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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?
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.
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!"
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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..
Even when I worked for a company that did discard the top and bottom scores, if one person had a bad feeling about the candidate, he could persuade the rest of the team that the person is the wrong fit for the job. Unless someone steps up and defends the candidate, then he/she will likely not be hired.
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
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.'"
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.
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".
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 *
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.
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...