A lot of recruiters at Google are temps and will lie through they're teeth in order to get candidates interested.
Google still has a reputation of being an amazing workplace. This, however, is becoming less and less true. Just last week Victoria Lease resigned after months of sexual harassment without any consequence for the perpetrators.
There are much better places to work for then Google these days.
Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)
> This article read like a paid Google App engine advert.
Yeah, that was my impression too. The fact is: Google is really afraid of AWS. Google knows that it's several quarters behind on cloud infrastructure deployment, and that the lack of presence in places like Australia is a problem.
That is why they're working like crazy to rush the 'miniclusters' project out of the door to try to capture market share in those regions before Amazon and Microsoft take everything and laugh on their way to the bank.
On top of that, Google's cloud offering is also behind in the tools and support department. Most of their projects are so behind schedule it's not even funny and will most likely miss their Q4 objectives.
Amazon and Microsoft have, today, much better offerings then Google will by the end of Q2 2015.
Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)
>This is just completely false. Google has just as much backstabing and infighting at the exec level as an company out there.
Of course it does. And much more then people outside of the company think. As long as people like Eric Schmidt are on board there will be no shortage of hypocrisy and backstabbing.
Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)
Very much this. There's a huge difference between what people think working for Google is like, and what it is actually like.
If you get hired you will end up working on boring maintenance/refactoring tasks, or some non-fancy infrastructure crap.
Google is like a big frat house. The amount of unprofessional behavior got so out of control that Urs Hölzle himself had to write a 'No jerks' manifesto to teach Googlers how to behave in a work environment. Yes, it's that bad.
Engineers no longer make decisions, it's all done by PMs who only care about meeting their OKR's.
Is it woth working for Google? Absolutely. Is it better then most companies? I don't think so. You'll learn a lot, meet some amazing people and then you can move on and work for a company where arrogance and an overgrown sense of entitlement are not so widespread.
Disclaimer: I used to work for the arrogant Google jerks. I still do, but I used to, too.
Nothing at all; this was a decision made by the Hangouts team. The XMPP change has to do with the NIH syndrome a lot of Google engineers suffer from, combined with the incompetence of the Hangouts PM, Kate Cushing.
I agree that the settlement is mainly about damage control. I also think the company most affected by said negative PR is Google.
I'm still waiting for Eric to apologize to the recruiter who was fired for contacting an Apple employee and for Jonathan Rosemberg to have the decency of resigning.
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.
That depends on your contract. And unfortunately those contracts are legal. I gave up working on open source projects as I'd rather that code didn't exist then having to surrender it to my company.
My employer, Google, has the most expensive lawyers money can buy and they will not hesiste to ruin your life in order to defend the company's interests. Like the guy in the article I have a family to support and the pottential affect is just not worth the risk.
What was Google's motto again? Don't be what?
Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)