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Google X Worked An Older Employee Until He Was Hospitalized, Then Laid Him Off (thenextweb.com)
Julie188 writes: When Google shows up to buy your startup and trade out your relatively worthless startup stock for Google stock, and offers you a high paying job, too, it seems like a dream come true. But for a group of ex-military guys at a startup called Titan Aerospace, it was more like a nightmare, according to a detailed article from Business Insider. After Google buys their company, it shuts it down, gets them to move across the country to California and then sets them up working long hours outdoors in 100-degree heat. One older guy, in his mid-50s, was even hospitalized, and when he returned to work, he was essentially pushed out. Some people claimed it was bias against older workers and veterans.
After reading the article and also listening to some of Eli the computer guy Youtube videos, I feel that I am slowly seeing the beginnings of a Google death. Eli pointed out that if you look at the numbers for Youtube's business performance, technically they are in the red and loosing money. If you look at many of Google's other projects, they try stuff then turn around and keep scrapping it after a while, like a kid bored with their toy. Lastly, google may have a bunch of geniuses but they've been really lacking with the business mind. For example, people use youtube to make money as a business, however if something happens to your channel you have to jump through hoops to get it fixed.
Back in 2009 when everything was hitting the fan I was working for a very well-known mixed-signal semiconductor company. I was on a team of 5 engineers doing the analog front end (this was a wireless transceiver) our of a total team of about 75 including digital and software. Money was running out and the site director intimated that our design center would get shut down if we didn't deliver. Well, I worked 29 straight days, on average 12 hours a day (and some days more than that). We all did. Anyway, we got the chip out the door on a thursday and no one came in until monday. And then I got laid off (along with 10 percent of the company). I was so mad I could just spit, and everyone on my team (people I thought were my friends) all avoided me and looked away as I was escorted from the building after giving my heart and soul to get this part out the door. I guess they didn't want to catch whatever got me laid off.
I was offered a quite generous "salary continuation" offer where if I agreed not to sue or whatever, they would pay my salary for up to three months while I looked for another job. (looking for work when you are unemployed is just slightly harder than looking for work when you have AIDS).
Anyway, I'm pretty good at what I do and interview well, so I got another job in no time, although I negotiated a couple of months delay before I started so I could milk my salary continuation for a while.
I still don't know why I was laid off, as I was easily in the top 25% of the company as far as performance reviews goes, and a couple of dead weight guys on the digital side stayed. Who knows?
I didn't get hospitalized from overwork but I most certainly got sick and burned out. I started crying for no reason all the time the first couple of weeks after the layoff and was generally a mess. I stayed with my girlfriend (we were long distance, now married in the same place, yay!) and kind of dried out. But what an awful experience.
Obviously Google would never do something like this /sarcasm
Some people claimed it was bias against older workers and veterans.
I was recruited for a dev position around 2007. I was pretty active in several Open Source projects and with one of the major community Linux distros. I had a pretty solid body of work that was publicly visible. Once I submitted my resume, the interaction changed somewhat. I was in the military about 10 years at the time, so in addition to my Open Source activities, I had quite a few years of military experience.
When they thought I was just an Open Source dev (perhaps thinking that my day job was for some small mom & pop company), the recruiter was always eager to communicate with me. However, after they got my resume, they seemed less eager. I don't think it was age (I wasn't 30 yet), but perhaps being a military veteran had something to do with it. Perhaps they thought I would expect a higher salary based on my experience/education (I had earned my MS in Computer Engineering shortly prior). Who knows.
Either way, I've known some folks who have worked at Google and other SV companies. Looking at where I am now I feel like I dodged a bullet, so it's all good.
Since companies will not give feedback on why they didn't hire you, there is no way to know why things went the way they went.
I got declined for a job. I had a friend who worked there and told me why I was declined. I was completely off base about what I thought was going on. He said it was just one guy who was completely against me since I had given a really bad answer to a technical question he asked. The guy didn't show it at all and he it didn't even register that he had such a huge grudge against me.
*OR*, if companies DO give you feedback, it is total made up bullshit. I was recently turned down on a job I was applying for and already had the in-person interview for. Reason? I "didn't have enough experience" with a particular open-source application. Said application is something that I've used daily for 10+ years now, and so far into it that I find bugs, debug them, and submit patches and have them approved. If knowing the software well enough to literally fix it when it goes wrong wasn't enough, then what the hell is!?
A recurring problem in "technology" companies is that people want to hire their clone instead of working out that people with a range of experiences is a useful thing in a workplace.
That's why so many places are a sausage fest with a very narrow age range and almost identical career path for everyone. It's kind of weird visiting some of those places, watching nerf stuff fly and feeling like the only adult in the room.
"100F = 37,7778C."
Only in Tucson.
Health insurance is much, much more expensive for older people than for younger. Companies have a tremendous economic incentive to discriminate against older workers. Health care needs to be single payer.
I don't respond to AC's.
Sorry but I have little sympathy for people that wont stand up to their employer even when obviously being taken advantage of or even abused.
what about more workers rights like the EU? or unions?
It's why I only keep recruiters for two weeks into my LinkedIn contacts after they add me. If they don't communicate at all with me for two weeks, they're out.
One of them has added me 12 times and counting!
I've seen recruiters boasting on LinkedIn about them having tens of thousands of contacts... all used as leverage to seem more competent than they are.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)