Hate to comment twice in one article, but I have to say: Show the names of the people writing you! Maybe not their email (though that would be OK), but at least their slashdot ID, if they have one. Shit, make it a requirement that they have a slashdot account before they write in.
It'd be much more fun if there was some accountability...
I was in the Google money pool for a few years. Getting in is easy, as long as you can pass 4 hellish interviews and wait 6 months for HR to respond.
Having said that, what you really need is a time machine. Go back to August 2004 and get hired. Even if you get a meager grant back then, you'll make out pretty well. Getting hired now, well, they aren't as forthcoming with the stock as they once were, and the base pay is pretty terrible. Free food, though.
You've been using apache and mysql for years, yet you've been looking for a "real" reason to use linux for years? You had a couple good ones right there, man...
As for the phrase "virtual webserver on your desktop": That means nothing. You want a real (ie, "non-virtual") webserver, because you want to serve files. You don't want a webserver anywhere near your desktop, as apache's not a GUI application. So I suppose the answer is "No, you have to have a real webserver, but you can probably access it via a desktop icon or whatever".
That will show you how to set up a thing called "virtual hosts", which is pretty close to what I think you want. In a nutshell, you can have multiple document roots with various versions of a web site all served by the same apache daemon. You should be able to set it up so that, using.htacess files, you can test all sorts of server directives, play with mod_rewrite, etc without affecting the other virtual hosts. (Note the "virtual" there: That's apache basically simulating you having multiple servers, when in fact you only have one. That may be close to what you meant.)
You can also set up multiple instances of apache on your machine. Just have them all listen on a different port. The effect is the same, mostly, as having one server with many vhosts.
Generally, I'd say 20% time is a great idea, but I think management of it is harder than it appears. If your team sets very aggressive goals for itself and that means you feel you can't take 20% time, that's something to take up with your management and your team. Remember, EMG have clarified this on several occasions - your manager cannot deny you 20% time in perpetuity.
I was in SRE as well, oddly. My manager dragged her feet and generally refused to hear anything about 20% time. We had 3 reqs open, and her feeling was that if we're needing staffing so badly then we can't have one guy off doing something else one day a week. I took it up the chain, and was routinely told it was my manager's decision, as she knew the status of the group. I actually tried to leave the group toward the end there, but there's really no clean way to go from SWE to anything else. My manager refused to entertain the notion of me leaving her even more short handed. When I left the company, I hadn't written a single line of code in over 9 months, and needed to scratch that creative itch. So, I had to leave the company as there was nowhere to go. I've heard horror stories about the SWEs in like Ads or Search -- they're stuck and can never leave the group. That's really sad.
Prior to my last attempt at getting on with a 20% project, I came up with a plan that involved people covering, me covering them, milestones, schedules, buy-in from the other group, etc. You're right, 20% time doesn't magically happen. But if you have a bad manager, it won't ever happen -- regardless of what EMG claims. I only had two managers at Google. Neither had been there very long, and neither allowed me to work on a 20% project. In my exit interview, the HR guy said "Well, I'm glad to hear you liked it here. People don't leave Google, they leave their manager. Sorry...". The money and perks were nice, sure. But the work itself sucked. So I do something I enjoy now, and am vastly happier.
I used to feel really bad about telling interviewees what my experiences with 20% time were like, but I couldn't lie to them. And every single one asked about it during the interview. All I could do was shrug and say "well, if you get a good manager, life at Google will be good..." The implication being if you get a bad manager then you'll grit your teeth until you vest a little and then you'll bail out.
I'm glad you have the ability to work on a 20% project. But from my experiences during the 3 years and change I was there, it's the exception rather than the rule, by a huge margin.
The repairs included quite a lot of structural repair, a completely new roof, rebuilding a deck, foundation work, etc, etc. we did update the kitchen, but mostly because the adjoining laundry room had rodents at one point and all the lower cabinets smelled or old urine. We replace everything with your basic Sears stuff. It's roughly equivalent to Ikea. The counters were no-name solid surface.
Had no choice. Moving in from out of state, we had to spend the money we made on the house sale on another house. I like doing things around the house, and so didn't mind a project.
And actually, I misspoke about the numbers. We put closer to 60K into it, so we made a little money on the sale. No chance of keeping the tax rate, as I'd never want to move back to California. We have 3x the house we had before, thanks to the down payment.
We were allowed to bring a guest twice a month. I did that more often than not. And I ate breakfast and lunch virtually every day, plus snacks and drinks throughout the day. The SmartWaters they had are like a buck each. The Naked Juice in the lobby fridges are $3-$4. I ate dinner there a couple/three times a week. They brought in food on weekends as well.
Sometimes it actually was lobster (though more likely crab and/or shrimp on Seafood Friday's at Charlie's). Sometimes a weird meat cut I'd never heard of. I had squab one time. Sometimes it was a celebrity guest chef. Bought elsewhere, it'd probably work out to more than $8K. They served very good food. I ate at home toward the end of my stay there, but it's a conscious choice you have to make: Go home and cook, or stay a little late and eat there. Traffic was better past 8pm anyway, so the lazy choice was usually taken.
And I only weigh 190, same as when I started work there.:-)
I just sold my 1500 square foot, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house (on a spacious 5500 square foot lot) in Silicon Valley for $875,000. I bought it for $750,000, and had to spend close to $100,000 in repairs and updates over the last 4 years. I priced it to sell, and it was only on the market for 6 days. I probably could have held out for more, but I was done and wanted out of CA for family reasons in my home state.
When I forst got to California and told people what I bought, and for what, they had one of two reactions:
1. You got a good deal!
2. How much repair does it need?
You could tell who had live in the Bay Area by which they had.
You think Google would offer a higher salary? Not if your just a normal engineer guy. They'll give you what they want to give you, and you better be grateful you're getting the offer in the first place, buddy.
I made probably about 20-25% less than my similarly-employed friends. Google likes to say that it compensates in other ways. I calculated that the free food alone was worth about $8000 per year to me. The yearly bonuses were beyond generous. I negotiated a good stock grant when I was hired. But the actual pay pretty much sucks, and they're cutting back in all sorts of ways. I saw it happening starting in late 2006, and it kept on rolling. They'll cut back on perks and then try to convince everyone they have the best thing going regardless, especially with regards to recruiting (keep pushing that 20% project myth, guys...). A certain TGIF is a good example (TGIF is a big gathering in Charlie's Cafe every Friday at 4:30, where Larry and/or Sergey and/or Eric talk about company issues and take questions).
During the QA portion, a guy got up and asked about our health care plan. Apparently, it wasn't as good as Microsoft's, yet in a then-recent magazine article, Eric said that we had the best benefits in the world and was really talking up the perks - even as they were routinely being scaled back. So this guy was comparing notes with his MS buddy and our health plan wasn't all that great (the dental in particular was worse than some government jobs I've had). Eric said he'd look at it and get back to us. (One of the things I really liked about working there was that sort of transparency and openness.)
Couple weeks later, same guy gets up to ask about what they found out. Eric says they did the numbers, and it was going to cost a few 10s of millions more per year to implement a comparable health plan. So, no dice. The crowd generally grumbled, and Eric was quick to pipe up with "But just think, by working here, you get to change the world!"
Was shortly after that I gave serious thought about examining my options. I'm not sure if/how that influenced my decision to leave, but some kool-aid you should never drink.
No, the only way to get more money at Google is to work 80 hours a week or sleep with someone important. Leaving and coming back won't do it, unless you're a high-flier and they're trying to headhunt you back for some particular reason.
If you're going to mount/home noexec, you should also mount/tmp as noexec as well. In fact, I'd wager you should do that well before you bother with/home. A lot of wormy/trojany stuff wants to write, unpack, build and execute in/tmp. In fact, while you're at it, make sure only root can run make and gcc, or get at any of the libs. All command line network tools (wget, ftp, etc) should also only be run by root. Now go through and get rid of most (all?) of the setuid root stuff. Then crank down the firewall to only allow incoming 22 and 80 (or whatever). That will take care of a wide range of automated stuff.
Using SSL for everything is too expensive in terms of computing resources. Gmail gets a staggering amount of traffic as it is, I don't know that they could handle all of it being run through the SSL hardware. I'm just happy the setting is there at all.
Pirates never fight on even terms (they always hide when out gunned)
Not at all true. We get in all kinds of fights that are even, lopsided, traps, whatever. You get a couple fleets slugging it out, and them you get stomped. No problem, you know now you can bait their big stuff out, so you plan ahead and then get your payback (and not necessarily with a larger fleet; more often than not, good planning and little quick thinking is more important than sheer numbers.
Another example would be faction warfare PvP. There's gangs of all sizes flying around. You have 12, they have 21? Well, what sizes are we talking about? Hmmm, we have two more cruisers than them, yeah, might work, if we can take that ship first, then that one, then either of those two. Good tactics and a good fleet commander making good decisions easily doubles the size of your fleet.
I think you were fell victim to one too many can flips and finally got pissed enough about all that veld you were losing that you quit -- without a full picture of what the entire game has to offer. You use the phrase "mind numbingly boring". What is mining if not that? Where's the excitement in watching a mining laser fire off again and again and again...
Viacom can take a look at all four of my uploads as a Google employee. I'm sure they'll love the vacation movies the in-laws wanted to see...
Though I don't understand why it matters if I uploaded something on my own time or not. I was allowed to do all sorts of things on my own time. Sure, I probably couldn't start another search engine, but if I wanted to upload a couple short clips from Comedy Central or whatever, who cares? If it's 10pm at night and I'm at home using my own hardware, what the hell does it matter that I work for Google? I mean, sure, if it's not Fair Use, they could come after me personally, whatever. But I fail to see the connection to my workplace.
People love working for Google, but my friends there tell me they work 70+ hrs/week.
The only people working 70+ hours/week at Google are the folks nearing a deadline, putting out a fire, or dealing with some other emergency. Some other folks do get close to that, however. The fresh out of college, in-a-new-town sort of folks have no life and so they work all week. Google gives them dinner (though I suspect dinner service will be stopping soon; shortly before I left, they were sending out surveys to see how they could "serve you better"), there are showers, and if you're young and energetic you can hook up with another geek. You get a few years before you burn out, so these guys are fine; they'll learn.
The other ones working insane hours are the people that want a pay raise. You have to get promoted to get a raise at Google. And since promotions are essentially popularity contests, you need to Be Seen (and be seen as a go-getter). Since I'm getting up in years, and I have a family life I enjoy, I never bothered to nominate myself for a promotion. It meant a few years without a raise, but the stock did well so it was a wash in my mind. The bonuses were fairly generous anyway.
The final group working long hours are those who are doing a 20% project. These are few and far between, the 20% project being primarily a myth to entice people into applying for a job. (I did a lot of interviewing, and about half the interviewees would ask about 20% projects, what mine was, etc. I could never quite bring myself to lie to them and say that there was ever the slightest chance they'd get to choose and work on a 20% project). There's been a real severe crackdown on 20% time. There's just less need for a "throw everything at a wall, see what sticks" mentality. They have a core set of products, so what you'll see from here on out is acquisitions as a way to get into offering new products/services, and add-ons to existing products (new features in Google maps, etc). There's actually a little room for 20% time in the latter areas, but the barrier to entry is non-trivial. Long gone are the days when you could host some new whizz-bang idea on your workstation or a borrowed machine in a coloc. If you want to integrate with existing services, you have to speak borg, borgmon, etc.
Anyway, there are a lot of people who put in a normal working week at Google an dare perfectly happy. They won't get promoted as often (or ever), and they won't get involved with the internal Google hip-crowd, but they can have happy, productive careers there. It's actually a pretty non-stressful place to work, once the golden handcuffs come off. I don't know that I'd work there again, but it's a fun place to be, with a lot of energy about the place.
As far as Apple, the stuff I was hearing is that there's a lot of fear for one's job, everyone needs to swear allegiance to the Cult of Steve, etc. I gather it's not a very fun place to work, and I gather that long work weeks are all but mandatory. That could just be sour grapes from overworked engineers, though.
Eve's pvp is very nice. There are no "classes", but there are different ships. And there are different mods to fit on those ships. I'd say that 70% of the outcome of any pvp is decided when the pilot is fitting his ship.
And that's what makes the pvp great: it take real-life skill to figure out what ship fits work best. And that has nothing to do with time spent in game. You can be in the game for 3-4 weeks and have a very nice pvp rig capable of taking on players 3, 4 years old (as long as the ships themselves are comparable). I've seen some really clever fits from newbies. And I've seen some crap fits from older players.
Once you have the ship fitted out for its intended role, then it comes down to player skill. The tactics you use in a fight make up the other 30% of the chances of success in pvp.
The best part about pvp in eve, though, is the finality of it. If you get a ship blown up, that's it, it's gone. Some of the mods might survive, but for the most part it's over. It makes for a very exciting time.
imnsho, that's the worst thing about Eve, and why I don't intend to ever play (well, one of the reasons). Real time translates into in-game power, which means that no matter what, I will always, always, always be at a disadvantage to someone who started playing the game on day 1
IMO, that's the best thing about Eve. You need to take care of stuff in real life? Go on ahead. (I'm in the middle of moving to a new state, and haven't logged on for a couple weeks; still training.) You want to go for a certain area or style of play? Train it up. In a couple weeks, you'll be able to shoot at all sorts of people. In fact, with the new character creation, you can have a brand new character in a destroyer (which is a little bit up from a frigate -- basically a flying gun) in like 3 hours of training time. That's pretty nice.
There's just no sense of grinding in Eve. You just don't need to do it. Sure, people who have played longer can fly more ship types than you, but I've killed many, many players who were a couple years older than me (and I've been killed by players younger than me). As an added bonus, if you have a younger player in the group, he can easily fly anywhere the more experience people can go. When he gets there, he can take an active role in the gang.
It's not about in-game power. A 4 year old character won't always beat a 1 year old. Not like with WoW or whatever. Hell, most other games have worked it out so that a 4 yo and a 1 yo can't fight (or there's no point in fighting, same thing). Not so in Eve. Just because he's got 3 years training on you doesn't mean squat when it comes to his battlecruiser against your interceptor (or whatever). It's about tactics, and your actual skill as a player at that point.
You need to play it before you form opinions. The training system in Eve is what keeps it a grind-free experience, where it's up to the player to decide how well he'll do in pvp. It has very little to do with player age.
The unofficial motto isn't "do no evil". It's "don't be evil". Semantics aside, I think there's a huge difference. And I know for a fact that Google pays more than mere lip service to that motto (not policy).
If you're going to create a straw man, try to at least get the little facts straight before you put on the tinfoil...
Isn't Tan just doing on a very small scale what Eric Schmidt, Larry Page et al are doing? I don't imagine that all those disparate people are there because of a genuine interest in Google, or because Google thinks they have important wisdom to pass on (despite the talks by some). They are trophies. And I would expect paid trophies at that. At least Tan isn't paying them for their picture. That makes him cooler than either Google or their celebrities picking up appearance fees. He is the only one who genuinely wants to be there.
Wow, that's cynicism.
And you're completely wrong. We get folks over all the time who aren't paid trophies. We get people over who just want to have lunch, see what the place is about, etc. There really are people who come over because a genuine interest in Google. It's a cool place, and has a lot of "different" things about it. People want to see it. (What's really funny is the new college grads with their parents. You can always spot them. I'd say we have several hundred pairs of parents a week walking around. I've never worked at a place that had so many visitors, and I'm guessing there's more to it than a free lunch.)
The other day I was walking through a building and saw Robin Williams. He was just standing there with an employee looking at the GeoDisplay. Why? Wanted to see the place (he was dressed differently than in Chade-Meng's picture, so I guess it was another visit). Another common one is people over at Shoreline Amphitheatre coming over to have a look. I've seen all sorts of celebrities wandering around because of that.
I think the people who give talks (Clinton, Friedman, McCain) get whatever their normal appearance fee is, but I don't know for sure. It would only make sense that we'd pay them like with any other speaking engagement, since we do think they have wisdom to pass on. And it's kind of weird that you'd bag on Google for paying someone their fee for coming to talk to us. You feel that universities and talk shows and whatever should also get the same treatment? It's a pretty standard thing, you know...
Heh, heh. I thought the same thing. Monster emails are almost entirely spam anyways. I mean, they may have been relevant a few years ago (that's being charitable) but I've never had anything but crap from them.
Nice bonus is trying to find a link on their website where you can contact a real human. Or contact anyone. They seem to assume that anyone who wishes to contact them is either a job seeker or job poster. I don't think this is an oversight. I do think the staff at monster.com don't want to be conversed with in any way. Slimy.
I removed my "profile" years ago, but somehow they still persist in contacting me. Obviously, it's a one-way thing; I couldn't possibly email I real human there. Because if they *really* wanted to talk to me, I'd ask them to remove all my info and leave me the fuck alone.
I could have posted this word for word. The RH9 fiasco still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I too bought a support contract for RH9, fairly shortly before that whole support/licensing debacle was foisted on us.
And this new version: you buy it and then get support for just one year? Gee, thanks, Red Hat! I'm really happy that you're there to give us a linux distro that works very well on the desktop and has support! We can't get that anywhere else...
Thanks, but Ubuntu has everything I need now, and I'm pretty sure that they won't pull a money-grabbing stunt like Red Hat did and leave its users high and dried, held for ransom. (And, as a bonus, I get out from under that hell which is RPM.)
We've asked experts across the industry to track the next 20 years of everything from game-design trends to the evolution of your living room
Why assume that consoles are going to be around? Or in a common area? I've been playing video games since around 1982 (when I wrote a crappy Asteroids clone in BASIC on my VIC-20). The last console I owned came with an orange plastic gun and a copy of Duck Hunt. Consoles have a horrible interface when compared to PCs, and until recently, TVs had a horrible screen on which to display games.
More than that: I have a very nice set of computers in my office, and only one TV (which is in the family room). My 24" LCD can display pretty much any game beautifully, and someone can watch TV if they want at the same time. People can do this without interrupting each other. If I want to play a video game, I want a little peace and quiet, a little alone time. I don't want to be in the middle of the family room. I think the rest of the house (who might be arguing over the remote) wants the same.
Anyway, I'm probably in the minority, but I don't ever see myself buying a console, or playing video games in the living room.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously... just use a normal - like everyone else. Or, if you're feeling fancy, try two of them: --
-B
Hate to comment twice in one article, but I have to say: Show the names of the people writing you! Maybe not their email (though that would be OK), but at least their slashdot ID, if they have one. Shit, make it a requirement that they have a slashdot account before they write in.
It'd be much more fun if there was some accountability...
-B
I was in the Google money pool for a few years. Getting in is easy, as long as you can pass 4 hellish interviews and wait 6 months for HR to respond.
Having said that, what you really need is a time machine. Go back to August 2004 and get hired. Even if you get a meager grant back then, you'll make out pretty well. Getting hired now, well, they aren't as forthcoming with the stock as they once were, and the base pay is pretty terrible. Free food, though.
-B
You've been using apache and mysql for years, yet you've been looking for a "real" reason to use linux for years? You had a couple good ones right there, man...
As for the phrase "virtual webserver on your desktop": That means nothing. You want a real (ie, "non-virtual") webserver, because you want to serve files. You don't want a webserver anywhere near your desktop, as apache's not a GUI application. So I suppose the answer is "No, you have to have a real webserver, but you can probably access it via a desktop icon or whatever".
Take a look here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/
That will show you how to set up a thing called "virtual hosts", which is pretty close to what I think you want. In a nutshell, you can have multiple document roots with various versions of a web site all served by the same apache daemon. You should be able to set it up so that, using .htacess files, you can test all sorts of server directives, play with mod_rewrite, etc without affecting the other virtual hosts. (Note the "virtual" there: That's apache basically simulating you having multiple servers, when in fact you only have one. That may be close to what you meant.)
You can also set up multiple instances of apache on your machine. Just have them all listen on a different port. The effect is the same, mostly, as having one server with many vhosts.
-B
Generally, I'd say 20% time is a great idea, but I think management of it is harder than it appears. If your team sets very aggressive goals for itself and that means you feel you can't take 20% time, that's something to take up with your management and your team. Remember, EMG have clarified this on several occasions - your manager cannot deny you 20% time in perpetuity.
I was in SRE as well, oddly. My manager dragged her feet and generally refused to hear anything about 20% time. We had 3 reqs open, and her feeling was that if we're needing staffing so badly then we can't have one guy off doing something else one day a week. I took it up the chain, and was routinely told it was my manager's decision, as she knew the status of the group. I actually tried to leave the group toward the end there, but there's really no clean way to go from SWE to anything else. My manager refused to entertain the notion of me leaving her even more short handed. When I left the company, I hadn't written a single line of code in over 9 months, and needed to scratch that creative itch. So, I had to leave the company as there was nowhere to go. I've heard horror stories about the SWEs in like Ads or Search -- they're stuck and can never leave the group. That's really sad.
Prior to my last attempt at getting on with a 20% project, I came up with a plan that involved people covering, me covering them, milestones, schedules, buy-in from the other group, etc. You're right, 20% time doesn't magically happen. But if you have a bad manager, it won't ever happen -- regardless of what EMG claims. I only had two managers at Google. Neither had been there very long, and neither allowed me to work on a 20% project. In my exit interview, the HR guy said "Well, I'm glad to hear you liked it here. People don't leave Google, they leave their manager. Sorry...". The money and perks were nice, sure. But the work itself sucked. So I do something I enjoy now, and am vastly happier.
I used to feel really bad about telling interviewees what my experiences with 20% time were like, but I couldn't lie to them. And every single one asked about it during the interview. All I could do was shrug and say "well, if you get a good manager, life at Google will be good..." The implication being if you get a bad manager then you'll grit your teeth until you vest a little and then you'll bail out.
I'm glad you have the ability to work on a 20% project. But from my experiences during the 3 years and change I was there, it's the exception rather than the rule, by a huge margin.
-B
I don't eat candy. I never have. When I was growing up, my easter baskets had nuts and jerky in them instead of candy. -B
The repairs included quite a lot of structural repair, a completely new roof, rebuilding a deck, foundation work, etc, etc. we did update the kitchen, but mostly because the adjoining laundry room had rodents at one point and all the lower cabinets smelled or old urine. We replace everything with your basic Sears stuff. It's roughly equivalent to Ikea. The counters were no-name solid surface.
Had no choice. Moving in from out of state, we had to spend the money we made on the house sale on another house. I like doing things around the house, and so didn't mind a project.
And actually, I misspoke about the numbers. We put closer to 60K into it, so we made a little money on the sale. No chance of keeping the tax rate, as I'd never want to move back to California. We have 3x the house we had before, thanks to the down payment.
-B
We were allowed to bring a guest twice a month. I did that more often than not. And I ate breakfast and lunch virtually every day, plus snacks and drinks throughout the day. The SmartWaters they had are like a buck each. The Naked Juice in the lobby fridges are $3-$4. I ate dinner there a couple/three times a week. They brought in food on weekends as well.
Sometimes it actually was lobster (though more likely crab and/or shrimp on Seafood Friday's at Charlie's). Sometimes a weird meat cut I'd never heard of. I had squab one time. Sometimes it was a celebrity guest chef. Bought elsewhere, it'd probably work out to more than $8K. They served very good food. I ate at home toward the end of my stay there, but it's a conscious choice you have to make: Go home and cook, or stay a little late and eat there. Traffic was better past 8pm anyway, so the lazy choice was usually taken.
And I only weigh 190, same as when I started work there. :-)
-B
I just sold my 1500 square foot, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath house (on a spacious 5500 square foot lot) in Silicon Valley for $875,000. I bought it for $750,000, and had to spend close to $100,000 in repairs and updates over the last 4 years. I priced it to sell, and it was only on the market for 6 days. I probably could have held out for more, but I was done and wanted out of CA for family reasons in my home state.
When I forst got to California and told people what I bought, and for what, they had one of two reactions:
1. You got a good deal!
2. How much repair does it need?
You could tell who had live in the Bay Area by which they had.
-B
You think Google would offer a higher salary? Not if your just a normal engineer guy. They'll give you what they want to give you, and you better be grateful you're getting the offer in the first place, buddy.
I made probably about 20-25% less than my similarly-employed friends. Google likes to say that it compensates in other ways. I calculated that the free food alone was worth about $8000 per year to me. The yearly bonuses were beyond generous. I negotiated a good stock grant when I was hired. But the actual pay pretty much sucks, and they're cutting back in all sorts of ways. I saw it happening starting in late 2006, and it kept on rolling. They'll cut back on perks and then try to convince everyone they have the best thing going regardless, especially with regards to recruiting (keep pushing that 20% project myth, guys...). A certain TGIF is a good example (TGIF is a big gathering in Charlie's Cafe every Friday at 4:30, where Larry and/or Sergey and/or Eric talk about company issues and take questions).
During the QA portion, a guy got up and asked about our health care plan. Apparently, it wasn't as good as Microsoft's, yet in a then-recent magazine article, Eric said that we had the best benefits in the world and was really talking up the perks - even as they were routinely being scaled back. So this guy was comparing notes with his MS buddy and our health plan wasn't all that great (the dental in particular was worse than some government jobs I've had). Eric said he'd look at it and get back to us. (One of the things I really liked about working there was that sort of transparency and openness.)
Couple weeks later, same guy gets up to ask about what they found out. Eric says they did the numbers, and it was going to cost a few 10s of millions more per year to implement a comparable health plan. So, no dice. The crowd generally grumbled, and Eric was quick to pipe up with "But just think, by working here, you get to change the world!"
Was shortly after that I gave serious thought about examining my options. I'm not sure if/how that influenced my decision to leave, but some kool-aid you should never drink.
No, the only way to get more money at Google is to work 80 hours a week or sleep with someone important. Leaving and coming back won't do it, unless you're a high-flier and they're trying to headhunt you back for some particular reason.
-B
Yes, it is a good idea. If you don't want to use root, set up another user for the purpose of building software.
Security and convenience. Pick the one you want.
-B
If you're going to mount /home noexec, you should also mount /tmp as noexec as well. In fact, I'd wager you should do that well before you bother with /home. A lot of wormy/trojany stuff wants to write, unpack, build and execute in /tmp. In fact, while you're at it, make sure only root can run make and gcc, or get at any of the libs. All command line network tools (wget, ftp, etc) should also only be run by root. Now go through and get rid of most (all?) of the setuid root stuff. Then crank down the firewall to only allow incoming 22 and 80 (or whatever). That will take care of a wide range of automated stuff.
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Next time you meet a gmail SRE, ask them how many SSL VIPs they have assigned. Also ask them about the latest hardware Code Yellow.
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Using SSL for everything is too expensive in terms of computing resources. Gmail gets a staggering amount of traffic as it is, I don't know that they could handle all of it being run through the SSL hardware. I'm just happy the setting is there at all.
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Pirates never fight on even terms (they always hide when out gunned)
Not at all true. We get in all kinds of fights that are even, lopsided, traps, whatever. You get a couple fleets slugging it out, and them you get stomped. No problem, you know now you can bait their big stuff out, so you plan ahead and then get your payback (and not necessarily with a larger fleet; more often than not, good planning and little quick thinking is more important than sheer numbers.
Another example would be faction warfare PvP. There's gangs of all sizes flying around. You have 12, they have 21? Well, what sizes are we talking about? Hmmm, we have two more cruisers than them, yeah, might work, if we can take that ship first, then that one, then either of those two. Good tactics and a good fleet commander making good decisions easily doubles the size of your fleet.
I think you were fell victim to one too many can flips and finally got pissed enough about all that veld you were losing that you quit -- without a full picture of what the entire game has to offer. You use the phrase "mind numbingly boring". What is mining if not that? Where's the excitement in watching a mining laser fire off again and again and again...
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Though I don't understand why it matters if I uploaded something on my own time or not. I was allowed to do all sorts of things on my own time. Sure, I probably couldn't start another search engine, but if I wanted to upload a couple short clips from Comedy Central or whatever, who cares? If it's 10pm at night and I'm at home using my own hardware, what the hell does it matter that I work for Google? I mean, sure, if it's not Fair Use, they could come after me personally, whatever. But I fail to see the connection to my workplace.
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The only people working 70+ hours/week at Google are the folks nearing a deadline, putting out a fire, or dealing with some other emergency. Some other folks do get close to that, however. The fresh out of college, in-a-new-town sort of folks have no life and so they work all week. Google gives them dinner (though I suspect dinner service will be stopping soon; shortly before I left, they were sending out surveys to see how they could "serve you better"), there are showers, and if you're young and energetic you can hook up with another geek. You get a few years before you burn out, so these guys are fine; they'll learn.
The other ones working insane hours are the people that want a pay raise. You have to get promoted to get a raise at Google. And since promotions are essentially popularity contests, you need to Be Seen (and be seen as a go-getter). Since I'm getting up in years, and I have a family life I enjoy, I never bothered to nominate myself for a promotion. It meant a few years without a raise, but the stock did well so it was a wash in my mind. The bonuses were fairly generous anyway.
The final group working long hours are those who are doing a 20% project. These are few and far between, the 20% project being primarily a myth to entice people into applying for a job. (I did a lot of interviewing, and about half the interviewees would ask about 20% projects, what mine was, etc. I could never quite bring myself to lie to them and say that there was ever the slightest chance they'd get to choose and work on a 20% project). There's been a real severe crackdown on 20% time. There's just less need for a "throw everything at a wall, see what sticks" mentality. They have a core set of products, so what you'll see from here on out is acquisitions as a way to get into offering new products/services, and add-ons to existing products (new features in Google maps, etc). There's actually a little room for 20% time in the latter areas, but the barrier to entry is non-trivial. Long gone are the days when you could host some new whizz-bang idea on your workstation or a borrowed machine in a coloc. If you want to integrate with existing services, you have to speak borg, borgmon, etc.
Anyway, there are a lot of people who put in a normal working week at Google an dare perfectly happy. They won't get promoted as often (or ever), and they won't get involved with the internal Google hip-crowd, but they can have happy, productive careers there. It's actually a pretty non-stressful place to work, once the golden handcuffs come off. I don't know that I'd work there again, but it's a fun place to be, with a lot of energy about the place.
As far as Apple, the stuff I was hearing is that there's a lot of fear for one's job, everyone needs to swear allegiance to the Cult of Steve, etc. I gather it's not a very fun place to work, and I gather that long work weeks are all but mandatory. That could just be sour grapes from overworked engineers, though.
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And that's what makes the pvp great: it take real-life skill to figure out what ship fits work best. And that has nothing to do with time spent in game. You can be in the game for 3-4 weeks and have a very nice pvp rig capable of taking on players 3, 4 years old (as long as the ships themselves are comparable). I've seen some really clever fits from newbies. And I've seen some crap fits from older players.
Once you have the ship fitted out for its intended role, then it comes down to player skill. The tactics you use in a fight make up the other 30% of the chances of success in pvp.
The best part about pvp in eve, though, is the finality of it. If you get a ship blown up, that's it, it's gone. Some of the mods might survive, but for the most part it's over. It makes for a very exciting time.
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IMO, that's the best thing about Eve. You need to take care of stuff in real life? Go on ahead. (I'm in the middle of moving to a new state, and haven't logged on for a couple weeks; still training.) You want to go for a certain area or style of play? Train it up. In a couple weeks, you'll be able to shoot at all sorts of people. In fact, with the new character creation, you can have a brand new character in a destroyer (which is a little bit up from a frigate -- basically a flying gun) in like 3 hours of training time. That's pretty nice.
There's just no sense of grinding in Eve. You just don't need to do it. Sure, people who have played longer can fly more ship types than you, but I've killed many, many players who were a couple years older than me (and I've been killed by players younger than me). As an added bonus, if you have a younger player in the group, he can easily fly anywhere the more experience people can go. When he gets there, he can take an active role in the gang.
It's not about in-game power. A 4 year old character won't always beat a 1 year old. Not like with WoW or whatever. Hell, most other games have worked it out so that a 4 yo and a 1 yo can't fight (or there's no point in fighting, same thing). Not so in Eve. Just because he's got 3 years training on you doesn't mean squat when it comes to his battlecruiser against your interceptor (or whatever). It's about tactics, and your actual skill as a player at that point.
You need to play it before you form opinions. The training system in Eve is what keeps it a grind-free experience, where it's up to the player to decide how well he'll do in pvp. It has very little to do with player age.
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If you're going to create a straw man, try to at least get the little facts straight before you put on the tinfoil...
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Wow, that's cynicism.
And you're completely wrong. We get folks over all the time who aren't paid trophies. We get people over who just want to have lunch, see what the place is about, etc. There really are people who come over because a genuine interest in Google. It's a cool place, and has a lot of "different" things about it. People want to see it. (What's really funny is the new college grads with their parents. You can always spot them. I'd say we have several hundred pairs of parents a week walking around. I've never worked at a place that had so many visitors, and I'm guessing there's more to it than a free lunch.)
The other day I was walking through a building and saw Robin Williams. He was just standing there with an employee looking at the GeoDisplay. Why? Wanted to see the place (he was dressed differently than in Chade-Meng's picture, so I guess it was another visit). Another common one is people over at Shoreline Amphitheatre coming over to have a look. I've seen all sorts of celebrities wandering around because of that.
I think the people who give talks (Clinton, Friedman, McCain) get whatever their normal appearance fee is, but I don't know for sure. It would only make sense that we'd pay them like with any other speaking engagement, since we do think they have wisdom to pass on. And it's kind of weird that you'd bag on Google for paying someone their fee for coming to talk to us. You feel that universities and talk shows and whatever should also get the same treatment? It's a pretty standard thing, you know...
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Nice bonus is trying to find a link on their website where you can contact a real human. Or contact anyone. They seem to assume that anyone who wishes to contact them is either a job seeker or job poster. I don't think this is an oversight. I do think the staff at monster.com don't want to be conversed with in any way. Slimy.
I removed my "profile" years ago, but somehow they still persist in contacting me. Obviously, it's a one-way thing; I couldn't possibly email I real human there. Because if they *really* wanted to talk to me, I'd ask them to remove all my info and leave me the fuck alone.
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And this new version: you buy it and then get support for just one year? Gee, thanks, Red Hat! I'm really happy that you're there to give us a linux distro that works very well on the desktop and has support! We can't get that anywhere else...
Thanks, but Ubuntu has everything I need now, and I'm pretty sure that they won't pull a money-grabbing stunt like Red Hat did and leave its users high and dried, held for ransom. (And, as a bonus, I get out from under that hell which is RPM.)
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Why assume that consoles are going to be around? Or in a common area? I've been playing video games since around 1982 (when I wrote a crappy Asteroids clone in BASIC on my VIC-20). The last console I owned came with an orange plastic gun and a copy of Duck Hunt. Consoles have a horrible interface when compared to PCs, and until recently, TVs had a horrible screen on which to display games.
More than that: I have a very nice set of computers in my office, and only one TV (which is in the family room). My 24" LCD can display pretty much any game beautifully, and someone can watch TV if they want at the same time. People can do this without interrupting each other. If I want to play a video game, I want a little peace and quiet, a little alone time. I don't want to be in the middle of the family room. I think the rest of the house (who might be arguing over the remote) wants the same.
Anyway, I'm probably in the minority, but I don't ever see myself buying a console, or playing video games in the living room.
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