The subject of this email (Facebook) famously declined to participate however.
Finally, the whole thing got settled (slap on the wrist but something at least), so Google employees could finally get an answer in the weekly all-hands (TGIF).
Laszlo Bock was their head of people at the time, and claimed that Google still did nothing wrong, and that they only settled because they were caught up in the whole thing with other companies like Adobe who did do something wrong. He said they did nothing wrong because they only stopped outbound recruiting towards employees at those companies, which had no effect, and still accepted inbound applications.
This raises the obvious question - if outbound recruiting had no effect, why was Google so eager to put at end to it? And how could Google act like they were caught up it the crossfire when it was specifically emails by Sergey Brin that provided the strongest evidence of illegal collusions?
It blew my mind how Google insists they hire "the world's smartest people" but then can have executives on stage spin narratives with ridiculous holes in it and expect those smart people to believe it rather than have their intelligence insulted.
But sadly, most Google employees did seem to buy it. There's a strong cult of indoctrination, starting with calling yourself a Googler and wearing the stupid hat, that Google execs just had a halo effect. I think between 2010 and now that halo effect has massively worn off, especially with all the dirty details about misbehavior from Sergey Brin, Vic Gundtora, and Andy Rubin.
Nonetheless, it served as strong evidence as to how even really smart people can get caught up in cult-like communities. The "founder worship", the indoctrination into company culture, all of that is super common in Silicon Valley tech companies and for an obvious reason - it works.
I see it differently. It seems like strong evidence as to how smart the average googler really is. If you start with the assumption these people are smart then you can reach your conclusion, but if you discard that assumption you just have a group of gullible employees.
> Are you going to leave?
I did, actually (more than once). And it's what made me realize how few engineers care about anything other than their paychecks and ultimately themselves. When push comes to shove, the vast majority of people I've met and worked with have no qualms looking the other way for more compensation.
When push comes to shove, those people would have no power to change things anyway in the vast majority of cases. You can either live in a terrible world rich, or poor - in both cases the world wouldn't change but at least your life will be better.
A lot of problems are big enough that only governments can deal with them by the use of laws and appropriate enforcement (eventually escalating to violence if needed). But if the governments themselves benefit from the problem, or are owned by the corporations (corruption, or "lobbying" as it's called in the US), there's no chance for a few individuals to make a difference.
All entities, one day or another, commit some immoral thing according to some relative morality. We can't expect that they never will. Of course, a consistent and repeat offender should not be rewarded with our support. But it's unreasonable to hold people and groups of people to unreasonable standards, such as "sustained perfect moral behavior".
The average Googler most likely than not thinks that what Google did is bad, but not bad enough overall to warrant their quitting.
If it's the best place to extract maximum benefits (money, experience, recognition, etc) - then you take the good with the bad.
Even outside Google, the halo effect is insane. Look at how much hate companies like Facebook and Uber get on HN. But if you break down the scandals side by side, you'll realize Google has by far the worst ethics in the industry.
For example, Uber is accused of being sexist because a woman wrote an open letter that she was excluded in various ways as an employee there, such as not receiving swag in her size as the only woman on the team. That sounds like a shitty culture. Meanwhile, Vic Gundotra was credibly accused of inviting 22 year old junior SWEs to exec offsites to sexually harass them. Andy Rubin was found to have sexually assaulted a subordinate, according to Google's own investigation, and recieved a 90M payout.
What's a worse workplace for women? Not getting swag in your size, or being raped?
Yet when I worked at Google when all these scandals took place, ordering an Uber was a huge faux paus. You had to order a Lyft because "Uber=sexist."
Even now on a recent thread I mentioned how all these tech companies are more evil than your typical crypto startup, people said "only Uber and Facebook" look bad on a resume. I would argue that's purely a function of PR because I challenge anyone to debate me that Facebook or Uber had worse ethics scandals than Google.
Google has one of the strongest PR machines of all time and its effect on sentiment inside and outside the company is indisputable.
Some people think Google is a good product. Nearly everyone on HN hates Facebook and I think most people hate Instagram, too, now?
“On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat… He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with… When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to… Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.”
https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
They don't hire the smartest people, they hire the greediest people. The only thing people worship in silicon valley and tech in general is money. That's it. An if your salary, stock options, etc are dependent on believing and selling lies, that's what you do. When an industry or group gets "saint status" or proclaims to be the agents of good, your spidey senses should start tingling.
the trial awards and verdict happened in 2014 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-lawsuit-excl...
What makes you say that? Everyone I know is aware that Google was doing dirt, but salaries were going up so fast at the time it hardly mattered. Especially when the collusion ended we went through several years of absurd salary growth. Even during the period of collusion, Google was being pretty generous with compensation (e.g. this event -- https://www.businessinsider.com/google-options-repricing-bai...).
Every programmer who was there at that time and has stayed has either been spending profligately or is fairly wealthy at this point.
Previously you pretty much had to get lucky as an early engineer through IPO, but in the past decade it's been possible to save millions by working at FAANGs. And those millions trickle down into the ecosystem: people can afford to start their own companies, do angel investments, etc.
I think most of the bad press just comes from media clickbait. Mainstream news identifies Facebook as a competitor and threat on ideological model, see people complaining about conservative news sources topping most shared on Facebook lists, and on a business model basis (Facebook controls a large stream of traffic).
I don't think Facebook is some well run charity doing philanthropy - I just don't think they are meaningfully worse than their peers. I do think there is a concerted media campaign to malign Facebook and I think this is where the differential in how people think of Facebook versus these other companies comes from.
Does P&G put the psychological health of their customers over their own profits? Does Walmart? Apple? Exxon?
One might be able to make the slightly stronger argument is that the average user’s psychological health is more at odds with Facebook’s interests/profits than most other companies — putting it in the same category as, perhaps, Phillip Morris — but even that is not an argument against Facebook or Zuckerberg; any company in the same position would likely be doing the same kind of thing.
As an example they will finally increase vacation from 15days to 20days on April 1st this year.
The media reports this as "on top of already lavish perks Googlers are now getting 20 days of PTO a year!".
Gee whiz amazing. An increase from 15 days of PTO. If only we didn't much more than that in my much lower quality of life home country as a standard for tech workers.
And sorry if this sounds a bit spoilt. I should be grateful to work at a large megacorp in this economy right? It's just that Google isn't any better in terms of working conditions than any other big tech company. In fact in general it's a little bit worse yet there's propaganda movies (The Internship) about how great it is to work at Google.
It's a job. No one else seems to want to acknowledge it.
That change is for junior employees. It's still overdue, but vacation bumps up to 25 days per year after you have some tenure, and has done for more than a decade. I'm not saying that 25 days is anything to write home about -- I've heard of places that give 30, or unlimited -- but 25 is not bad.
Previously after 4 years you got 20 days per year. Then you got 25 at year 6+.
So if you're saying 'year six' starts the day after you've been there for 5 full years, then yes, we are saying the same thing.
(Source: have been at Google almost 8 years, and went through both of those bumps)
* you carry no vacation liability on the books year-to-year
* if you don't encourage people to take it, or provide slack when they can take time off they use less vacation
I am not saying 15 days of PTO is high (it isn't) but you're comparing different countries. Local customs vary hugely from country to country: for example, when I was at Google UK, I got 30 days of paid annual leave.
I don't remember reading about any formally signed agreements. Executives aren't going to create an incriminating paper trail like that. Instead, it was some complaints in emails and an implied understanding. E.g. Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt emails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_n...
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2014-03-24-emails-reveal-that-steve...