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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.
We're self-insured, and they didn't want to pay the hospital bills.
As a company whose sole business model is based on privacy-invading advertising tracking analyticsm you'd think they'd be an employer that has any sort of morals and ethics?
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.
Google is a well known age discriminator.
Yeah that will get you a lawsuit and probably a loss.
"That HR person was so inadequate in handling the case. Her job is to protect management the whole time." Again for anyone thinking otherwise HR is not there for you.
What happened here is not new and will happen again and again. These 'new' companies are making the exact same mistakes as the previous ones. That paperwork is because of messups like this.
Exactly! HR is typically there to protect the company. While it is often in their best interest to protect employees (i.e avoiding lawsuits) that really is secondary and when there is a conflict it's the employee that will lose.
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.
Rule of acquisition #10: Greed is eternal.
Rule of acquisition #23: Nothing is more important than your health, except for your money.
Rule of acquisition #48: The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
Rule of acquisition #95: Expand or die.
Rule of acquisition #111: Treat people in your debt like family; exploit them.
Rule of acquisition #211: Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them.
Oh wait, they took over the Dr. title from Microsoft years ago. Dr. Evil, Google didn't study 7 years to be called Mr.
Microsoft? They are now Sean.
So this guy collapsed from working in the heat in the California Central Valley. In February.
Was he inside the cab of a truck with the heat on too high? It's lucky to get into the mid-50s in the Central Valley in the winter.
Film at Eleven
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Rule of late-stage capitalism #97: Money stolen is twice as sweet as money earned.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Setting the minimum salary for exempt employees to $500,000 a year would go a long way towards fixing this. Everyone below $500,000 would be paid by the hour with paid overtime.
It's easier for companies to hire a new person than it is to let an existing one retrain for a new position. Cheaper and it gives the company an excuse to systematically let go a group of employees costing Z per year and replace them with a group making 10% less than Z.
Spread out over a multinational where it's 'normal attrition' is called portfolio management.
Obviously, they were talking about Farhenheit, not Celcius. 100F = 37,7778C. Which is still pretty hot. For me the northeastern Canadian.
Google: "Do No Evil."
Current Evaluation: 50.0% Good, 49.9% Evil, 0.1% Indeterminate.
CEO: So we're still good to go, right?
By the way: Not "There not, there just a company" but "They're not, they're just a company."
Unless you really mean "There not", in which case it depends on exactly where you are pointing. Currently, the moon is a good place to point, as neither Google nor Amazon has publicly flown a drone there. I wouldn't bet against their (there? they're?) R&D teams to get there (their? they're?) though.
(It's kind of a "Let's eat, grandma" vs "Let's eat grandma" thing.)
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Why am I not surprised, this is performance based management at its finest. Set unrealistic KPI's to ensure only the fittest and strongest (or the biggest BSers survive).
engineers. Nobody wants to bother with older IT guys. Their experience doesn't matter that much because you just don't need that many experienced techs to watch over the young guys and they can't work 60+ hour work weeks and be productive. Human beings just don't work that way.
What does irritate me though is seeing them spouting anti-Union / laissez faire clap-trap right up until they're personally discriminated against. Then they want the government to step in an regulate. But the young guys wanting to unionize or (God forbid) have a living minimum wage? Let 'em just work harder. Good for goose, good for gander. Or how about we protect _all_ workers?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
*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!?
Guess we've seen that it was nothing but horseshit and they're yet another evil empire.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If they left off the unit they definitely meant kelvin; 100 kelvin is downright chilly! No idea how he got heatstroke :/
-SaNo
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.
Cronyism is the inevitable result when Capitalism enters its malignancy stage, which it did about 1980. Now it's stage 4 Capitalism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Try mid 60's like me. I've been offered indefinite contract jobs, but full time employment? I'm not working for less than people that know less than me. A security 'forensic specialist' that didn't have a clue as to what email headers were? REALLY?
These middle class republican beat the republican drum until they are personally inconvenienced. After that... democrat, broke republican on socialis^Wmedicare, or dead.
"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.
They were also talking about February...in the central valley, CA.
It doesn't get that hot in February around here. That's how you know something about the story stinks.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
HR is typically there to protect the company. While it is often in their best interest to protect employees (i.e avoiding lawsuits) that really is secondary and when there is a conflict it's the employee that will lose.
HR people are often stuck in the middle. Senior management says they're protecting incompetent workers, workers say they're doing the dirty work of senior management. It's even worse in unionized environments.
lucm, indeed.
Human nature is cronyism. All systems are rife with it.
Google: "Do No Evil."
That's the world we live in. It's not even possible for one of the most revolutionary companies in recent history to get away with a simple statement adopted while it was still a startup without having people using that 15 years later to bitch about an issue with one of the 72,000 employees.
lucm, indeed.
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?
Most Recruiters suck some times they have very little info on the job it self and want to come into the office. It's like some are on a quota or the firm wants to look good by saying we have a big number on people on file.
Other like to edit your resume to jam you into a job that are not a fit for and other times it's bs like we need to edit to a long form federal resume.
A union only buys you a 2nd boss, not necessarily real representation. Good engineers have more personal leverage than they could gain from outsourcing it to a union representative who represents the union, not you personally.
There's a fair point in creating real worker protections at the federal level, though.
You just printed the recruiter job description, though. He's going to get you in the door, and maybe show you to your table. However, he's not the waiter nor the chef, and will not have much influence on the interview process, so why should he care.
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.
That's actually not relevant.
When computing the interview score for the hiring committee, the top and bottom scores are thrown out.
He could have given you a 0, and if everyone else gave you scores that average out to 3+: you're in, as far as the hiring committee goes, unless there's a huge red flag, such as lying about criminal record, education, etc..
Xoogler here.
Back in 2007, the recruitment process was an absolute mess. You were probably first in contact with what was known as a "sourcerer" - someone who sourced leads. These passed the people they got interested over to recruiters, who were typically rather busy.
During my interview process, the recruiter went radio silent for up to 3 weeks at a time between interviews, even when prodded via email. Until suddenly I got a new interview scheduled the next day.
Eventually started working there. It was many great years - and the company is really rather fantastic to work for. Eventually homesickness got to me, and I decided to quit and move back home. I do have to say that it was a fantastic time. Way too much work, thousands of hours of uncompensated overtime - but at the same time - the coolest technology I've ever worked with. The experience I gained was incredible. I would've applied to join them again in a heartbeat if they set up an engineering department in my home city. :-)
the problems is career management.
you see, they think that they can get more bang for the buck from overworking the workers - even creative types, while they really don't get that.
they just can't understand it because they don't understand what they are managing anyways - which leaves them with just ONE tool to "manage better": overwork the workers.
that's really all there is to it, happens in most places now where you have existing workers developing something and doing a generally good job already and then you slap them with a manager who doesn't understand what the fuck he is doing at all(but has done courses on managering).
maybe only 1 manager out of 50 of that type is good and the rest are garbage at their job - however, they wouldn't even know it because.. once again, they don't understand what the company is doing! they just know that they have x amount of underlings and they are putting in y amount of hours and their manager is then telling them to finish up the product so instead of trying to find whats wrong and why the product isn't ready already they just tell people to work more hours, come in more early and leave later - without doing as much as looking at what is stalling the development - or indeed if it is even defined what the fuck it is that should be developed.
incidentally this is polar opposite to how management in successful cutting edge projects has been since the dawn of engineering.
a good to the day example of this would be ea/bioware fucking up mass effect andromeda - working people to the ground on the wrong things.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That reminds me of a company that I used to work for. The company had been acquired, and everyone was being laid off. We were all given the contents of our personnel files, and in mine was the physical copy of the resume that I had submitted when I originally applied. There was something written at the top in pen, but crossed out fairly thoroughly. Not thoroughly enough, though, because I could still make it out: "Karla doesn't like". Karla was someone that I knew from college who was also one of the people at the hiring interview. Fortunately, it didn't seem to matter that she didn't like me.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
If you have a problem with your boss, HR's job is to get rid of you before your boss does something actionable.
Human indeed does not work that ways. See the difference in *productivity* between a software developer in Europe and one in one in the US, when you look at the quality of code developed, is almost nil over a week. That is, because in my experience, overworked 60+ hours youth/old/whomever has as much productivity when only worked 40h weeks on end. I'll compare that to bulb wattage. You can have a 40 watt lamp and leave it on for hours or have a 60 watt one and leave it on for 40.
And don't get me started about experience. I have seen a goddamn awful code by young folk which thought they were code diva, but did not understand what the point of maintainability is. I don't care if your code use a metamorphic self compiling reflective algorithm. What I do care is that it will cost 3 time more the development code to maintain compared to normal bloody non compact code. Older developer understand that.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No they are not. They, like everyone else, are paid through people above them.
In certain countries (e.g. France, Germany) incompetent workers are very well protected by laws while Upper Management's dirty work isn't. That's where HR comes in, to minimize the former (protection) and maximize the latter (dirty work).
HR almost always manages up. Sometimes they appear to be protecting the employee, but in fact they're protecting their own asses. For example, when many employees from my group provided bad feedback for a certain Director during a yearly review phase, HR contacted most of them (save for two) and "privately" told them that it would be best to adjust hat feedback because the "anonymous" data isn't that "anonymous" after all. One of the two employees who were not notified caught wind of this and promptly changed his feedback, the other wasn't so lucky and was laid off shortly afterwards, ostensibly for reasons different than "you provided bad feedback about that Director".
HR is like Nobel's dynamite: created for noble reasons, used for all the nefarious ones.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Let me guess... You fucked her in college and she didn't like it? :)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Just to hear the other side of the interview table, there are TONS of LIARS out there. They have a nice resume with previous senior level positions, but can't answer simple tech questions; they can't write basic code on a whiteboard even with hand holding.
Also, getting defensive during an interview = automatic zero.
Titan was an aerospace company. Google is a Internet company. One deals with the environment, the other a cooled 24hr IT facility. Titan, though was a great win to be bought by Google, didn't realize Google's success comes at solving the scale problem, scale by running 24hr to service more people and reducing cost as a side effect (really). Like typical aerospace companies, mind that any safety critical technology, when you scale, i.e. using drones/robots/autonomous vehicles.... costs actually go up for years beforehand.
Google's theory is scale up and the costs go down. Now apply it to drones. But safety and complexity typically kills you in costs. Telsa knows this, So does Google's Waymo. Airlines know this very well, just look at your ticket price. For Google, it's theory, so one better fail fast if it doesn't work for your business.
As an architect/developer of drone swarms, the only place you can legally test in CA is the desert. Similar to Titan, we were at EAFB, the schedule is grueling: 5am team meeting, 7am - noon flight testing, 100 deg weather, desert sand, winds, onsite debugging, testing protocol (can't "reboot the webserver" attitudes--that results in hard crashes). Then there packing/unpacking, the 2-3hr trip to/from. I found: drones are easy to demo, but drones are hard to make useful. No business wants to fly around 150K drones... They want drones at reasonable car prices (25K)--75% discount.
I'm in my 40's and was able to handle 3-4 trips to the desert, we had a 60 yr old on my team and you can see the wear-n-tear to the point it's unhealthy, even unethical. And most of my Interns hated the schedule in the end, it was too hot and tiring.... flight testing IS grueling. I understand completely what the Titan team is going through: Pressure to push tech at the bleeding edge, meet a 9 mo schedule and keep system costs 50% less than what Boeing would price. And meeting all the same performance/repeatability that the FAA and industry accept.
Basically, this is not about the older guy not handling the task at hand, it's about Google not understanding what it takes for flight testing--they are performing the classic case of poor crew resource management. Age was an easy metric to justify laying off the guy.
If google thinks this is the right process for DLCs, robots, drones, i.e. safety critical tech.... they may want to lawyer up.
It's easier for companies to hire a new person than it is to let an existing one retrain for a new position.
What the government should do is make a rule that any physical labor or work under adverse conditions such as temperatures outside the normal range of human comfort for more than 2 hours per day voids the exempt employee status, And even for exempt employees the "fixed" or "salary" amount is for no more than 40 hours average work per week over the course of a year. Companies Must meter the actual number of hours for reporting purposes when the employee is working or required to be at a work location using common automated methods. If the median number of hours per week worked for any sequential or non-sequential 2-months out of 12 months exceeds 40, or the average number of hours worked per week exceeds 40 for any 2-months out of 12 months, Then the employee can no longer be considered exempt, and the employee must be compensated at their standard salary Plus additional renumeration for all time above 40 hours at the average per-hourly rate of salary times 1.5 for office work, and times 2 for physical labor or labor under adverse environmental or hazardous conditions; If the worker is put out of commission or suffers a health problem requiring treatment due to working conditions, then Employer should be required to pay not only out of pocket expenses for treatment of the problem, But also for lost wages due to time worker is out of commission, And laying them off or dismissing them based on productivity or their physical limitations should be barred/prohibited, if they were a salaried or exempt employee.
I think it is well established by that there is a deeply ingrained bias against older employees, but I wonder why? I think in some cultures, older people are seen as much more valuable than is common in the West, as a source of experience and insight, and this was once the case in our culture as well. Now a days you're simply expected to bugger off and stop being a nuisance; something that came natural back when people would be old and worn out at around 50, but today many continue in good health well into their 60es and 70es, and could easily make a valuable contribution to society.
As for what we can do about it - perhaps it is time for us old ones to get together and form our own businesses where you can't a job unless you have 30 - 40 years of experience. It ought to be simple to outwit and outmaneuver those quite frankly dimwitted youngsters that currently faff around in start-ups. How about that?
So what are google supposed to do? They bought it from these guys but those same people decided to go into the UAV business. Its their choice to continue working for google.
I am over 50 myself. I suppose most /. members are these days.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Sorry to hear about the deflation of your gross income
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
what about more workers rights like the EU? or unions?
The EU allows zero-hour contracts. These mean jobs have gone, and companies can piss you around as much as they like to avoid their legal obligations. Furthermore, the big players will now only do it through agencies to give them an extra buffer, and the agencies squeeze rates down to to the massive influx of low education, no skills former Eastern Bloc countries given a free run across the continent; who stack up 9 to a 3 bed house and live minimally - which obviously cannot be completed against when you aren't a single. And should you look farther away from the prime markets like Germany and the EU, you'll see horrendous unemployment levels, particularly for the 25 age bracket.
Good lord no, just a personality conflict which I was entirely oblivious to.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Translation: He couldn't find the clitoris AND he didn't call her after. :P
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No kidding. If HR was there to protect the employees it would be called Human Treasures.
Embrace the company by buying it
Extend the hours of the employees of that company without compensation
Extinguish them as they leave or die off.
Google are merely following the Microsoft benchmark we all know and love so well.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I will always give feedback when asked - but most of the time that is (honestly) because someone was better suited to the role. Just because you don't get a job doesn't always mean you created a bad impression. The worst thing about hiring, for me at least, is interviewing a bunch of great people, all of whom I could work with, and only choosing one or two to employ.
You don't understand women very well, do you? If you don't find her clit, it'll annoy her a bit (they're quite used to that); it's if you're able to get her off repeatedly and then you blow her off... omg, are you scorned: the saying is not "Hell hath no fury like a woman frustrated."
Typo; that should have read "omg, are you fucked."
I realize you're trying to be funny, but they did say 'degrees', which rules out Kelvin.
And before you wonder, yes, I'm a blast at parties.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Google: "Do No Evil."
No, it's "Don't Be Evil."
(It's kind of a "Let's eat, grandma" vs "Let's eat grandma" thing.)
Yes, it is. How ironic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Brazilians refer to a woman who is rude to strangers or others terrible to deal with as a "badly eaten bitch". It's mostly an insult used by other women. The implication being that the sexual frustration of having your pussy eaten by somebody who is so bad at it that you don't get off - would make somebody far grumpier than just not getting any.
Now considering that the average Brazilian has sex three times as often as the average American -I daresay they know more about the topic than you do.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Or both, but Unions, not Guilds like they seem to have in the US. Those are there to protect the jobs, Unions are there to protect the people and no, that is not the same. They are overlapping.
Just talking about Belgium, so details might differ from country to country.
Unions saw to it that we have much stronger working rights. They are Unions and not a guild. With a guild (e.g. writers guild) you protect just one function. e.g. writers guild or bakers in the middle ages or beer brewers.
With a union, they look at the people, regardless if they are a writer or a baker or whatever.
In Belgium I can join any of several Unions. There are some that are specific for certain branches, like e.g. for train personal or for military, but even then you will have an option to join them, or another.
I can go to almost any union and join. And nobody cares. Really, they don't. I have been on both sides and nobody asks if you are Union or not You will have the same identical rights.
When a company is larger that 49 people, a union representative must be available, so social elections are held. So this means that every company with more that 50 employees is, in fact, a Union company. This means some monthly meetings and such. This does NOT mean you must join a union.
If you work in a company with less than 50 people, you can still join a Union, if you like. Or you don't. All up to you. Nobody will realy ask for it as there is no difference and you can join or leave at any m
The Unions saw to it that working in heat is illegal. At a certain duration, they need to see that drinks (water is fine) is available. If it takles longer, working hours need to be shorter (without loss of pay) and at even higher temperatures, they will need to close altogether.
So in Belgium, if this where the case, any person could contact their union who could start an investigation. "But what if I am not a union member at that moment?" Thenb you become one and they will be available from that moment on.
"How do you know that?" Because I have seen it in action.
37 hour week? No unpaid overtime? 35 days holidays? 8EUR extra per working day for food? Paid public transport? Extra insurance? Increase in pay with index so no negotiations need to be done? All done thanks to Unions.
I know many will now start to defend the companies and tell how bad of an idea all this is. There is no need for that. The companies have their own lawyers that are capable of defending themselves.
And because they are a Union and not a guild, they will understand that the companies need to make money to keep as many people at work as possible and not just at one company or in one profession.
Are they perfect? No. Are they better than nothing? Ask the people who started and fought for them.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
To be fair, their statement does categorically state that they should "Do No Evil" and not that they should "Do Only A Little Bit of Evil".
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
You know, id like to see these interviewers try a job interview for a change, its not that easy, you can make mistakes, since you are in a new environment and nervous.
Get a grip interviewers, dont be so harsh, dont be such assholes with stupid questions.
You know we dont have the internet in our heads, and can answer any query faster than google.
Some people might be technically correct, but are assholes, wouldnt have your back, and would throw you under the bus anytime, thats not a person I would hire.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Nobody wants to hire in someone who may advance to be their future boss. People can be spiteful and the corporate world draws those people like flies. The communication you received from the company was calculated to insult you. They specifically targeted a strength of yours. Nothing thrills such people as much as using position to abuse someone they sense is more capable than themselves. What you describe is common.
25+ here.
I still fail to see what you have said.
1> claim your a big shot, declare some facts to proove it.
2> declare the person an idiot, having a small sample size in survey, (when watching Silicon Valley, Office Space, IT Crowd is enough one needs.)
.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
HR at my company told me when I started asking about going back to school to get a masters "You know, you really shouldn't be bothered, you won't get a pay raise". My company has a fairly flat structure and as such I was friends with the director I worked under at the time. He told me the same HR lady was arguing we had too much paid time off and it should be reduced. This director was really good and did a lot to make life good for employees. He left a few years later, I'm still friends with him. He doesn't admit it, but I think he was forced out.
How do you draw a connection between "capitalism", an economic system, and the idea of certain people being above the law? Any problem with law is an issue with government, not the economic system. Even when industry is state-owned there is corruption and a double standard of justice. In the USA, I don't even think it's "de facto" anymore. Clearly, the ultra wealthy and government employees are above the law.
I'm just frustrated that "capitalism" seems to have become the catch-all term for every injustice in our society. Wealth and income inequality will always exist(unless we are all equally in a state of squalor) but the current degree of wealth inequality is not a result of "capitalism". It is the result of government granting special economic and legal privileges to a favored elite.
If you want to look for the root of economic injustice in our society, forget about taxes, government spending, minimum wage laws, etc. Start researching the monetary and banking system. The people in our society who get wealthy by actually producing things and providing valuable services aren't necessarily the bad guys. The parasites who accumulate wealth by shuffling money around and playing financial games while providing very few real services are the evil ones. A trillion dollar banker bailout isn't "capitalism" and I would argue that capitalism doesn't even exist when we have a small group of banker scumbags who are allowed to arbitrarily set interest rates.
Recall that Jesus threw the bankers(money changers?) out of the temple, and note the many scriptures condemning the practice of usury.
Google is a company like any other.
I don't think so, although they're probably a lot like other Silicon Valley/San Francisco companies. Reading TFA, it's pretty obvious they have no idea how to run a successful flight test program. Here's a hint: it's not at all like crash-developing a social media app or ways to track your "customers".
You didn't write it, you plagiarized it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Note the previous poster said "northeastern Canadian." I'm guessing he means Quebec which uses the French numeric style where the decimal mark is a comma instead of a period. The thousand's separator is also a space instead of the comma.
So the asking price of a Tesla Model 6 P100D of $186,200.00 would be 186 200,00$ in Quebec (ignoring silly Quebec tariffs and taxes...).
This is merica where we now believe freezing to death is not a reason to abandon your post. Thanks Neil Gorsuch. /sarcasm
As Gorsuch said in his dissent: "And there’s simply no law anyone has pointed us to giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their employers forbid. Maybe the Department would like such a law, maybe someday Congress will adorn our federal statute books with such a law. But it isn’t there yet. And it isn’t our job to write one — or to allow the Department to write one in Congress’s place." He is being lambasted for not being compassionate, but compassion is not the job of the court. The job of the court is to interpret what the law says, not what it SHOULD say. Full ruling here: https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/...
>How do you draw a connection between "capitalism", an economic system, and the idea of certain people being above the law?
It's an inevitable outcome of capitalism that money buys power, so power concentrates in the rich - including the power to buy immunity from the law. If I poison a town's drinking water I would get the death penalty for terrorism. If a corporation does it they may get sued, and probably won't because they can afford an army of lawyers. Even if they get a fine, it will be for far less than the money they made killing people.
>Any problem with law is an issue with government, not the economic system.
You're an idiot. These two things are always related, neither can exist without the other. No I don't care what you read in whatever ANCAP manifesto, it's fundamentally impossible for one to exist without the other and without constant influence on the other. They are two sides of the same coin. Of course capitalists CLAIM otherwise, it's the best way to deflect any and all criticism of their preferred way of organizing resource distribution (that's all an economy is) onto government and away from the system or the rich. It is, however, flagrant and obvious bullshit.
>Even when industry is state-owned there is corruption and a double standard of justice.
Yes. What's your point ? Nowhere in my post will you find any suggestion that I favor state-ownership of anything. Just because I'm opposed to capitalism doesn't mean I'm in favor of communism. There are more than two ways to distribute resources, in fact there are thousands - the two you know are the worst two - and no, neither is better -they are equally horrible with essentially identical outcomes.
>Clearly, the ultra wealthy and government employees are above the law.
Both of which are caused by capitalism and the existence of the ultra-wealthy in the first place. To GET above the law, the ultra-wealthy has to buy loopholes in the law, which is automatically available to the government employees they bought it from afterward. More importantly, there really isn't much difference between the two. There's practically a revolving door between the capitol and the most crooked banks of wall street. The Trump cabinet has more ex Goldman Sachs employees than ANY OTHER SOURCE - even the government and the military. He's not unique in this, Obama and Bush II both had several of their species in their cabinets, but he did take it to a new level. There are more of them than ever before.
>I'm just frustrated that "capitalism" seems to have become the catch-all term for every injustice in our society
I didn't say this in a discussion on EVERY injustice in society - I said it in a discussion on labor abuse, and my post was focused on the problem of approaching labor policy from a capitalist perspective which makes humans just another resource in the economy - as opposed to their proper place in an economy: the RECIPIENTS of resources, and about an event in a private company that is all too sadly common and representative. Of course, it's not as bad as it once were, labour laws and standards over the years have improved things a bit, but the fact that - even 200 years later, this shit still happens, shows just how perniciously it is a result of the very concept of "human resources" which is utterly ingrained into capitalism (where EVERYTHING is a market resource). Unions did a lot to make it better. The law did more and made it even better. Sure we no longer kill 90% of our children before age 10 by literally working them to death in factories as was the case in 19th century England... and yet this shit still happens. Because capitalism reduces us to "work. buy. consume. die" - mere resources in the market until we're dead.
> The people in our society who get wealthy by actually producing things and providing valuable services aren't necessarily the bad guys
Of course not. Their called "workers". But the people who own their companies - they are almost always and entirely bad guys. It's not that big
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No, it's "Don't Be Evil."
Or.... "Don't, Be Evil!"
I always thought of it as an imperative statement, not a declarative and self referential one.
"(You,) don't be evil."
When read that way, as it is actually written written, it leaves the writer free from all obligation, all the while having the plausible interpretation of being self referential. Perfectly weasel like and morally bankrupt.
Just what you would expect from a bunch of evil bastards.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
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.
If you go through a contracting agency, you get feedback, because the agency needs the feedback so they can select a better candidate. You may not like this arrangement for other reasons, but it is possible to get feedback.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The thing is, everybody has their own view of what is evil and what is not.
For some folks, evil has a very high bar, like blowing up a planet. And everything else below that is fair game.
I know people who think it would be fine to rob banks and the only thing stopping them is the idea of getting caught. Not that the concept is inherently wrong, or evil. To them, the act of stealing is not a problem. It's not evil.
So Google could easily come to the conclusion that doing whatever they wanted to do with this guy was just business and not evil. It's bullshit but there is nobody to tell Google this isn't right. The government isn't going to care about a man who is not a minority or other protected class. And Google can self-justify by saying it wasn't evil because heck, no government agency is even looking at it. Surely they'd say something if they were concerned.
Sig for hire.
They COULD work 60-hour weeks and live off Mountain Dew and sleep under their desks like good little drone employees and accept low salaries in lieu of how it looks on a resume, but the older, experienced workers know that lifestyle is bullshit and won't do it.
So the companies don't want them.
I'm an older tech worker trying to find a job, and even when I bury my experience and try for entry level stuff, they imply they pretty much want people who will marry the job, eat, sleep, and live for work, and not ask for much compensation. And I can't do that. I don't WANT to do that. I already know it does nothing but burn out people, whereupon the company just replaces them with new ones. It does nothing for the individual.
The last job I actually nailed and got right away was working in a McDonalds. They just wanted workers, not drones.
Sig for hire.
I lived in Albuquerque working on safety critical avionics for Honeywell when Google recruiters came calling on behalf of Titan Aerospace. At first I engaged them but after researching Google, I decided to pass. Google culture was not for me.
Months later they shutdown their operation in NM after spending many millions on buildings and infrastructure and moved it to CA. Then they shutdown the entire operation. What a waste.
Now this. Yep I dodged a bullet.
> One older guy, in his mid-50s
*sigh*
I'm in my mid-50s and I rock-climb, lift weights, run and am the same weight I was in high school. I could probably beat you in a 5K.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Well, he wasn't water.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
One of the parts I really dislike about hiring is that we have to go through Recruiters/HR when dealing with candidates.
I don't even know if they communicate with candidates at all. I always ask that they let candidates know when I decide not to hire them and give them feedback. But I found out once, when I ran into a candidate later, that they didn't. They just got no response at all after the interview. Which sucks for everyone involved, and makes the company look bad. But HR/Recruiters don't care. They really don't.
So when you talk about "the company" you mean the face of the company to the candidates.
But to your point, and interviewer may give feedback to the hiring manager to gives it to the recruiter who gives it to the candidate. By the time it gets to the candidate, if at all, it most likely isn't the original information. I have been that candidate too... and it does really suck to think you nailed it and you never hear anything back. On the flip side, I have gotten resumes that were ok, but 2 minutes into the phone screen knew the person was a NO. My feedback to the recruiter was specific and definite...and while we were talking, he got an email from the candidate saying the phone screen went well. Sometimes, your perspectives are just completely different.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There are people doing real, actual hard labor who wake up and find they can't do it anymore, where are the stories about them? Oh, but this is 'Google' so we're supposed to care?
You work to provide value to your employer, when you cease to do so your job is in jeopardy. And we always hear about the "bad" side of this but what about whoever got that job? They are probably pretty happy about it.
Converse of this story:
My name is Bryce McMillenial, I'm 32 and I've been looking for work forever. I'm young, healthy, and don't have a family so I really want somewhere I can work hard and have a chance at advancement. I recently found an opening at Google X working with drones, it's amazing!
At least part of the Court's job is to determine whether a badly written law, interpreted literally, infringes on the individuals rights to the point that that infringement is unconstitutional. But Gorsuch types are loath to step up to the plate in such cases - unless said individual is a corporation...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
If Google buys your company - take a cash buy-out. Once Google owns your technology - they are going to do with it what they want to anyway. No use you hanging around for that.
Do not stay on-board because you have better things to do - like start your next business, retire to a sailboat in the Caribbean, or pursue other interests (do you like to write? Write a book and put it up on Kindle.) People put so many limits on themselves; they really need to expand their comfort zone.
As for Age Discrimination: that is real and should be dealt with if found in a company. Hypocritical for a company that supposedly supports diversity. Everyone should be interested in combating this because we are all going to get old one day, assuming we don't die first.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
My guess was that you were already identified for layoff by the time your site director made their comments. This is pretty common; management keeps bad news about layoffs under wraps until they have a plan. They don't want people bailing out on them "prematurely" and they want to keep control. The fact that the site director suggested there was a way to save your jobs was likely one of the following:
1). A coward's choice (introduce the subject as a possibility when it is an inevitability);
2). A way to squeeze you for one final product release;
3). A 'faint hope' comment;
4). Maybe the site director actually believed there was a way out. Most people prefer good news and optimism, sometimes to the point of discounting reality. It could even be that the site director wasn't actually in control and wasn't fully informed. Who knows?
Best thing you can do is learn from the experience. Would you sacrifice like that again, given the same set of circumstances? I'm betting on No.
You make my point. In some states it is both legal and illegal for the CHP/HCP to carry a gun. So which is it?
HR women are the most evil people you will ever meet.
"Some people claimed it was bias against older workers and veterans." Of course not! Google stretch its tentacles way further than anyone really knows. They probably bought this company to make way for some other "partner" or because they, the real owners of Google, saw it as a threat. There are many "roads to rome" but most are in reality owned by the same old banker #$ers. Monopoly rules, and no one is the wiser... well almost no one.
HR women are the most evil people you will ever meet.
I think one of the reasons HR people suck is because anyone can do their job so they assume everyone's job is easy.
lucm, indeed.
Every year, dozens of people are fired for defending their life with a legally carried handgun, because the carrying was in contravention to company policy.
9 times out of 10, they are "defending" property.
If Gorsach's ruling was legit, why was it overturned unanimously on appeal.
hint... You might be a moron.
Cheap storage VM.
If you want to be successful at getting your foot in the door of a traditional company - try talking about your desire to find a job with your friends and family. With luck and the right contacts you can get in by someone inside vouching for you.
The very first adult job I acquired out of high school was working in a lamp store (lamp repairs and lamp creation from parts, heavy lifting and unboxing and boxing for delivery, lamp installation for display in store, sales and register, and cleanup). I got the job through my girlfriend at the time, who's parent's CPA worked for the owner who just so happened to be opening a new store. I got the job the day of the interview because they all vouched for me.
My current job (career - 20+ years on the job) was through a college friend who already worked at the company. I had the right skill set they needed, at the right time - they were scaling their operations, and he vouched for me - which gave me added points over my competition. This all through a short conversation I had with him about my need to find a job (the student loans and credit cards were maxed out and I was worried about how to make the next month's payments).
In some ways, I think if you are open to it and can communicate with others, the universe will provide. And don't get me wrong, there were times when I had to take the burger flipping type jobs in a pinch - but I always saw those things as stepping stones to something better. It's all about your attitude regardless of the slings and arrows of misfortune thrown your way.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Republicans? Even the Unions went for trump, that's how he got the rust belt. The libs are much scarier with their desire to off-shore or import labor instead of supporting fair salaries. Both sides are badly broken, lets hope Trump at least helps the H-1B issue before he gives up on campaign promises.
Well... Let's See about that... Oh wait, I'm having trouble finding support for him. Oh wait, I found this Wikipedia page So, the police and firefighters unions. That's it.