[greenyoda]

Note that this was written by someone who spent three months at Google as an intern, so it's probably not very representative of what it's really like to work there. After three months you can't really understand much about a complex corporate culture or become familiar with more than a tiny corner of a huge company. And interns aren't involved in corporate politics, performance reviews, etc.

[dewitt]

I found it fairly accurate, and I've worked there seven years.

For most engineers most of the time, the job isn't politics or performance reviews. It's writing interesting software with talented teammates.

(Counterexamples of course exist, and a handful of vocal ones certainly like to chime in on threads like this. But if it weren't still mostly good for engineers at Google, Google wouldn't still employ the great engineers it does. But it does have great engineers to this day, so something is still going mostly right.)

[varelse]

As one of the vocal ones(tm), even I would say Google is fantastic if you get allocated onto the right team. This obviously occurs most of the time or the place would be out of business.

What led to me becoming one of the vocal ones is what happens when allocation fails and there's really no resort other than trying to fit in doing something completely uninteresting or leaving. Google seemingly does not acknowledge that the allocation process is in any way flawed.

My mistake was I should have insisted on an allocation upfront as a condition of accepting the offer made to me. After acing the interview, all the power was in my hands and I failed to make use of it.

[dewitt]

I'm sincerely sorry things didn't work out in your case, varelse. I don't know your backstory, and it wouldn't be my story to tell even if I did.

But I do know it makes me sad whenever I hear that we have any attrition, regretted or otherwise. And I know as an eng manager I try to put myself out there for /any/ engineer who wants a hand, or even just a sympathetic ear. Some cases are just unfixable, but I like to believe we still can repair a good number of them.

I hope things worked out better for you wherever you landed next.

[varelse]

I had an offer for something more suited to my skills before I left Google, skills that I knew Google would ultimately need, but didn't yet need when I was there. In fact I had previously turned said offer down to join Google in the first place. These employers were happy to have me. All is good there.

What isn't so good is that since I left Google, several positions have arisen that would very much make use of my existing skill set. Several people within have tried to get me considered for those positions only to get shut down by HR without so much as a phone screen. So I would appear to be on some sort of black list. There are worse things in life, but it does seem silly to me.

[asdfprou]

It certainly comes to no surprise to anybody that a company as large as Google will have mixups in their hiring/recruiting process.

Often one arm of the organization does not know what the other is doing, although I am sure Google is constantly trying to improve their internal communications in order to prevent exactly this.

As for your point about the black list... I would say it would likely be closer to a note that has been placed in your recruiting profile instead.

[Helianthus]

Hahaha come on, just what do you think a blacklist is?

[Helianthus]

> Several people within have tried to get me considered for those positions only to get shut down by HR without so much as a phone screen.

Well, I rather think that verifies my criticism of dewitt.

[seanmcdirmid]

Google has to get someone to work on the boring but necessary projects! Google appears to hire high-end passionate talent; these are the people who aren't going to be satisfied doing something they aren't interested in and/or don't involve many hard problems, just lots of necessary grunt work (all projects require grinding, but some more than others). They care too much and are not in it just for the money.

I would be surprised if Google did not know what projects are problematic, but finding solutions would be another matter.

[varelse]

And that's exactly what happened to me. I was senior level talent at the preceding employer with a fantastic track record. When I started at Google, I was effectively told to start over from scratch. I'm not just in it for the money. The money can briefly distract me, but if I don't feel passionate about what I'm doing, I tune out, and ultimately leave.

[seanmcdirmid]

Microsoft (my employer) at least doesn't really have this problem. First, we hire from a broader talent base so we usually have talent for teams that aren't as sexy as others. Second, you interview to the team you will be working with, even if it is an internal transfer. This is bi-directional: they aren't just interviewing you, you are interviewing them. Perhaps Google simply needs to make the interviewing more bi-directional at the project/team level to fix the problem. From what I understand, right now allocation works only in one directly: teams bid for the new employee, but the employee doesn't get to bid on the teams!

[Helianthus]

I'm trying to figure out just what makes me uncomfortable about your comment.

In the end, maybe it comes down to: what you have written are words, which are only an appearance. I don't have any means of verifying your record as an eng manager, and this comment doesn't contain any reference to direct activity in this case--nor should it!--because that is the kind of action that should happen within Google's private mechanics.

That's the discomfort: greetings and farewells are formal gestures, but all-too-often empty ones. Yours ring empty to me.

Everything about your post, whether you intended that or not, is constructed to make you/Google look good. I bet you wouldn't say your intent was to make yourself look good, right? Then what was your objective?

And in any case, is any of that a bad thing? Or is it just another comment on corporate loyalty?

Consider that in the context of a naive intern's post in this post-PRISM world:

>>Google’s radical approach to transparency and commitment to the mantra of "Don't be Evil" is extremely admirable.

Right.

---

Please understand, my reaction is purely contemplative. There is a regrettable urge towards conflict when any ideologies meet, but I like to believe we can still come to peaceable verbal agreements. And forgive the irony of this paragraph, if you can.

[asdfprou]

I admit, there are places where my post may have struck some chords with those have been following recent events in the area of privacy and transparency.

However from the perspective of someone who has worked in something like investment banking, I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction.

[Helianthus]

Lovely.

>I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction.

So you admit that your entry omitted any discussion of where Google is headed in the wrong direction? That it was completely one-sided?

>>Dare I call the Google the "holy grail" for many aspiring software developers?

What you are doing, what you have done, is easily termed "gushing." You are so eager to affirm what Google has done for you this summer.

You're even gushing to the person that has come to back you up, when you probably don't even know him. (Or maybe you do, and that's even worse. Is he here to back you up, not to argue of his own accord?)

---

I'll tell you what I think is going to happen. This post just might hit the top of HN. You'll get maybe 5-10 new twitter followers. You'll go back to your senior year. Your 1-post blog will languish because you'll be fucking busy (because yeah, you got a Google internship, so you're damn good and that means you should spend your senior year in Toronto focusing on Toronto, not on what the Internet thinks).

I'll get assorted votes in this topic, depending on the crowd that arrives. Depending on how this comment is received. I'm the sort of person that thinks you're not doing good writing if you don't get downvotes, and you should practice by getting downvoted to oblivion so you know how to get close to the real line.

It's just a small bump in the daily discourse of the Internet.

---

Where is your cynicism?

(Edit: Did you notice how my flattery of your Google internship (maybe) made my comment more palatable to you?)

[leothekim]

How difficult is it to switch teams? It seems ridiculous that Google would invest so much time and energy finding bright engineers and then let them go somewhere else because they're bored with what they're working on.

[jrockway]

It depends on what sort of switch you want to make. Do you want to switch to the team that you sit next to? You can probably do it by mentioning it to your manager in your next 1:1. Do you want to move to Paris for a year and work on a completely new product area? That might involve meeting the manager of the new team, getting to know the team in person, getting HR to write up a new employment contract, etc.

As someone going through the process to transfer to a different area, though, I find it a bit more difficult that I imagined it. It's not that anyone is blocking me, it's just hard to decide where to go and which opportunity makes the most sense for the next two years.

[asdfprou]

Thanks Dewitt! I had a feeling that my lack of tenure was going to be a point of contention, so having someone with as much experience as you backing the story certainly helps!

[asdfprou]

Hey Greenyoda,

Certainly correct, although I have worked at a number of other companies (an investment bank, Microsoft, a startup, and in management consulting) so I was using those as benchmarks.

Thanks for reading!

[guyzero]

Yes, you certainly can't form an opinion in three months.

Sorry OP, your opinion is almost certainly wrong.

[asdfprou]

You formed an opinion about my post and my experience in around 5 minutes.

Does this mean your opinion about my opinion is almost certainly wrong as well?

Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!

[guyzero]

My sarcasm was actually intended to indicate that opinions can never be "wrong" in some objective sense as they represent subjective experience. The notion that your opinion can't be valid because you worked for "only" three months is nonsensical. People who worked for Google for a day have opinions as valid as anyone else's.

[Helianthus]

You're getting kinda ugly about this. Are you really that disingenuous?

In this parent, you just fought almost as dirty as it is possible to fight within proper, polite terms, and you made a point of doing it.

And then you want to discard that with "Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!"