[plinkplonk]

The same people come out of the woodwork anytime michaelochurch says anything about Google, and sometimes even when he doesn't say anything about Google. It is getting a little tiresome.

As someone with no stake in either condemning or defending Google, I'll just say that while I admire Google as a company, and have many friends who work there, this kind of reflexive attacking of anyone who criticizes Google's internal heirarchy, or thinks some of its decisions were wrong etc, and constant defense and glorification of everything it does, is grating. And people talk about Apple fanboys.

It doesn't matter if everything m_o_c says is exactly true or not. It doesn't matter if what went down when he was at Google is entirely his fault. Just give it a rest already.

My 2 cents.

[jrockway]

His stories are just so far removed from reality we can't help it. It's like a programming language debate where someone says "Perl has no OO" and complaining that "Perl programmers come out of the woodwork to correct me every time I say that." Well yeah. It's the Internet. That's what we do.

More seriously, this affects my ability to hire people I want to work with. When I have to start by explaining away random falsehoods about Google, that wastes time I could have spent talking about projects or programming or something. You only get one first impression. It's better if the first impression is reality instead of a contrived fantasy world.

Also, I take exception with the statement that I'm "coming out of the woodwork" to post. I am in the top 10 highest reputation users here. I'm already out of the woodwork :)

[plinkplonk]

I suspect what really affects your ability to hire people you want to work with is your posts on HN and what they convey about you (vs michealochurch's posts and what they convey about him).

Right now (and please take this as constructive feed back, because that is the intention) in your posts here you come across as someone who has totally drunk the Google koolaid and can see no wrong in anything Google does, and attacks anyone who says anything negative about Google or any of its products, with a special grudge against michaelochurch.[1]

I am not sure that helps you hire the right kind of people. But hey, you know better.

[1] please note: I am not saying you are a fanatic. just saying you come across as someone who sees Google as some kind of Immaculate Workplace, that can never do wrong. Just feedback. I could be totally wrong.

[jrockway]

Noted. It is hard to dislike Google when you previously worked for Bank of America. Like I imply in another comment, one's previous experiences can easily taint one's future experiences.

Even with a little bias, I I really think I get it mostly right. Here's another perspective:

https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/UgCL6YRw...

Steve writes: ``One day I started getting jealous of this digital piano that people were playing every day. So I sent a nice email to someone in facilities asking if there was any chance we might be able to get a guitar. She said it sounded like a good idea and she promised to look into it.

A month went by, and I started to get a little sad, because I thought they were just not interested. But I sent her a little email and asked if there was any update. Just hoping, you know, against hope.

She told me: "Oh yeah, I'm sorry -- I forgot to tell you. We talked it over with the directors, and we all decided the best thing to do was to build a music studio."

So now we have Soundgarden over in Building A. It has two rooms: one with soundproofing and two electric guitars and a bass and a keyboard and a drum set and a jam hub and amps and all kinds of other crap that I can't identify except to say that it's really popular. The other room has a ukulele and some sort of musical drum and a jazz guitar and some other classical instruments.''

My experience is the same. Any opportunity that Google has to spend a lot of money on me, they take. And yup, that makes me pretty darn happy, especially coming from Bank of America!

[plinkplonk]

ha, but that's my point exactly.

Steve Yegge says Google is a cool place to work. Peter Norvig thinks it is a great place to work. m_o_c thinks differently. All good.

If Yegge starts stalking m_o_c on HN that gives a different impression to neutral onlookers, even when the underlying facts haven't changed. That was my only point.

And yes, as someone who has worked at "Bank of America" type companies, I get exactly what you are trying to say. Good for you.

[jrockway]

One last response:

If Yegge starts stalking m_o_c on HN that gives a different impression to neutral onlookers. That was my only point.

His post is the top-rated comment on the top-rated article. Yes, I read HN and reply to comments frequently. While we await some form of therapy for this obvious mental defect, we will just have to accept the more-than-occasional comment from me :)

But to be fair, I didn't go out of my way to look for michaelochurch, and, in fact, I was just defending someone else who was being blasted for being critical of Michael. If Google was brought up and nobody corrected Michael, I wasn't going to. Like you say, it's been covered again and again and it is probably not worth rehashing. Oh well.

I have run into other comments from Michael, and I treat them at face value:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780793

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780879

Ultimately, I don't think I'm a crazy person. Bring up programming, we'll talk about programming. Bring up Google, we'll talk about Google :)

(Oh, and one more things: I do complain about Google on HN. I think Wallet being blocked on Verizon is dumb. I think the lack of the Android trackball is dumb. I think the whole fake-open-source process around Android is dumb. But seeing as how we live in an imperfect world, I'm willing to live with this. As time improves, things will get better.)

[DanBC]

It is disappointing that you cannot see m_o_c's attention-seeking flamebaiting for what it is.

It's a shame you're happy to allow him to say whatever he likes about a company (and I'm not talking about Google) yet you're unhappy when people calmly correct him; even though you don't know the company, or who works there, or what the situation is, and the people correcting him do know the company, and the people working there, and what the situation is.

A huge chunk of this thread is taken up with pointless responses to m_o_c's comments. He flamebaits Google; Googlers cannot respond fully because stuff is still private; a bunch of people who don't know the truth either side pile on; useful discussion is pushed further down the page.

> If Yegge starts stalking m_o_c on HN

When m_o_c's comment is the first in thread on the first thread on HN there's no stalking needed. m_o_c is deliberately choosing to push the buttons of Googlers knowing that they'll really want to respond (and I'm grateful to them for showing some restraint).

[dpritchett]

I don't think we can blame Michael for writing comments that are upvoted to the top of the thread. I generally try to share my personal experiences as they relate to threads, and if the community as a whole finds them worth upvoting then so be it.

Perhaps you'd like a technical solution to your problem, in which case you can petition PG for a backend solution or you can whip up a quick browser extension to hide comment trees or to ignore Michael.

[michaelochurch]

Steve Yegge says Google is a cool place to work. Peter Norvig thinks it is a great place to work. m_o_c thinks differently. All good.

Also, there's a "blind man and the elephant" thing going on. Google is a huge company. I'm sure Google is a great place to work-- for Peter Norvig. If you're already great, the rewards and environment are fantastic; if you're good and trying to become great, it's a bit sclerotic, because there are 10,000 other people who've been there longer than you and who also want to become great, and most of the work Google thinks it needs to have done won't help you improve or advance.

Google is not some horrible company. It's actually quite good, even if poorly managed. The quality of engineers is very high, and the perks are fantastic. It's just not the best place if you're in your mid-20s, still somewhat green, and want to become great. It takes too much time, and too much irrelevant people-pleasing work, to advance.

[jamesaguilar]

I suspect you would feel differently if you had an internal view of the things he said. I am, you might say, the least fanatical of all googlers, and am quite pessimistic about the company in a lot of ways. Even with that I feel a twinge of lol every time I see an m_o_c post on anything having to do with ethics, employers, and what not. What he "blew the whistle" on had nothing to do with ethical management by any sane person's definition. I am highly inclined to doubt his new foray into workplace controversy as well, considering how quickly it has followed on the heels of the last.

Personally, I'm happy to call him a liar, although I typically refrain because I can't really provide any evidence of it externally.

[plinkplonk]

sure, I am not saying m_o_c is right, or ethical, or sane or anything. I don't know the man from Adam.

I am just some random hacker half the world away. All I am saying is, as an outsider who knows nothing about what is really going down, when I see a pack of people piling on to someone for saying something which seems like no big deal to me (large companies with tens of thousands of employees have a few unethical managers/political bs happening here and there duh), you give him more credibility than he might otherwise get.

[waterlesscloud]

It's very clear that he had a different experience working at the company that you did. Leave it at that and let it go.

The way people pile on him every time he sticks up his head does far more harm to Google than it does good.

If he's "wrong", then he's wrong. You would hope than anyone capable of working for Google would be capable of sorting through conflicting evidence on their own. Trust them and leave them to it.