Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by EmployedRussian 3342 days ago
> Do you work for Google?

I do. I've also done 200+ interviews.

> Googlers are known to come out to defend their employer on HN

Well, sure. It's not because Google tells us to defend it though, but rather to state the facts as we see them.
1 comments
thesmallestcat 3342 days ago
On the other hand, I understand that part of the employment contract is that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company. Horror stories come out, but few and far between due to this risk. Google's certainly not alone in having clauses like that, but the volume of Google defense on HN feels like astroturf. So that's where my cynicism comes from.
link
EmployedRussian 3342 days ago
> I understand that part of the employment contract is that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company.

You understand this based on what?

Out of curiosity, I just went through my employment agreement, and did not find any such clauses.

> Horror stories come out, but few and far between due to this risk.

Or due to the fact that they rarely happen (I am not disputing that they do sometimes happen).

> the volume of Google defense on HN feels like astroturf.

Like I said earlier, since you are dead set to never apply, you'll never find out what (if anything) you've missed.

link
thesmallestcat 3342 days ago
Seriously? Maybe you're an exception, but it's not like a search for "google employee nda" returns nothing. It's been discussed on HN as well.
link
EmployedRussian 3342 days ago
Google NDA covers (non)disclosure of Google confidential info. It has nothing to do with "bad-mouth"ing before or after termination of employment.
link
ocdtrekkie 3342 days ago
Perhaps not, but if you say something negative about Google, and it gets a lot of attention from the public, I think you can agree that you're probably going to get fired. Let's be real here, NDA or no NDA, this is true of working for any company.

Which is why the "personal views" of a current company employee of any organization posted publicly is close to useless.

link
EmployedRussian 3342 days ago
> I think you can agree that you're probably going to get fired.

thesmallestcat claimed "that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company", and I claimed that no such clause exists in the standard contract of employment.

By the time you are an ex Googler, getting fired is unlikely to be an effective deterrent.

> Which is why the "personal views" of a current company employee of any organization posted publicly is close to useless.

Either you believe that the company is forcing me to write this (instead of just remaining silent), or your argument is not very logical.

link