Until last year I too use to dream working in Google. But increasingly the attractiveness is decreasing. I cannot put a finger on one specific thing. It has gone too large from a career pov.
I used to dream about working at Google until I interviewed with them. I got dragged along for months and largely ignored between interviews. The interviews themselves were impersonal and non interactive. They gave the impression that I should just shut up and write code in front of them and when I asked clarifying questions I barely got anything in response.
Wow, this is the complete opposite of my experience interviewing there. The recruiter typically got back to me the same day, or the next day at the latest. My interviews, system design in particular, were very, very, very interactive (and fun!).
Had a similar experience. The recruiting part of the process went pretty smoothly, until I got to the onsite. Had 5 on-site interviews (excluding lunch), all exactly the same format: walk in the room where my interviewer is waiting with a question written on the white board, they say "hello" to me and I'm expected to read the question, clarify it a little bit and start coding. Not a single interviewer cared about my past experience or what kind of a person I am. I guess they're relying on the lunch interview for that signal? Anyway I ended up getting rejected and the feedback was that I need to practice my algorithms more. (All the questions were slight variations on popular leetcode questions)
>> and the feedback was that I need to practice my algorithms more.
I'm optimistic I will live long enough to see the death of this type of interview. Great gate-keeper question, easy to mark, next to zero signalling value as to ability to problem solve or program. Sigh...
When interviewing we are instructed to write up the interview question and answer and score on a rubric with citations into the interview notes. These notes then go to the hiring committee who makes the decision without knowing the human side at all. I think the point is something like this
where the hiring committee is intentionally blinded. There just isn't anywhere in the notes to record "what kind of a person you are". There is a separate interview which tries to capture that, but the rest of this is in the name of avoiding bias, and maybe being more lenient with someone who went to the same school as you, or makes you laugh or whatever.
that reasoning is understandable actually. Given Google's success, maybe this is the right way of approaching the hiring process over the long term at the scale of tens of thousands of employees. However, that kind of culture is just not for me. I ended up getting hired at a small startup working on cutting edge technology and have really enjoyed my time here. So in a way, it turned out well for both me and Google.
I've done a live on-site and a virtual on-site during COVID.
I was mostly stationary during the live on-site. I was taken to a room and the interviewers came to me. Some chit-chat, then given the problem, then working on the problem. A break for lunch, then I was taken to a room near where the first was for the rest of my interviews. Much the same deal. I stayed in the room while the interviewers cycled through. I was told that the lunch portion wasn't part of the interview and the person escorting me around didn't have any influence on the hiring decision. That may or may not be true, but it is what they told me.
About a week after, I was informed of my rejection. I'm fairly sure I know one interview I particularly bombed. The question involved something I had done before, but a while ago and I floundered a bit trying to recall all the bits and bobs of the syntax and structure. The other four I felt could go either way.
During the virtual on-site, it was just being passed off to various Google Meet rooms. I think I wrote code in a shared Google Doc. I felt ok in most of them. None particularly stuck out. A few days after the interview, I was informed I was being passed to the hiring committee. And then a few days after that, I was informed the hiring committee passed on me.
All the questions I got were vaguely LeetCode-ish. They were all of the template: Here's a vague problem with loose requirements. I'd ask some questions about particulars, "Can I assume this?", "Is this true for all?", "Is this sorted?", "Can I go to the bathroom?" "No, now I really have to go, last time was to avoid answering a question" etc. Then I'd write up a solution in my language of choice, trying to explain why I was doing what I was going while doing it. Just stream of conscious style stuff. Occasionally, I'd get comments or questions as I talked. Stuff about assumptions I was making or why I was trying this method. Then if there was time and they were satisfied with my solution, they'd ask me to essentially scale it up. "Ok, that works when you can hold the dataset in memory, but what if the dataset was three bazillion petabytes?"
I personally enjoy puzzles and challenges, so I found the process fun even though the fact that it is an interview makes it a little more. But since I have also had a job both times I interviewed, the stakes are a bit lower for me, which also helps.
I've had mixed experiences with their recruiters, and their interviewers. Some recruiters were on the ball and pushed things forward; others just disappeared. Some interviewers were great, clearly wanted it to be a collaborative thing, so were responsive to the questions I asked and helpful in rubber ducking as I talked through it (I'm thinking here especially of an algorithm session)...others clearly didn't care, were cold and didn't seek to answer anything in a way I could move forward (here I'm thinking of a system design session; exactly where you -need- answers to scope anything out).
I happily never particularly cared one way or the other about working for Google (and only once or twice did their recruiters reach out/get back to me when I was actually looking; I am sufficiently ambivalent that most of the times their recruiters have reached out have been "I'm not currently looking"), but their cachet has only dropped since I started my career, and their remote-as-second-class-citizen approach currently makes it a non-starter for me. I'm not going back to the office.
This is very similar to my experience. TBH, being able to not talk through what I’m coding the _whole_ time, unlike what it shown in the official “What to expect” Google videos, was a relief. Unfortunately, that change in expectation sort of threw me off; there became uncertainty in what was expected of me. This uncertainty hindered my creative juices while problem-solving but nowhere near as bad as the interview prior, which I won’t go into since I am paranoid about the interviewer seeing this comment :)
The experience was long and the recruiters were great but I definitely didn't feel like interviewers listened to what I had to say. Like I'd talk about past work, hostile managers, waiting 4 months for an admin to install software that was blocking a project. Then the Googler would ask something idiotic like, "tell me about a time you rallied your team to meet a strict deadline."
All I could think was, "I just explained how I'm out here waiting 4 months for software. Nobody is rallying shit. There aren't strict deadlines. Nobody cares. That's why I'm here interviewing."
Amazon was the same way. All they were asking was like, "Why didn't you adapt and overcome this obstacle? blah blah" What!? This is defense software numb nuts- I don't have privileges.
It seems that they ask great questions for engineers who already come from that culture.
FWIW, I've used this as my answer to that exact question. "Despite repeated requests and proactive discussions, all attempts to stem the <BAD THING HERE> were negated by management".
But yeah, in defense and a few other industries, it's really your job to shut up and work.
I think this is a by-product of some internal dynamics. A lot of teams push staff really hard to be interview trained because they see it as a funnel to get applicants for your team. I assume they think the interviewee will tell the recruiter "oh, I heard about foo team, are there any openings there?". This has gotten worse since perf started having a citizenship component. The easiest way to get citizenship points is to interview.
The worst was when you got picked for G&L interviews (Googliness and Leadership). Nobody defines those terms, so nobody knows how to interview for them. They give us a few sample questions for people at each level, so most people just blindly pick one or two and go with those. "Tell me about a time you rallied..." is definitely on that list.
Let's be honest, for most employees interviewing was a chore, and not one that they could see the outcomes of. So of course the experiences are going to drag out and be monotonous and robotic.
It feels like they have no actual direction but they think if they just hire enough smart people (and prevent those smart people from working at competitors) they'll figure something out along the way. It's why they have a near constant stream of product/service failures (https://killedbygoogle.com/).
Same. The culture of early tech (nap pods, free food, work whenever) isn't compatible with the more mainstream kind of employees they're now bringing on. Gone is the passion, from all sides, and the perks and allowances given to truly obsessed developers just aren't sustainable with both the bloat and complexities hiring anyone but brings with it.
For me its appearances versus reality. When I first got into the industry, I worshipped the chance to work at Google (or Facebook, MS, etc). I've since stopped worshipping and now I would not take a job with them. Often I wonder why my mind changed over the last 4-5 years but it comes down to the fact that I've seen how the industry works. Google is very much like any other megacorp, just with an extra coat of prestige to make you want to work there, even though it is prestigious, that prestige isn't going to make the problems that megacorps run into go away.
I'm sure they have infra issues, I'm sure there are messy ass codebases saddled with tech debt everywhere, I'm sure that there is going to be scant documentation and you're going to go on the journey of talking to multiple teams. When I was younger I would have said: "but it's google, they must have figured it out". Now that I'm older I say: "but it's google, no way they don't have these issues, no thanks".
Successful companies might become megacorps, and you'd imagine there would be a new wave of hungry young ambitious companies that try to displace them. Trouble is the last generation of such companies included some with extremely shady and cutthroat cultures, e.g. Uber.
Yeah this is a sticky issue because it falls under religious freedom. Would you want to be the director at Google sued for firing somebody due to their religion?
The primary mechanism that is allowing this situation seems to be the split between actual Google employees and contractors.
- Less enforcement of hiring standards and methods allowed a cult member in a management role to hire other cult members and arrange them within his organization
- These contracted cult members primarily work around other contractors, who can only complain to their contracting agency not Google.
- The contracts in place make it nearly impossible for the agencies to put pressure on Google beyond ceasing to do business with them.
What woke factor are you seeing here? Google's doing capitalist stuff here not woke stuff, and a cult has found a hole in the structure they can exploit.
Every entity has one or more cults depending on its size, beit university, military, govt's & companies. You cant get away from them unless you live on the moon!
It doesn’t matter if a secular organization has a cult or even social organizations, labor practices need to remain fair regardless of membership. That seems to be the issue with this story as one of the directors in question has already lost lawsuits because of favoring cult members over non. The cult itself seems suspect, but that’s for law enforcement to determine.
Wish people understandstand how this interplays with politics and national identity.
It's an odd feature of humanity and a bug part of why I could never call myself an atheist as that too didn't go far enough with this understanding. Fundamentally religious by default and interesting how that plays in PR and advertisements.
Its all intertwined, religion, politics, etc etc. Cults, cliques, gangs, its all just a play on words by specialists in words and the nuanced differences whilst having similar properties. Something to keep us busy if other things dont keep us busy.
Google, like almost every large organization, is de facto psychopathic. Its values align with "woke" values because its profits do not depend on the favorable opinions and/or work performance of racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, or other traditional Western bigots. Its profits do depend on the work performance of casteists, therefore Google will use every means at its disposal to preserve that profit.
If tomorrow the Google board of directors and executives found that someone had created an AI that could single-handedly replace every single other Google employee with the caveat that it absolutely hated left-handed people, Google would be posting thoughtful articles about how anyone not right-handed deserved to be rounded up and put in camps.
> Its values align with "woke" values because its profits do not depend on the favorable opinions and/or work performance of racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, or other traditional Western bigots.
It's deeper than that. There are genuine economic incentives for corporations to align themselves with progressive values. Racist hiring schemes artificially restrict the labor pool, and would deny them access to many of the best workers. Furthermore, having a diverse workforce reduces the risk of unionization. Amazon specifically is known to track low ethnic and racial diversity as a unionization risk; the other big companies probably do similar. The most obnoxious aspects of corporate "wokeness", the anti-racist training and similar "get lectured by HR" programs, likely serve to decrease the risk of unionization by keeping employees nervous and on their toes around each other. A workplace where everybody is walking on eggshells, treating their coworkers like potential landmines, is not exactly fertile ground for labor organization.
Christianity started as a cult. Protestantism after it.
(You are right of course, Brahmanism is not a cult, but my point is many mainstream religions at one point counted as such before they became well established as their own thing)
Please do not take HN threads into religious flamewar. This is a classic generic flamewar tangent, exactly the sort of thing the site guidelines ask you not to do here. If you'd please review them and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
Edit: you've been posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to other threads to. Could you please stop? We ban accounts that do this kind of thing because we're trying for a different sort of forum here.
I guess the bigger question is: is Ycombinator or any receiving VC funds in a lawsuit or otherwise scandal regarding caste-based discrimination? Since this has been discussed here before without threat of deplatforming, something must have changed.
> That has nothing to do with the GP comment being religious flamebait and therefore against the site guidelines, which it obviously was.
Sure, I get that the comment was based partially in religious hatred and "flamebait". However, at the core of most of those types of comments are a kernel of truth. And if anything, PG has written about understanding those essential pieces of truth... even if they are uncomfortable.
And, converting a flamebait comment with a kernel of truth to an actual intellectual conversation should be the height of what HN ascribes to.
> I understand the internet forum instinct to look for specialized nefarious secret reasons when a standard moderation decision gets made, but really.
Wow. What you're ascribing a conspiracy theory to is what I would call "bias". And normal news orgs put a bias like (eg: "XYZ company is our sponsor"). I'm not invoking some super secret cabal, as your "nefarious secret reasons" would have it.
And I would ask that you follow the guidelines, primarily pertaining to "dont be snarky". I know I have a penchant to doing that sometimes, but I try not to.
" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. "
I’m from a place pretty near Oregon House and used to drive by it every couple of months. IIRC these people made decent wine, and you could go see their art collection for free, but I never got around to it.
That's pretty standard for cults actually. A big part of having a successful cult is screening out people who aren't susceptible. Having a less extreme outer cult ensures only the most vulnerable are served up to the more extreme stuff.
See NXIVM or even Scientology with the split between "normies" out walking around and the Gold Base/Sea Org people.
I'd be more than happy to join a cult and do their bidding if they got me a good job at Google with good long term prospects, it sounds like a fair deal to me. Mr Lloyd would have been much better off working out a deal with the cult rather than suing his employer, perhaps he could have nominally joined them and tithed 10% in exchange for their nepotism; it's certainly what I would have done.
It's not illegal to be in a cult. Maybe it's left out for legal reasons, but there's no suggestion in the article that they did bad anything at all to the author.
Maybe he was afraid of the whiteness of it, or the allegedly rampant gay sex.
> Then, without warning or reason, I was fired. The person who actually gave me the decision didn’t know why they were doing it. They said they had no involvement in the decision. They asked me if I knew why I was being fired. I said “I assume you would know, right?” They didn’t. (A funny detail: The raise for that promotion I was given was processed after I was fired, so I received two last checks at the higher rate. Fired and promoted at the same time.)
> Even though Dan was not in my chain of supervisors, I’m convinced he helped to orchestrate my termination. I believe he saw me as an existential threat, to him, his colleagues and their jobs. The purported reasoning for my termination was an email I had sent requesting the retention of an editor, which was a completely normal business issue. In retrospect, it looks like Dan was looking for pretext to shuffle me off for some time before that.
The whole reason he filed the lawsuit, and thus why we are reading about this, is because he was fired and he feels it was because he tried to speak out about the cult. Did anyone in this thread read any of it lol
But he was harmed: he was allegedly fired for reporting religious discrimination.
He may not have been harmed by the cult members, but he was (again, allegedly) harmed by the culture created by this cult. "I learned of someone being discriminated due to their religious beliefs (or lack of), I reported it and the company fired me" makes a good case for the company supporting and/or engaging in religious discrimination.
I'm not saying the author will win - it is entirely possible, like you say, that he was fired for being disruptive or other hundred valid reasons. But I do think the author raises at least a good initial argument.
>But he was harmed: he was allegedly fired for reporting religious discrimination.
He was allegedly harmed. If, as the person you are replying to speculates, he was freaking out and being a bad employee after discovering the affiliation of his coworkers, then potentially that's a righteous firing and he wasn't harmed in a legal sense. If as he alleges, he was fired for having valid concerns, then yes, harm in a legal sense.
Commenters: please don't post shallow/unsubstantive/flamey things to this thread—or any HN thread, but this one seems to have been unusually triggery. Probably the submitted title "Cults at Google" contributed to that.
'Closer to the story' is not a virtue in this case because it's essentially one side of the story - without context and only from one of the parties in a multi-party dispute.
The guidelines are intended to promote better, more curious discussion, not strict compliance to the letter. An NYT story about a dispute is a better starting point than one interested party's story and it's the kind of url change that's both pretty obvious and common on HN.
For the rest of us who don't want to "sign up online and forced to call to cancel":
I present Firefox plugin "Bypass Paywalls Clean". Used in conjunction with "Ublock Origin" and you'll have the easiest and best use of the web to date.
While I agree that journalism needs to be supported somehow, saying that "everyone can read the article" is classist and out of touch. HN's audience extends far outside of the glorious realm of Silicon Valley, where everyone makes 6 figures and never has to worry about money.
I think the choice not to label this a cult is inappropriate moderation, considering how it's classified by numerous groups, the fact that it has a leader known for serial sexual abuse, etc. Cult fits, calling it a "religious sect" is a pretty big attack on religion.
You guys may be right - I haven't read either the article or the Twitter thread. In principle I'm open to reverting the URL if the latter really is more substantive and interesting. But there doesn't seem to be a consensus about this.
It is Google so it gets that much publicity which is good for that particular case because it will be investigated and sorted out. Sexual abuse and discrimination enablers will be investigated. Good.
Too bad for the other large size company where similar things happen which won't get similar publicity and won't ever be investigated.
Not working at GOOG, but I don't get the hate in the comments or the idea that it is a google thing. The tough interviews that everyone is very critical about are actually a good edge against that sort of system (recruiting members of your cult). Too bad the process/interviews aren't that hard for contractors?
"I was a TVC — which stands for “temps, vendors, and contractors,” a designation within Google for workers who aren’t full-time employees and are hired by third parties companies, not by Google itself. We do the same work as full-time Google employees — I worked right alongside them — but we don’t have the same corporate benefits."
This is another way to screw workers, allowing large companies to hire "employees" without having to pay benefits or FICA taxes. If Google managers are directing and controlling these contractors as if they were actual Google employees, doesn't this violate IRS rules on independent contractors?
For example, if I hire a company to do my video productions, that's fine. But if that company's employees all are required to work in my building, and I supply the desk, chair, computer, and have a employee/manager who directs their daily actions, they are not functioning as independent contractors according to IRS guidelines. In that case, the contractors might be able to sue Google for benefits and past taxes they've had to pay that Google employees don't have to pay.
Probably not, but there's no legal issue with a W2 employer directing you to work on the campus of another company whose own employees have better benefits.
Didn’t this already go through the court system long ago because of Microsoft and this is why these kinds of workers can only work for a particular company for 11 months and then have to be off for 3 months before they can get a new contract with the same company?
This is just one example of a much bigger issue, which is religious institutions quietly taking over secular businesses without anyone realizing it. It is so pervasive and so stealthy that it is hard to even talk about it without sounding like a crackpot. It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics, but it runs much, much deeper than that. The LDS Church, for example (a.k.a. Mormons) has vast business holdings, all of which funnel tax-free money back to the Church. Downtown Menlo Park is largely owned by the Presbyterian Church. I could go on and on.
All of this is driven by the fact that churches are not taxed in the U.S. They are legal tax havens, and they are very much used as such by oligarchs of all stripes.
They're not integrated. BSA where I grew up, on the South Side of Chicago, was (for instance) extremely Catholic. "Duty to God" is (or was?) a tenet of the organization, dating back to its founding. In the formative years of the BSA, that wasn't strange at all; what would have been unusual would have been members that weren't in some way affiliated with a religion. In fact, Boy Scouts is how I first learned about a bunch of religions --- Hinduism and Islam, in particular --- because they had different religious badges.
Eh. Bad choice of words I guess. The implication is that the BSA and LDS were tight. Apparently to the point that 1 in every 5 scout was also a Mormon. Which is weird when Mormons account for only about 2 percent of the population at large.
I think that's in large part because Scouting was almost obligatory for LDS kids (it isn't any longer, since the LDS church cut ties with the BSA) --- nobody pressured us Catholic school kids to join the Boy Scouts, and most didn't. The troop, meanwhile, met in the basement of my local parish. What I'd just want to call out is that even in the 1980s, the Boy Scouts were openly and emphatically multi-faith. Not just ecumenical, but also going out of its way to teach Scouts that they were going to encounter other Scouts from totally different faith traditions.
The BSA may have been problematic for other reasons! I haven't thought that much about them since I dropped out (I only made it to Scout First Class). It was a sort of inherently conservative organization, as you'd expect just from hearing the Scout Oath. You can see where the Scouting ethos would mesh pretty perfectly with LDS culture.
Are you sure about your assertions? I thought all LDS Church child businesses (such as KSL, Bonneville International, etc.) and land holdings were taxed. I was under the impression only the charitable arm of the church was not taxed (i.e. donations). IANATL though, so maybe there is some loophole being exploited I'm not aware of.
It'd be helpful if you could provide further information, because I haven't heard of this before. Extraordinary claims and all that...
>It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics
I thought evangelicalism has been strong on and off since America was founded; the rise now is closer to a return to the field after they were routed some time around 2008 (when they were getting a lot of press by losing debates about evolution and whether it should be taught in schools).
Evangelicism has been strong since the founding, but it is more brazenly political now than it has been historically. There is actually a legal requirement for churches to stay out of politics in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. The enforcement of that has gotten more lax over the last few decades.
With regards to information about entanglements between religion and business, start with the LDS church, whose business entanglements are well documented.
But the journalism about the more general problem is is not very comprehensive, probably because it is a very fraught topic.
Yeah, that came as a surprise to me too. And I have not verified this, but it came to me from a source that I consider reliable (a local real estate agent).
> There is actually a legal requirement for churches to stay out of politics in order to maintain their tax-exempt status.
Churches and charities can get involved in politics, including ballot issues and legislation. They just can't get involved in campaigns for specific candidates. In practice, the IRS is terrified of touching religious orgs so "anything goes" as long as the church isn't a straight up criminal enterprise.
IMO the actually important thing about churches is that they don't have to file a Form 990. I don't actually have much of an issue with churches getting involved in politics -- it happens on both sides and frankly the idea of religion being divorced from politics is a fairy tale anyways -- but I do wish every church had to file a Form 990 so the public (and congregants!) can see how this tax-free money is spent.
> It is so pervasive and so stealthy that it is hard to even talk about it without sounding like a crackpot
You're sitting in the intersection of 'it's pervasive', 'nobody is noticing it', and not listing the evidence for it. So yeah, it sounds crackpotty.
> It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics
Christians, evangelical or otherwise, have been generally active in politics for as long as Christianity has existed. To say this is an 'emerging' problem as though America started from a position of mainstream secularism seems entirely ahistorical. If anything, the generational trend has been the decline of superstition in all aspects of American society. 60 years ago it was common for public schools to make children recite christian prayers, but that's almost unheard of now. The trend is obviously towards secularization, and while that trend may not be happening fast enough to suit some of us, it's wildly disingenuous to suggest the trend is in the reverse direction.
Yep, I get that. I did give two examples, but no supporting evidence. In the case of Menlo Park being owned by the Presbyterian Church, I'm not sure how I would support that short of pulling up dozens of Menlo Park property records. I don't know of any journalism about this.
With regards to the LDS church, this is well-known and well-documented. Here's just one easily-found link:
The Business Insider article is I think a clear demonstration of what concerns me about this kind of analysis. The author seems to see strict secularism as the only "normal" way to run a business, declining to recognize a distinction between businesses owned by a religion and businesses whose owners happen to be devout followers of a religion. When simply printing the text "John 3:16" on the bottom of your soda cups is enough to be considered an extremely religious company, I hear "Downtown Menlo Park is largely owned by the Presbyterian Church" and question how much of that ownership is simply by people who happen to be leaders in their congregation. (In particular, Presbyterians aren't a single corporate structure like the Mormons are, so it's not clear which specific organization the claim should be understood to refer to.)
Bible verses on cups is one thing but Hobby lobby went to court to avoid paying women's insurance. Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays and fights for the right to discriminate against groups it marginalizes for religious reasons. These practices are bad for profit, bad for customers, bad for society, and only good for the religious leaders who take from the earnings without even being a part of the business.
It's also good for religious followers! This is really the lack of understanding I'm getting at. Many religious people genuinely believe that following their religion is more important than profit or customers and inherently good for society.
I'm not saying you have to agree with our beliefs, of course, but it's not right to think of religion affecting the secular world as some kind of weird practice that has to be explained by corrupt leaders. Most religions and basically all Christian churches teach that you should consider religious factors in your business and personal lives.
Is this another case of "corporate religion"? It's not new, I've seen studies of cases a few years ago. Terrifying to know some managers are adopting it and people get dragged into it. I understand individuality, free will and consciousness are not exactly valued in the brave new world paradigm, but I'd rather stay clear from such places.
“We have longstanding employee and supplier policies in place to prevent discrimination and conflicts of interest, and we take those seriously.”
Isn't adding a superfluous "and we take those seriously" the rhetorical equivalent of pouting?
Every time I read this - after an account suspension, for example - the impression I get is that no, they don't really take those things seriously. They're just improvising or leaving it for the algorithm.
I just switched to hackernews from a Gmail conversation I was having with Google customer support. The chain started when a Google person sent me a follow-up from a chat conversation where the Google support person refused to help me. The follow-up mail said a reply "will come directly to me". I replied and a second emailer replied back to me to "thank you for your understanding". I replied again and yet another Google support person replied to me saying that because I was "logged out" my ticket was now closed and that they were glad they could help.
Reading your comment I feel there is just a commitment to shallow lies from Google across the board. For example, why would the first emailer even tell me replies went directly to her? It obviously wasn't true. Why would three or four Google people email me, do absolutely nothing, and then close the ticket? Why not just say "We aren't helping" or just ignore my request?
Isn’t it just as likely that the software developers disempower the support staff as much as they do users? Maybe the agent did think that the reply would reach them, and the algorithm was being AB tested.
There is nothing more annoying than a Customer Support Chinese Room of Kafka, where tickets are transferred around only to take us back to square one each time.
And if plausible deniability from senior management would just add insult to injury, plausibly, claiming that things are taken seriously when things are obviously being neglected is just gaslighting.
Cults like this generally target and recruit damaged or otherwise vulnerable people. Also, they generally keep the crazy dialed down to a minimum in the beginning, then slow boil people over the course of several years. It often starts with "love bombing"; the cult heaps positive attention and praise on somebody who is unaccustomed to receiving anything like that.
This is brilliant. I thought I can't be manipulated easily. But after watching the video, I think I could have joined such a cult at some point. It basically boils down to giving love and attention to people who didn't get any and made to feel like a looser in their life before, specially by parents.
Have raised kids and teens. They can be dumb as absolute shit.
One daughter at 18 asked who she should vote for. So I tried explaining both sides of issues so she could make up her own mind.
She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for. She had zero interest in thinking for herself from about 17 until 23 when she started to ask questions and wanted to understand things.
Which was weird as she had been a highly independent thinker until hormones went crazy.
>She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for.
This sounds like so many zoomers I've encountered on the internet. "Just tell me what to do". There's just so much information in their world they don't cope well with the uncertainty.
I remember voting for the NDP at about age 18. I really believed that investing tax money in people who were in need was the most important investment we could make. I really thought that perverse incentives and corruption would be negligible. The Liberals won in our riding. We do FPTP in Canada, so my vote didn't really change anything. Then I voted Libertarian a couple years later, to send a heartfelt message that "I like freedom". Of course they were even less likely to win than the NDP.
Both times it was like a roller coaster, or a lottery, to form my underdeveloped opinion, wait in line, identify myself, give my papers, and later find out my chosen party didn't win. Your daughter missed out.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but according to Wikipedia, 85% of the world population is religious. So really it’s a small minority that don’t believe in obvious lies.
Setting aside the issue of cults, recruiting from church networks is fairly common. It's not surprising and often not nefarious. After all, a church is just another social setting. People also recruit from other non-professional networks -- adult sports leagues, hobbies, alumni networks, family friends, and so on. Churches are just another social group.
I am, however, surprised more companies don't have explicit HR conflict of interest clauses regarding religious entities. Not whole religions, but specific congregations/parishes/etc. Allowing these social networks as unchecked recruiting channels without some sort of control seems like asking for discrimination suits, even when the subject is a traditional religious organization rather than a cult.
I think about religion the same way I think about family. There's nothing wrong with referring your cousin or fellow congregant for a position, but a judicious company should probably flag the conflict of interest in the actual hiring process and perhaps also in management relationships. Otherwise you can end up with centers of influence in the company revolving around an external religious social network, which is a huge risk for the company.
(Alumni networks have the same issue in terms of institutional political dysfunction, but with the important difference that a company cannot be sued for preferring Stanford grads in promotions.)
I think the biggest obstacle is probably that flagging it requires asking for information on it. There's a lot of icky history about quotas to prevent there being "too many" Jews in a particular organization, for example. If you ask what a prospective hire's religion/congregation/parish/etc. is, you may say it's to prevent a conflict of interest, but it looks bad, and probably invites as much legal trouble as not monitoring it, if not more.
It is one thing if someone brings in a guy they know from their soccer team to interview, another if 90% of the people in a department turn out to be playing on it.
No, it's a huge difference. Manchester United fan is not a protected class in the US, but religion is. Hiring or demoting against someone who's not part of your church is Very Illegal in most situations but firing or demoting someone because you disagree with their football preferences is... perhaps psychotic, but totally legal.
As a former Oregon House resident, astonished to see it on the front page of HN.
It's interesting to see the same strategy implemented at Google, apparently, that they reportedly used to get members employed by Yuba county. There was a minor scandal, an investigation leading to a bunch of firings, years ago. Allegedly members were using their ties to get the county to look the other way at countless unpermitted structures. I understand that blew over in time, after which there was apparently a rehiring of some of those that were fired. (Some of this is just things I heard when I worked at the grocery store/gas station/video rental, which was and I believe still is the center of commerce in the area.) At that time it seemed like the fellowship made up about half the town population.
Anyways, for years they were trying to build a large colosseum and that must have been much harder to hide than the countless little shacks without addresses that they put members in, up driveways that wended and climbed past the main, addressed house. I think the colosseum led to the county's investigation. I'm not sure if they're still building it...
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 447 ms ] threadThe story is about a cult infiltrating from the outside, not a cult “popping up” from the inside.
I'm optimistic I will live long enough to see the death of this type of interview. Great gate-keeper question, easy to mark, next to zero signalling value as to ability to problem solve or program. Sigh...
When interviewing we are instructed to write up the interview question and answer and score on a rubric with citations into the interview notes. These notes then go to the hiring committee who makes the decision without knowing the human side at all. I think the point is something like this
https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/...
where the hiring committee is intentionally blinded. There just isn't anywhere in the notes to record "what kind of a person you are". There is a separate interview which tries to capture that, but the rest of this is in the name of avoiding bias, and maybe being more lenient with someone who went to the same school as you, or makes you laugh or whatever.
I was mostly stationary during the live on-site. I was taken to a room and the interviewers came to me. Some chit-chat, then given the problem, then working on the problem. A break for lunch, then I was taken to a room near where the first was for the rest of my interviews. Much the same deal. I stayed in the room while the interviewers cycled through. I was told that the lunch portion wasn't part of the interview and the person escorting me around didn't have any influence on the hiring decision. That may or may not be true, but it is what they told me.
About a week after, I was informed of my rejection. I'm fairly sure I know one interview I particularly bombed. The question involved something I had done before, but a while ago and I floundered a bit trying to recall all the bits and bobs of the syntax and structure. The other four I felt could go either way.
During the virtual on-site, it was just being passed off to various Google Meet rooms. I think I wrote code in a shared Google Doc. I felt ok in most of them. None particularly stuck out. A few days after the interview, I was informed I was being passed to the hiring committee. And then a few days after that, I was informed the hiring committee passed on me.
All the questions I got were vaguely LeetCode-ish. They were all of the template: Here's a vague problem with loose requirements. I'd ask some questions about particulars, "Can I assume this?", "Is this true for all?", "Is this sorted?", "Can I go to the bathroom?" "No, now I really have to go, last time was to avoid answering a question" etc. Then I'd write up a solution in my language of choice, trying to explain why I was doing what I was going while doing it. Just stream of conscious style stuff. Occasionally, I'd get comments or questions as I talked. Stuff about assumptions I was making or why I was trying this method. Then if there was time and they were satisfied with my solution, they'd ask me to essentially scale it up. "Ok, that works when you can hold the dataset in memory, but what if the dataset was three bazillion petabytes?"
I personally enjoy puzzles and challenges, so I found the process fun even though the fact that it is an interview makes it a little more. But since I have also had a job both times I interviewed, the stakes are a bit lower for me, which also helps.
I happily never particularly cared one way or the other about working for Google (and only once or twice did their recruiters reach out/get back to me when I was actually looking; I am sufficiently ambivalent that most of the times their recruiters have reached out have been "I'm not currently looking"), but their cachet has only dropped since I started my career, and their remote-as-second-class-citizen approach currently makes it a non-starter for me. I'm not going back to the office.
All I could think was, "I just explained how I'm out here waiting 4 months for software. Nobody is rallying shit. There aren't strict deadlines. Nobody cares. That's why I'm here interviewing."
Amazon was the same way. All they were asking was like, "Why didn't you adapt and overcome this obstacle? blah blah" What!? This is defense software numb nuts- I don't have privileges.
It seems that they ask great questions for engineers who already come from that culture.
FWIW, I've used this as my answer to that exact question. "Despite repeated requests and proactive discussions, all attempts to stem the <BAD THING HERE> were negated by management".
But yeah, in defense and a few other industries, it's really your job to shut up and work.
The worst was when you got picked for G&L interviews (Googliness and Leadership). Nobody defines those terms, so nobody knows how to interview for them. They give us a few sample questions for people at each level, so most people just blindly pick one or two and go with those. "Tell me about a time you rallied..." is definitely on that list.
Let's be honest, for most employees interviewing was a chore, and not one that they could see the outcomes of. So of course the experiences are going to drag out and be monotonous and robotic.
Good devs create easy times, etc.
I'm sure they have infra issues, I'm sure there are messy ass codebases saddled with tech debt everywhere, I'm sure that there is going to be scant documentation and you're going to go on the journey of talking to multiple teams. When I was younger I would have said: "but it's google, they must have figured it out". Now that I'm older I say: "but it's google, no way they don't have these issues, no thanks".
- Less enforcement of hiring standards and methods allowed a cult member in a management role to hire other cult members and arrange them within his organization
- These contracted cult members primarily work around other contractors, who can only complain to their contracting agency not Google.
- The contracts in place make it nearly impossible for the agencies to put pressure on Google beyond ceasing to do business with them.
What woke factor are you seeing here? Google's doing capitalist stuff here not woke stuff, and a cult has found a hole in the structure they can exploit.
It's an odd feature of humanity and a bug part of why I could never call myself an atheist as that too didn't go far enough with this understanding. Fundamentally religious by default and interesting how that plays in PR and advertisements.
If tomorrow the Google board of directors and executives found that someone had created an AI that could single-handedly replace every single other Google employee with the caveat that it absolutely hated left-handed people, Google would be posting thoughtful articles about how anyone not right-handed deserved to be rounded up and put in camps.
It's deeper than that. There are genuine economic incentives for corporations to align themselves with progressive values. Racist hiring schemes artificially restrict the labor pool, and would deny them access to many of the best workers. Furthermore, having a diverse workforce reduces the risk of unionization. Amazon specifically is known to track low ethnic and racial diversity as a unionization risk; the other big companies probably do similar. The most obnoxious aspects of corporate "wokeness", the anti-racist training and similar "get lectured by HR" programs, likely serve to decrease the risk of unionization by keeping employees nervous and on their toes around each other. A workplace where everybody is walking on eggshells, treating their coworkers like potential landmines, is not exactly fertile ground for labor organization.
-ism
a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory
(You are right of course, Brahmanism is not a cult, but my point is many mainstream religions at one point counted as such before they became well established as their own thing)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've been posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to other threads to. Could you please stop? We ban accounts that do this kind of thing because we're trying for a different sort of forum here.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+... reports 2400 links, since algolia is down for maintenance.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cisco-lawsuit/california-...
is one of the bigger articles about Caste-based discrimination.
Google also cancelled a talk over this topic as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-...
I guess the bigger question is: is Ycombinator or any receiving VC funds in a lawsuit or otherwise scandal regarding caste-based discrimination? Since this has been discussed here before without threat of deplatforming, something must have changed.
That has nothing to do with the GP comment being religious flamebait and therefore against the site guidelines, which it obviously was.
I understand the internet forum instinct to look for specialized nefarious secret reasons when a standard moderation decision gets made, but really.
Sure, I get that the comment was based partially in religious hatred and "flamebait". However, at the core of most of those types of comments are a kernel of truth. And if anything, PG has written about understanding those essential pieces of truth... even if they are uncomfortable.
And, converting a flamebait comment with a kernel of truth to an actual intellectual conversation should be the height of what HN ascribes to.
> I understand the internet forum instinct to look for specialized nefarious secret reasons when a standard moderation decision gets made, but really.
Wow. What you're ascribing a conspiracy theory to is what I would call "bias". And normal news orgs put a bias like (eg: "XYZ company is our sponsor"). I'm not invoking some super secret cabal, as your "nefarious secret reasons" would have it.
And I would ask that you follow the guidelines, primarily pertaining to "dont be snarky". I know I have a penchant to doing that sometimes, but I try not to.
" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. "
See NXIVM or even Scientology with the split between "normies" out walking around and the Gold Base/Sea Org people.
Maybe he was afraid of the whiteness of it, or the allegedly rampant gay sex.
> Then, without warning or reason, I was fired. The person who actually gave me the decision didn’t know why they were doing it. They said they had no involvement in the decision. They asked me if I knew why I was being fired. I said “I assume you would know, right?” They didn’t. (A funny detail: The raise for that promotion I was given was processed after I was fired, so I received two last checks at the higher rate. Fired and promoted at the same time.)
> Even though Dan was not in my chain of supervisors, I’m convinced he helped to orchestrate my termination. I believe he saw me as an existential threat, to him, his colleagues and their jobs. The purported reasoning for my termination was an email I had sent requesting the retention of an editor, which was a completely normal business issue. In retrospect, it looks like Dan was looking for pretext to shuffle me off for some time before that.
edit: i might as well just link it here too https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...
The author wasn't personally harmed in a significant way but I don't see how that's relevant.
"I was fired from my team there in February of 2021 because I raised alarm about a cult within Google, a group called the Fellowship of Friends. "
Sounds to me like he freaked out because he was working with weirdos, wanted 'someone to do something about it', and then wouldn't let it go.
He may not have been harmed by the cult members, but he was (again, allegedly) harmed by the culture created by this cult. "I learned of someone being discriminated due to their religious beliefs (or lack of), I reported it and the company fired me" makes a good case for the company supporting and/or engaging in religious discrimination.
I'm not saying the author will win - it is entirely possible, like you say, that he was fired for being disruptive or other hundred valid reasons. But I do think the author raises at least a good initial argument.
He was allegedly harmed. If, as the person you are replying to speculates, he was freaking out and being a bad employee after discovering the affiliation of his coworkers, then potentially that's a righteous firing and he wasn't harmed in a legal sense. If as he alleges, he was fired for having valid concerns, then yes, harm in a legal sense.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Commenters: please don't post shallow/unsubstantive/flamey things to this thread—or any HN thread, but this one seems to have been unusually triggery. Probably the submitted title "Cults at Google" contributed to that.
I present Firefox plugin "Bypass Paywalls Clean". Used in conjunction with "Ublock Origin" and you'll have the easiest and best use of the web to date.
The "original source" is a blog post titled "The Cult in Google", here: https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...
https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...
I was not aware of that guideline, will keep it in mind in future.
Too bad for the other large size company where similar things happen which won't get similar publicity and won't ever be investigated.
Not working at GOOG, but I don't get the hate in the comments or the idea that it is a google thing. The tough interviews that everyone is very critical about are actually a good edge against that sort of system (recruiting members of your cult). Too bad the process/interviews aren't that hard for contractors?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083
https://twitter.com/alphabetworkers/status/15373969466917724...
"I was a TVC — which stands for “temps, vendors, and contractors,” a designation within Google for workers who aren’t full-time employees and are hired by third parties companies, not by Google itself. We do the same work as full-time Google employees — I worked right alongside them — but we don’t have the same corporate benefits."
This is another way to screw workers, allowing large companies to hire "employees" without having to pay benefits or FICA taxes. If Google managers are directing and controlling these contractors as if they were actual Google employees, doesn't this violate IRS rules on independent contractors?
For example, if I hire a company to do my video productions, that's fine. But if that company's employees all are required to work in my building, and I supply the desk, chair, computer, and have a employee/manager who directs their daily actions, they are not functioning as independent contractors according to IRS guidelines. In that case, the contractors might be able to sue Google for benefits and past taxes they've had to pay that Google employees don't have to pay.
All of this is driven by the fact that churches are not taxed in the U.S. They are legal tax havens, and they are very much used as such by oligarchs of all stripes.
The BSA may have been problematic for other reasons! I haven't thought that much about them since I dropped out (I only made it to Scout First Class). It was a sort of inherently conservative organization, as you'd expect just from hearing the Scout Oath. You can see where the Scouting ethos would mesh pretty perfectly with LDS culture.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/18/us/latter-day-saints-charity-...
>It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics
I thought evangelicalism has been strong on and off since America was founded; the rise now is closer to a return to the field after they were routed some time around 2008 (when they were getting a lot of press by losing debates about evolution and whether it should be taught in schools).
With regards to information about entanglements between religion and business, start with the LDS church, whose business entanglements are well documented.
But the journalism about the more general problem is is not very comprehensive, probably because it is a very fraught topic.
Churches and charities can get involved in politics, including ballot issues and legislation. They just can't get involved in campaigns for specific candidates. In practice, the IRS is terrified of touching religious orgs so "anything goes" as long as the church isn't a straight up criminal enterprise.
IMO the actually important thing about churches is that they don't have to file a Form 990. I don't actually have much of an issue with churches getting involved in politics -- it happens on both sides and frankly the idea of religion being divorced from politics is a fairy tale anyways -- but I do wish every church had to file a Form 990 so the public (and congregants!) can see how this tax-free money is spent.
You're sitting in the intersection of 'it's pervasive', 'nobody is noticing it', and not listing the evidence for it. So yeah, it sounds crackpotty.
> It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics
Christians, evangelical or otherwise, have been generally active in politics for as long as Christianity has existed. To say this is an 'emerging' problem as though America started from a position of mainstream secularism seems entirely ahistorical. If anything, the generational trend has been the decline of superstition in all aspects of American society. 60 years ago it was common for public schools to make children recite christian prayers, but that's almost unheard of now. The trend is obviously towards secularization, and while that trend may not be happening fast enough to suit some of us, it's wildly disingenuous to suggest the trend is in the reverse direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer_in_the_United_St...
With regards to the LDS church, this is well-known and well-documented. Here's just one easily-found link:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2012-07-12/the-m...
Here are some links about the more general problem:
https://www.businessinsider.com/18-extremely-religious-big-a...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/religion-bigger-busin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_as_a_business
I'm not saying you have to agree with our beliefs, of course, but it's not right to think of religion affecting the secular world as some kind of weird practice that has to be explained by corrupt leaders. Most religions and basically all Christian churches teach that you should consider religious factors in your business and personal lives.
This is an external group that got a foothold and nepotistically hired more from its ranks and made purchases from its businesses.
Isn't adding a superfluous "and we take those seriously" the rhetorical equivalent of pouting?
Every time I read this - after an account suspension, for example - the impression I get is that no, they don't really take those things seriously. They're just improvising or leaving it for the algorithm.
Reading your comment I feel there is just a commitment to shallow lies from Google across the board. For example, why would the first emailer even tell me replies went directly to her? It obviously wasn't true. Why would three or four Google people email me, do absolutely nothing, and then close the ticket? Why not just say "We aren't helping" or just ignore my request?
And if plausible deniability from senior management would just add insult to injury, plausibly, claiming that things are taken seriously when things are obviously being neglected is just gaslighting.
...
What makes people join these groups to begin with?? Why do they believe such obvious lies?
It's the exploitation that's as old as time itself.
One daughter at 18 asked who she should vote for. So I tried explaining both sides of issues so she could make up her own mind.
She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for. She had zero interest in thinking for herself from about 17 until 23 when she started to ask questions and wanted to understand things.
Which was weird as she had been a highly independent thinker until hormones went crazy.
This sounds like so many zoomers I've encountered on the internet. "Just tell me what to do". There's just so much information in their world they don't cope well with the uncertainty.
I remember voting for the NDP at about age 18. I really believed that investing tax money in people who were in need was the most important investment we could make. I really thought that perverse incentives and corruption would be negligible. The Liberals won in our riding. We do FPTP in Canada, so my vote didn't really change anything. Then I voted Libertarian a couple years later, to send a heartfelt message that "I like freedom". Of course they were even less likely to win than the NDP.
Both times it was like a roller coaster, or a lottery, to form my underdeveloped opinion, wait in line, identify myself, give my papers, and later find out my chosen party didn't win. Your daughter missed out.
I am, however, surprised more companies don't have explicit HR conflict of interest clauses regarding religious entities. Not whole religions, but specific congregations/parishes/etc. Allowing these social networks as unchecked recruiting channels without some sort of control seems like asking for discrimination suits, even when the subject is a traditional religious organization rather than a cult.
I think about religion the same way I think about family. There's nothing wrong with referring your cousin or fellow congregant for a position, but a judicious company should probably flag the conflict of interest in the actual hiring process and perhaps also in management relationships. Otherwise you can end up with centers of influence in the company revolving around an external religious social network, which is a huge risk for the company.
(Alumni networks have the same issue in terms of institutional political dysfunction, but with the important difference that a company cannot be sued for preferring Stanford grads in promotions.)
But a very important difference from the co.'s perspective is that discriminating against non-soccer-players isn't illegal...
(No, that's not because we're on one side or the other of any particular flamewar. The entire category is hellish and off topic.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's interesting to see the same strategy implemented at Google, apparently, that they reportedly used to get members employed by Yuba county. There was a minor scandal, an investigation leading to a bunch of firings, years ago. Allegedly members were using their ties to get the county to look the other way at countless unpermitted structures. I understand that blew over in time, after which there was apparently a rehiring of some of those that were fired. (Some of this is just things I heard when I worked at the grocery store/gas station/video rental, which was and I believe still is the center of commerce in the area.) At that time it seemed like the fellowship made up about half the town population.
Anyways, for years they were trying to build a large colosseum and that must have been much harder to hide than the countless little shacks without addresses that they put members in, up driveways that wended and climbed past the main, addressed house. I think the colosseum led to the county's investigation. I'm not sure if they're still building it...