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Comment by fooker | Hacker News Reader

RIP

I'm one of those people who go work at Google once every few years.

The transformation of culture from about 2013 onwards has been somewhat sad to experience.

Interestingly, most people who have been continuously employed there have not felt the very slight gradient. However, the changes in culture, freedom, food quality, etc are fairly obvious when one returns after ..say.. 18 months.

Here are some semi-concrete metrics: Decreasing TGIF frequency (now gone..), 'micro kitchen' snack variety and quality, which doors in buildings you are allowed to enter from(:facepalm:), badging in for meals(also :facepalm:), weird restrictions on business flights, attempt to make everything look uniform (no candies in receptions! No decorations..), defense contracts(much publicized here), any other discretionary spending by teams.

Anything I forgot?

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The dismantling of Google.org in 2015.

We were once an engineering and product team that used Google's unique reach, resources, infrastructure, and technology to create tools and services purely for good. We reunited survivors of disasters, helped them find shelter, alerted people to keep them safe, built technology to help MSF fight Ebola, and predicted flu epidemics. We worked to lift the most vulnerable among us. Teams all over the company and around the world helped us do things only Google could.

That Google.org no longer exists. The "Google.org" label has been reassigned to Google's donation programs. Google donates money to many meaningful efforts, and that's great; but anyone can donate money. Google used to donate money and build things for good, and it does the latter no more.

Yes. Another one I just recalled: More and more retaliation. Two prominent women who tried to protest were 'managed out' this year.

I (an Eastern European software engineer who was working at Google Switzerland) can't forget the Christmas gift I got from Google that I donated Chromebooks to students in U.S.

It was the weirdest Christmas present that I got in my life, and believe me I got some very weird clothes from my mum when I was young.

That was the same Google.org that had weird problems with its leader interfering in middle eastern politics, to the extent it became practically an extension of the White House?

I remember google.org - seen from the perspective of an engineer in a far away land it was frankly just kind of weird/creepy/slightly sinister. Yeah the flu epidemic predictor thing was kinda cool, except I never heard anything about it since and I'm not sure it's ever actually been useful for much.

If badging in for a free meal (which is "required", but not enforced) is one of your top complaints, this comment will only reinforce how ridiculously entitled some tech workers have become.

Not sure what office you work or worked in, but where I'm at they regularly go over the top with decorations during celebrations. It's pretty awesome.

None of these on their own are huge complaints or issues. They just add up.

How is badging for food even a small issue?

Would you want your employer to know about your exact food habits for years of your life?

How about your government?

How about your insurance company?

You blew it out of proportion. It's more like you badge in a certain cafe. No one knows what you ate in that cafe.

Google already tracks every time you badge in at any door meaning they already know exactly where you are, when you com in, where you go for meetings etc. Badging for food is very minor in comparison.

Just because you badge in for your company doesn’t automatically mean your government or insurance company will get the data. Even if they did, they could probably get it in more detail from other sources like your bank and credit card company. Also they don’t track what you get, so I don’t see what the big deal is.

The badging for food thing is because the IRS is coming after tech companies saying that it should be treated as a taxable benefit. It helps to have metrics about how widely used the perk is in arguing that it shouldn't be taxable.

Badging for food doesn't say anything about the evolution of Google's culture over time; it only says that the IRS is now coming after Google.

Oh come on. Those are 3 wildly different use-cases. Your employer is providing you a perk as an incentive to keep you at the company longer hours. They provide a complementary meal, they log things like how many people eat, how often, what times, etc, to improve the service.

Your government is mandatory, your employer is voluntary.

Your insurance company would likely offer you a discount if you provided them this information. Again, on a voluntary basis. In general when something like this is required by an insurance company it's heavily regulated.

Point taken, but how is badging for meals a ‘facepalm’? Re: decorations, https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/04/google-seattle-hall... ?

This, from 2009? "Badging today will allocate funds for your meal tomorrow". And I wrote about it eight years ago.

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/10/17/badging/

I'm still unclear on what the badge for meal thing was, but apparently its come and gone before. It was apparently a thing in 09, went away, came back sometime in like 2013 or 14, went away again, and is now again a requirement (and has been since sometime in 2018). It didn't spell any particular doom either of the other times, and other than some dubious tax related stuff, i'm not sure what the impact is/will be. Seems like it will take more years to find out.

The badging for meals is to show to the IRS that it's not a taxable perk. AFAIK it's just something that happens in the US.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t that be a taxable perk? (Not that I think tax codes make any sense)

If it's provided because of its benefit to the employer, it's not taxable (same reason company computers are a business expense and not a taxable perk to the employee).

The logic is that the company gets benefits from providing meals that exceed the costs, e.g. shorter lunch breaks since employees don't even have to leave the building. And given that meals can be provided at scale for under $10/head, then even shaving 5 minutes off a lunch break is worth it at Big Tech compensation levels. There's also benefits to having employees eat more meals with other employees, and thus some work gets done over lunch.

It's only for IRS reporting purposes, nothing more.

I might be slow, but I still don't see reason to worry there. What happened in the proceeding months / years that was forewarned by this whiteboard / practice?

I think this is basically par for the course as a company becomes massive. A small percentage of employees will abuse perks, and once the absolute number hits some threshold the financial cost of that abuse requires revision. Same thing happened at a company I watched from from about 100 to 5000, albeit on a smaller scale.

That's not what cafe badging is about. It wouldn't catch that anyway; you're just badging into the cafe. There's no way to know how much you actually ate.

I think it's more about the 22 y.o hire who decides he and his 5 mates should all get dinner at the new office

This is generally fine, at least in Google Cambridge.

It's just for tax purposes, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread.

It's generally not fine in other offices where cafes are already crowded just with employees (e.g. NYC). You have to register all guests at the building entrance and if you're registering lots of guests all the time, something might happen. What exactly I'm not sure; I don't know anyone who abuses the cafes to this extent. I think the registration requirements alone substantially curtail potential abuse.

Cafe badging does nothing to address this, as guests don't even have badges to badge with! There's no gate that you need to badge into the cafe to enter, if that's what you're thinking about.

The way to address that is to see who is consistently registering to bring in way more guests to the office than anyone else.

which doors you are allowed to enter from is a security protocol...

badging in for meals is for IRS tax purposes...

The two things you facepalmed are absolutely easily explainable.

*security theater

Yes, all of this is explainable. So is cancelling TGIF. Was that your main takeaway here?

The real issue with the security "protocol" was that directors and up were exempt from it, creating a two-class system. That's supposedly since been rescinded.

> No decorations..

Where does this apply? Just reception, or more?

Can I have a poster or art? A plant?

Receptions and front desk, iirc. People manning them were previously allowed (and long ago, encouraged) to decorate the space to their liking.

That went away this year (and partly restored as a result of memegen-driven protests, after I left as I hear.)

I'd be interested to hear what Googlers have to say about recent deals with the Chinese government. Any qualms about that, or is there more of a feeling of relief or "glad we're back in China"?

Which deal? Are you saying about Dragonfly?

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