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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> You expect Google to scan the database of companies in every country continuously to see if employees are executives of them? How would this handle different people who have the same name?

> Disclosure: I work at Google.

It's Google. Not a mom and pop shop, not a startup, not even a large bank. It's a massive conglomerate who's entire business model revolves around data.

So yes. And same-name conflicts can be handled case by case.

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>And same-name conflicts can be handled case by case.

How? Several times I've had to contact someone within Google whose name I know, but when I go to look up the person's email, there are multiple employees with that name. This is just within Google. Think of within an entire country.

And how are they going to access Chinese databases that they are not allowed to access? It's Google, not the CIA. I wouldn't be surprised if all of that information was covered under China's broad state secrets law.

I'm not aware of any corp doing this and why should they? There are as many valid reasons registering a company without affecting your employment.

Big 4 do this routinely to check for conflict of interest as a result of audit regs.

When you apply to Google, they ask what other employment you have, IP you own, etc. Many companies do some variation of this, but I believe Google is one of the most restrictive on its employees.

Sure, if it's an employment that's standard procedure in every company i ever applied to ask/rule out if you would be employed by another company after start date. I was rather operating under the assumption when you're not employed / the owner but the ex-googler seems to have been an employee in a rivaling business in both cases which would have clearly violated his contract with google.

But this person would just lie and say no. The application isn't a lie detector.

> And same-name conflicts can be handled case by case.

...unless they're Chinese.

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