of my otherwise short reply:
Google follows what I believe to be unethical business practices – including, but not limited to, condoning censorship, invading their users’ privacy, [publishing] proprietary software, and making available and encouraging the use of network services with far too little user control of the programs.
A little more than a year later, Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote this, which I thought was the best explanation of why one wouldn’t want to work for Google:
