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Comment by mav3rick | Hacker News Reader

Your sole view is not the final authority on what's right for a company. Google has done many things right while growing to this size. It still retains top talent something that other big companies struggle with. And yes I'll just wait for HNers who are disgruntled about being rejected downvote me. But the truth is 99% of the people will take a job at Google in a jiffy. I'm also proud of the response and employee support amidst Covid-19. Look at Amazon on the other hand. Google is going to be just fine.

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I'm not so sure if Google did that much to help with the Covid situation. Yes, they checked the box of throwing a bunch of chromebooks at the problem and money and are also extending the tracking of people to "help identify potential new cases". But did they actually do anything out of the box that doesn't directly help them? As an example, my company allows us expensing up to 2 family meals per week from local businesses to help these. They are also extending the deadline with holidays not spent from last year so employees don't lose them. These are little things that actually make a difference. I know Google didn't come up with any of these things for their employees, but I'm sure Larry and Sergei's Google from back then would have done this and much more.

They're running free screening/testing centers[0]. They're collaborating with Apple on a contact tracing approach (which, personally, I'm leery of, but is probably largely responsible for SK, China, and Singapore's success at containing it). They were also one of the first large corporations to institute mandatory work from home.

[0] https://www.projectbaseline.com/study/covid-19/

> As an example, my company allows us expensing up to 2 family meals per week from local businesses to help these.

How is it different that "throwing money" as you describe Google doing?

> They are also extending the deadline with holidays not spent from last year so employees don't lose them.

It's same at Google.

There are multiple other things, most you can see at http://blog.google, including but not limited to working with governments, reducing the pricing for gsuite features, classroom software and others I can't comment on.

Disc: Googler.

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