Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

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The whole point of somewhere like Google is that they don't want people who will do what they're told, because such people are only capable of doing what they're told. You can't order someone to innovate unless they have no other choice.

Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work".

(I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried)

Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)

I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on.

Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.

The equity grants awarded by publicly traded companies like Google/Alphabet are far from worthless, unlike for early stage startups where indeed most of those employee stock options end up as worthless as you say.

Weren't some early Facebook employee cheated out of their shares by some legal gymnastics?

My understanding is that did happen, but far before Facebook went public. I was discussing options awarded by companies that are already publicly traded at the time of grant.

It wasn't always worthless, although I agree that options are a lottery ticket and you need to read all the small print. Back in the distant past of the early 2000s a Google chef made $26 million: https://searchengineland.com/google-employee-53-charlie-ayer...

(of course they subsequently changed the rules to make that less likely for non-tech staff, part of the gradual move away from "Don't Be Evil")

You say Google et al want people who don't just "do what they're told", yet one of the most distinguishing aspects of these places is a hiring process that specifically selects for people willing to jump through absurd hoops and full buy-in to the corporate mythology that doing this means you are simply better and smarter than anyone who doesn't.

That's not how you foster counterculture. In fact, that's probably why Google went so long without any internal employee conflict.

What is an example of these absurd hoops you talk of, w.r.t the google interview process specifically? I just went through the process and had a much more positive experience, so i’m interested to know.

The fact that you are meant to specifically study for the interview unlike 99% of all other companies, so the interview to a large extent evaluates how much time you've spent willingly studying the Google interview - i.e. how much you really, really want to work specifically at Google.

It's not exactly a recipe for hiring people that are going to push back on corporate decisions.

Of all the Silicon Valley companies, Google with its intense focus on traditional academia is not very counter culture at all. They're basically part of the educational industrial complex.

Tell that to the suits who invented the future at IBM and Bell labs.

Counter cultural types don't have a monopoly on innovation.

Have you seen a photo of Kernighan & Ritchie? They sure look like counterculture types to me - or at the very least, that's a lot of hair.

Did you have anyone specific in mind?

I don't think you hire bold out-of-the-box innovators to run AdSense.

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