Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

They're one of the worlds biggest (my share market value, and mind share) companies, and almost the entirety of their revenue is generated by collecting huge amounts of personal information about people all over the web, and using that data to sell adverts, all over the web.

Yes, a percentage of their revenues have been spent on things that help people without inflicting more harm (e.g. some of their software contributions to the world, some services they run "for free" which the industry uses for security purposes).

That doesn't mean their other actions should be ignored or accepted as OK.

Edit:

Based on the other comment maybe this is about considering working for Google?

I wouldn't work for Google for all the money in the world. I've had a high paying contract position doing work I didn't really enjoy that much, on projects that made questionable choices (I don't mean tech choices).

The saying "you can't buy happiness" is fucking true. If you are doing something you hate, all the money in the world won't make you enjoy it.

Is your issue just that you hate all advertising?

If so, shouldn't you take your ire out on the web itself rather than Google, as Google is hardly unique in using advertising to sustain itself. Many websites do.

And what is the alternative? Everyone pays for everything, thus providing bank-authenticated billing data to every company? At least with ad supported services you can use them anonymously, if you want to. Besides, Google has their Contributor product that (in some cases) lets you pay to not see adverts. So it's not like they aren't trying to find a good balance.

Is your issue that you dislike targeted ads specifically?

If so, doesn't the fact that you can opt out of ad targeting and/or edit your own profile change anything? Surely you can see that many people would prefer to see relevant ads rather than ads intended for the wrong gender, age group, regional populations etc?

It's unfortunate that you feel so strongly about something as mundane as online advertising. Google is not the military or the CIA, where the actions of the employees can result in people getting randomly drone striked. It's just a software company.

I say these things because I used to work for Google and the people there are usually very happy. It seems a shame to rule out a company that's always tried so hard to find the right moral balances in things on grounds as flimsy as "advertising sucks".

> Is your issue just that you hate all advertising?

If I'm looking at a site about fish ponds, or gardening, I would absolutely be OK with seeing adverts about where to buy a pond liner, or a contractor who builds fish ponds.

I would even be OK with that ad being somewhat location specific based on my IP address.

The above situation would have literally helped me in a real word situation in the last month. But, because of the way the vast majority of web advertising works, there was no opportunity, because I have to block ad networks because:

I am not ok with seeing ads about "rent a cheap server today" because there's an email from a hosting company in a google apps mailbox, or because I got an email from a client asking about where to host something.

That is objectively fucking creepy.

> If so, doesn't the fact that you can opt out of ad targeting and/or edit your own profile change anything?

This is like the argument that I can go to http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ and choose to "opt out" of aggressive web tracking. The problem is, it works on a cookie basis, meaning I have to lower my privacy settings for the whole thing to even work, and then hope that some other bad actor doesn't take advantage of that, and that the NAI members even do what they say.

Creating a google profile (and being signed into it on every device i use) so I can tell them not to track me when I view sites they don't own/run is fucking ridiculous.

> It seems a shame to rule out a company that's always tried so hard to find the right moral balances in things on grounds as flimsy as "advertising sucks".

I never said advertising sucks. I said Google are a creepy mega corporation collecting every bit of information they can.

Pretty much, yes.

I think that accepting advertising as a normal part of life is terrible.

I cannot escape from Coca Cola's existence. I cannot, without locking myself in a cabin, ignore corporations, because they shove themselves in my face every day, even if I don't go to the grocery store.

I walk down the street and see adverts for beauty products. So I'm reminded that whole industries, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of workers, exist to try and peddle chemicals to the insecure.

I do see it as a moral issue. Without a cost-benefit analysis, 'X would not exist without advertising' is a meaningless argument - hell, you can't even show that it's true, plenty of websites exist without advertising.

This idea that everything must be 'monetized' is broken. Artists require enough money to live and to buy materials for their art. We can provide that without everyone being encouraged to buy bollocks they don't need.

Common sense (and my limited sample size of friends I know working at Google) tells me that the vast majority of people working at Google love their jobs.

> Common sense

Why is it common sense that people would "love" to work at Google?

A lot of posts/comments/etc in the last few years say "I love my job, <employer> provides free <snacks/food/hookers/whatever> and I have unlimited time off whenever I want it.

That isn't a job you love. Thats literally a job that offers ridiculous "perks" because the job itself is not enough to attract the people they want.

It consistently tops the chats of "best places to work". Combine that with the fact that there's literally a movie about how great it is to work there and I'd say that's pretty common sense.

> Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.

You think that Google being a great place to work meets this definition, despite the fact that the vast majority of people have no idea what it's like to work there.?

> It consistently tops the chats of "best places to work".

Which are answered by who? I've never even seen one of those surveys and I've worked in the industry for 13 years.

SV types tend to think the world is all like SV (which seems to be a focusing of the more general American view point)

> Combine that with the fact that there's literally a movie about how great it is to work there

There's a biographical movie about the life of Steve Jobs that has actual evidence about factual events, and they fucked it up massively. Why would you assume any movie is a true representation of something, especially a fucking comedy??

"best place to work" is a relative term, while a "job you love" is not relative (not based on comparison with other available options).

With a job you love, one is happy with just subsistence level compensation. There are very few jobs like that IMO, mainly either the ones which involve a large creative and independent component (some artists, scientists, maybe entrepreneurs) or working for the greater good.

You sound like you have a chip on your shoulder.

The free perks are great, but are not the core reason that make Google's work environment compelling for the many that love it (and they don't offer unlimited time off, although I know you don't mean that literally).

Google offers a very healthy working environment for many people. It's a large and diverse company. Not everyone loves it here, of course. But many do, and it's clear it's offering an environment that has real value and pull, and tries hard to respect and empower those of us down in the trenches.

> The free perks are great, but are not the core reason that make Google's work environment compelling

> they don't offer unlimited time off, although I know you don't mean that literally

My comment wasn't limited to just Google. It was aimed at the all the software companies where often young employees rave about food or other benefits (some of which are listed as literally unlimited holiday time) and are often very quiet about the actual work itself.

I had a colleague who worked on-site for a client that is a reasonably well known game company. He (and his gf, then wife) moved from Australia to LA for this project, and then I spent a few weeks onsite on a different project for the same client.

I heard about all the 'perks' employees (and to some extent long term contractors like himself) got, and it paints a rosy picture. This company even expected all staff to spend a % of their day playing the company's own game. (To the point that they arranged for us to play while on-site, and no amount of "No thanks, I'm not really into computer games" would be heard.)

Then I went and actually worked with some of their people on one of their projects. Then I asked him about something technical to do with the work or what he was doing.

It was literally as I expressed earlier - the actual work was a fucking nightmare of bad technical debt, shitty internal politics and ridiculous priorities.

Maybe this is all an American concept - the "I made an app to help us choose what to have to lunch together" thing on HN a few months ago gave me the same idea. I have never taken or left a job because of the 'perks'. I've absolutely left jobs because the work didn't interest me, or I wanted to do something else.

Honestly it's also hard to see how those sort of places will continue in the future as remote working becomes more common place.

I agree with practically all you're saying, aside from the assertion that this largely applies to Google. I think Google is much better in this regard than many tech companies. But mileage varies, of course. Cheers.

When I say common sense, I mean this: it takes a real stretch of cynicism and uncharitable thinking to believe that most people at Google dislike their job. For a couple reasons:

1. I have a strong prior belief that most people at any company enjoy their jobs (otherwise they would leave). This includes companies like Goldman Sachs - most people there are probably super-competitive types that love "winning" and status and prestige and don't care about work life balance.

2. I have heard only positive things from people I know.

3. Every time there is a thread on HN about how bad it is to work at Google, the negative reviews are always from 1) people who never worked there or only interviewed there (you really cannot draw much impression about what it's like to work at a company from the interviews), or 2) the same group of disgruntled ex-employees.

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