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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

As a Googler, that's a sentiment I have never heard expressed, nor have I felt anything even remotely like it myself. My guess would be that most people would feel a lot better about the company if they could see how the sausage gets made. At least, judging by the reactions of my family members when they ask me concerned questions and I explain how things work, that's what would happen.

That being said, it will be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. I'm curious to know what practices they are going to zero in on. No company should be immune to the law.

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As a Googler, that's a sentiment I have never heard expressed

I've seen a lot of Googlers coming here lately, professing to be Googlers and stating "this hasn't been my experience".

Asked genuinely: as someone inside the company-with much better access to sentiment, opinion and company culture than I could ever hope to have, is Google truly that open and transparent to employees that you actually had an expectation to see this sentiment "expressed" elsewhere?

(I would pose a similar to question to other FAANG employees who do the "as an employee of faang[]:")

Many many googlers constantly advocate their resentment to the company. The company gives more avenues for this than any other company in the world.

That's fantastic-that employees feel they can express resentment without reprisal, however I'm left feeling that my question wasn't really answered-regarding the sentiment quoted and the context being discussed via the article linked.

"I'm worried that if the rest of America knew what we were actually doing here they would literally come here and kill us..."

This is a VERY specific and very interesting response to the goings on of your employer. My company frequently has feedback surveys prompted by HR for employee satisfaction, I still hear through back-channel mediums a lot of gripes and kvetches that were uttered over libations with the understanding that the discussion doesn't leave the bar.

I'm inquiring how insulated individuals at Google are from even that level of 'resentment' born dialogue between colleagues and coworkers.

I think you're still assuming it's less open than it is. There's a (well documented now) culture of what might be be described as direct and open insubordination when management does things that are not well liked.

I think your question was answered, but you don't really believe it, because it's difficult to believe.

Well, I'd say there's literally no barrier between employees that prevents 'resentment' born dialogue. In fact, there's an internal site which is specialized to accelerating that 'resentment'. (joke, but it's true)

Yes. At least in my part of the company, people are very open about the things that make them unhappy or that they think are stupid. Probably the most-hated thing is how certain migrations are handled. There has also been dissent about certain anticipated large acquisitions, the most egregious of which fortunately did not go through. I have heard statements like, "I don't know why we/they are doing this" many times. I have also heard from current and former Googlers who think very negative things about leadership's approach to product development.

I've heard all this and more. But one opinion I have never heard is that increased visibility into our operations would make people trust us less or dislike us more. I cannot see how anyone could believe that who is familiar with both the internal workings of the company and the external views of it.

No, it isn't. Think of G as an oil company that owns and operates a pipe from the oil source (user data) to countries that need gas and other oil products (companies that pay for targeted ads). G employees have access to a lot of knowledge about how this pipe works, but make no mistake: any attempt to look into the pipe will be retaliated viciously. Employees are strictly not allowed to look at personal user data, even though they can do so by writing a simple SQL query. I really doubt that G sells raw user data. Not because it's kind or nice, but because an oil company makes more profit margin by selling oil products, rather than crude oil.

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