I was flown out to California for an interview at Google, and while I didn't get the job, it shattered any desire I had to work there. I previously wanted to work "for the giants" because, well, money, and prestige, and "cool problems" etc.
Then I noticed every single person I met was involved with Advertising and tracking and tracking advertising. It was disgusting. I don't want to work on those kinds of "cool" problems.
That is the core of their business though and that fact seems pretty clear from basic research, what did you expect? If you find advertising/tracking reprehensible, why would you agree to an interview in the first place?
>I previously wanted to work "for the giants" because, well, money, and prestige, and "cool problems" etc.
I had fewer ethics then, as I was still basically a bright eyed kid. Also I had never been financially well off, and therefore had never really been able to afford being principled. And honestly I truly did not realize how pervasive advertising was for google.
> And honestly I truly did not realize how pervasive advertising was for google.
That sounds extremely naive. It's like being surprised by how pervasive basketball is for the LA Lakers. I mean, what exactly did you believed the company did?
Really? How many people outside of tech honestly understand that Google is 90% advertising and 10% "other" instead of more like 50% search company and 50% "other" like they tried to pretend to be for so long? Go ask your grandma what google does.
I was not born in Silicon Valley. Could have probably talked to you a little about potato farming though, and the purchase of Hannaford by Del Haize
Well you must have accepted an interview for that kind of team (perhaps unknowlingly; this kind of thing can be quite opaque to the candidate a company like Google). Obviously not everyone at Google is working on ads and tracking. In fact, I would bet the farm that it's a minority under 5% if not under 1%.
I think yours is a good story -- it worked out for you. But, honestly, you didn't know Google's business was an advertising and tracking business? Don't know the exact number but I think it's still over 90% of their revenue is from ads. Come on.
I was just getting ready to graduate from college at the time. I understood google did a significant amount of advertising, but my introduction to google as a business was reading the initial search whitepaper from the 90s. I had assumed they at least had some remnant of "interesting sciency" search based stuff going on.
>Well you must have accepted an interview for that kind of team
No. My interview was as an infrastructure and internal software engineer.
The big thing that hit me was that every single person I talked to emphasized how you could switch projects/teams/orgs every year or so, so they had a wide range of experiences under their belt. Except to the man, every last one was about supporting Google's advertising
The only hint that google did something other than advertising on the entire campus was a statue of the Android mascot
<Recruiter>: (reads first sentence) "I'll just put you down as a 'no'. Next..."
Not a quote from an Amazon or Google recruiter saying, "man, numbers are down, hiring has been hard." Nope, not a word. Just anecdata like "I rejected Uber so hard, so many times". Oh, yeah, I'm sure Uber is feeling so burned over there they are having discussions right now about what to do about it. Or maybe it went down like my first paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, I turn down my fair share of companies, too, and sometimes for ethical reasons. But let's not kid ourselves, there's someone right behind you eager to get to work on Evil Corp.'s "interesting problems". Hell, Intellectual Ventures (you know, the big-time patent troll?) here in Bellevue, WA is hiring. You and I might say "hell, no", but they're still in business, so you know someone is hiring on there. Say "no" so that you can sleep at night, not because you think someone gives a shit as to why.
If that recruiting agency gets in trouble for not getting numbers or similar. They will look for reasons why, to toss it at their client to turn down the heat and to better know what to change about their tactics.
Yeah, that could happen. Or not. Maybe, I dunno. Someone should go ask tech recruiters about that and write an article.
There were a lot of missed opportunities such as this one in this article, and that's what I'm getting at. As written, it's just a few personal stories from self-important tech workers.
That feeling when an article published by one of the largest professional engineering organizations in the world has no data to support its claims.
Also, what does this even mean:
>It’s likely no accident that women, underrepresented minorities, LGBTQ people, and other underrepresented groups in the tech industry are among the more prominent voices speaking out through recruitment channels, Luo says.
Why is that no accident? Is there some different moral matrix people who belong to these groups judges the world by? Is there any evidence to support that claim (or whatever claim they're trying to make).
So glad I dropped my IEEE membership (I used to get this trash mailed to me).
And for the record, the claims could very well be true, but the article does nothing to prove it, other than using two people as an example. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn they were invented (or friends of the author).
>Solidarity went out the window when noone would touch me for over a year after 10 yrs of service as an engineer in the armed forces.
Why wouldn't they 'touch you'? This should in fact bring on more solidarity but instead you've seemed to turn it into some sort of anger. You should be able to relate with the rest of the workforce, see their challenges & struggles, and have solidarity as others have for you.
Pretty much. I've told amazon in particular I have no interest in working for their company because of how they treat their employees.
Of course, that hasn't stopped me from getting hit up by at least 7 more recruiters from Amazon since, including one lovely person who decided cold calling me was a totally reasonable thing to do.
Not like this is new; I'm in my 50s and since I was in my 20s there were people who wouldn't work for one company or another because of the products, working environment etc. Sites like Glassdoor exist because people care about working conditions (whether GD can be gamed is a different matter).
It is like asking prospective students to boycott applying to elite schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Even if you convince a majority of people, say 60%, there are 40% others who want to apply to elite schools, or work at elite companies.
In the end, what matters is money. Subordinating money to ethics works well for those who are reasonably well off financially; for others, it is a way to become reasonably well off financially.
Having a discussion on surveillance and ethics here is nearly pointless and merely dilutes the discussion with denial, apologism and hand waving. Its just going through the motions of debate when reality already confirms the choices made.
Google, Facebook and others are SV darlings and large employers and they have no shortage of fawning prospects who barely stop to think about niceties like ethics unless they need to posture, or expect it of others as if we live in a magical world where we can sellout but others have to behave ethically.
Articles like this and endless debate is not going to work. Regulations may - personalized advertising especially social or political is unethical and destructive. But these debates will happen in other places where the focus is more on ethics and society and not startups and making money.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 72.7 ms ] threadThen I noticed every single person I met was involved with Advertising and tracking and tracking advertising. It was disgusting. I don't want to work on those kinds of "cool" problems.
I had fewer ethics then, as I was still basically a bright eyed kid. Also I had never been financially well off, and therefore had never really been able to afford being principled. And honestly I truly did not realize how pervasive advertising was for google.
That sounds extremely naive. It's like being surprised by how pervasive basketball is for the LA Lakers. I mean, what exactly did you believed the company did?
I was not born in Silicon Valley. Could have probably talked to you a little about potato farming though, and the purchase of Hannaford by Del Haize
I think yours is a good story -- it worked out for you. But, honestly, you didn't know Google's business was an advertising and tracking business? Don't know the exact number but I think it's still over 90% of their revenue is from ads. Come on.
>Well you must have accepted an interview for that kind of team
No. My interview was as an infrastructure and internal software engineer.
The big thing that hit me was that every single person I talked to emphasized how you could switch projects/teams/orgs every year or so, so they had a wide range of experiences under their belt. Except to the man, every last one was about supporting Google's advertising
The only hint that google did something other than advertising on the entire campus was a statue of the Android mascot
<Recruiter>: "wanna work for Evil Corp.?"
<Candidate>: (long, multi-paragraph rant; something something ethics.)
<Recruiter>: (reads first sentence) "I'll just put you down as a 'no'. Next..."
Not a quote from an Amazon or Google recruiter saying, "man, numbers are down, hiring has been hard." Nope, not a word. Just anecdata like "I rejected Uber so hard, so many times". Oh, yeah, I'm sure Uber is feeling so burned over there they are having discussions right now about what to do about it. Or maybe it went down like my first paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, I turn down my fair share of companies, too, and sometimes for ethical reasons. But let's not kid ourselves, there's someone right behind you eager to get to work on Evil Corp.'s "interesting problems". Hell, Intellectual Ventures (you know, the big-time patent troll?) here in Bellevue, WA is hiring. You and I might say "hell, no", but they're still in business, so you know someone is hiring on there. Say "no" so that you can sleep at night, not because you think someone gives a shit as to why.
There were a lot of missed opportunities such as this one in this article, and that's what I'm getting at. As written, it's just a few personal stories from self-important tech workers.
Also, what does this even mean:
>It’s likely no accident that women, underrepresented minorities, LGBTQ people, and other underrepresented groups in the tech industry are among the more prominent voices speaking out through recruitment channels, Luo says.
Why is that no accident? Is there some different moral matrix people who belong to these groups judges the world by? Is there any evidence to support that claim (or whatever claim they're trying to make).
So glad I dropped my IEEE membership (I used to get this trash mailed to me).
And for the record, the claims could very well be true, but the article does nothing to prove it, other than using two people as an example. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn they were invented (or friends of the author).
What happened to solidarity?
Ask again when Google changes their motto to "Hitler did nothing wrong", then I might be more for solidarity.
Don't appeal to my emotions
Why wouldn't they 'touch you'? This should in fact bring on more solidarity but instead you've seemed to turn it into some sort of anger. You should be able to relate with the rest of the workforce, see their challenges & struggles, and have solidarity as others have for you.
If I recall correctly, historically virtually all employee solidarity movements have been about making more money.
Of course, that hasn't stopped me from getting hit up by at least 7 more recruiters from Amazon since, including one lovely person who decided cold calling me was a totally reasonable thing to do.
In the end, what matters is money. Subordinating money to ethics works well for those who are reasonably well off financially; for others, it is a way to become reasonably well off financially.
Google, Facebook and others are SV darlings and large employers and they have no shortage of fawning prospects who barely stop to think about niceties like ethics unless they need to posture, or expect it of others as if we live in a magical world where we can sellout but others have to behave ethically.
Articles like this and endless debate is not going to work. Regulations may - personalized advertising especially social or political is unethical and destructive. But these debates will happen in other places where the focus is more on ethics and society and not startups and making money.