Google X employee collapsed on the job due to harsh working conditions
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
> Expecting his condition to require a departure from the company, he spoke with managing director Gabe Newell, who surprised him by offering an extended leave with pay. "Your job is to get better," Newell said. "That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Wolpaw#Personal_life
We can't all work at the most lucrative game company on earth, but that sure was classy.
He was an ass, and the only thing Valve did wrong was letting him host in the first place. He's always been like that, and they should have known what would happen.
The issue with that hosting gig is that the tournament logistics were a disaster and he ended up having to stretch a solid 10 into several hours of filling dead air.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r57...
James is an ass and its his casting style, I certainly don't hold this against him.
(A common argument is that "Companies wouldn't thrive in such a socialist environment". But you can look at Supercell, King and Mojang: all are Nordic game companies with multi-billion dollar valuations and more profits than Valve.)
In America, not only is it now possible, but the UNODC intentional homicide rate [0] is about 4x higher than my home country (Australia) and most of Europe. Yes the rate is still small, yes we're probably overreacting. I have a feeling this will be an unpopular comparison but I'd say our fear of being shot in America is similar to American fear of terrorism after 9/11. Before 9/11 you simply never had to worry about it. It'd never happened, it wasn't possible. Suddenly it happened and even though the chance a terrorist will kill you is vanishingly small, people worry about it a hell of a lot.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Living in the United States I have never been in fear of a shooting and never been exposed to a robbery or such where I was in danger of getting shot.
I just looked at the FBI's UCR statistics to see what others see about my country ;) In my city 1 person was killed in 2014 by any form of murder or negligent manslaughter, regardless of a firearm having been used. I suspect that was a data entry error that should have been zero.
Granted, the US has far more deaths per capita by guns than places that don't have as many guns per capita. Upon research I found this table on wikipedia, showing overall homicides rate per 100,000 by country. This also seems drawn from the dataset you mentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
The US was lower than I had expected at 3.9. This is very close to the 4x relationship you mentioned compared to Australia. However, the US Virgin Islands must be horrible at 52.6 per 100,000 people. Guadeloupe (France) is 7.9, and the real loser seems to be Honduras with 84.6 intentional homicides per 100,000 people. That makes me think that for someone living in Honduras, at least one of the people you see today will be dead tomorrow.
I definitely understand people's concern about not wanting to be subject to the dark death dealing of hammer, knife, and machine gun toting drugged Americans, but we're really like any large country. Things have to do with the city that is visited, since the country is vast with many cultures and differences throughout.
I understand that things depend a lot on where you are within a country but as someone speaking about the safety of a country as a whole, the average is pretty important. It's also worth pointing out that many of the places a tourist would consider visiting are places with above average crime rates.
Or if you get a baby and want parental leave.
Or if you want to send your kids to university.
Just saying "makes less than a programmer in the US" isn't enough to make a comparison.
I was able to burn through my holiday/vacation time for a bit to avoid bouncing debts but this is in the UK where we actually have job protections and rights never mind in the US where (I've heard) you can be fired for anything with no notice. I'm still paying off the debt I racked up during that time (~2 years or so).
They can't fire you because of the injury but they can and will start keeping a hawk eye on you to see what they can get you on if you're not useful anymore.
*By monopoly, I mean the Peter theil sense of the word, as used in his book Zero to One.
Otherwise your argument is accurate.
On a cold morning in February 2015, a group of men left the spacious Google X headquarters in Mountain View, California, before daybreak. They traveled more than two hours east to some trailers parked in the middle of nowhere, on private ranch lands in California's Central Valley...And on this day, their complaints turned into terror. One of their team members, a man in his mid-50s, collapsed on the job...
While the Central Valley can have searing heat in the summer, it's generally less so in the winter... so I looked up the weather for Merced, CA in Feb 2015 and temperatures were:
Max: 75 °F Avg: 67 °F Min: 55 °F [1]
While 75 is warm when doing heavy labor, it sounds like the article is exaggerating when it refers to "...extreme temperatures of the Central Valley..."
[1] https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KMCE/2015/2/13/...
I'm in my early 50's and would (and do) gladly go for a 6 hour bike ride in that weather...
Nor do I fully appreciate, as a reader, the unnecessary connection to Uber's sexism complaints as an editorial addition to portray sensationalist chaos in the Valley.
I don't work for Google or Uber, or anywhere in California - I am just frustrated at how bad tech journalism can be at times.