Re: Hello from Google | Hacker News Reader

Re: Hello from Google

amos.me

40 pointsFredericJ50 comments

"Best response...ever"? I got bored two paragraphs in, I am confident that the recruiter didn't go past two sentences. When the hiring manager asks, the recruiter will just say, "he didn't accept the offer."

That's not to say there isn't validity in what was said (just because it bores me doesn't make it lack value), but as a response to Google HR it isn't going to change anything.

Well, that you got bored is more of an issue. The obvious target audience of this letter is not the recruiter.

This would make more sense if being contacted by a Google recruiter was an honor limited to an Elite Few, and therefore the opinions of anyone who's experienced it would automatically be of interest.

However, I've been contacted by Google recruiters twice, and I'm such a dumb-ass I'm consistently amazed I can walk around on two legs. If they've made their way down the "potential recruits" list all the way to me, it's safe to assume that they cast their net pretty wide.

Agreed. Google is really contacting anyone these days. It's probably obvious that I'm not a good fit there and I still got an e-mail. Most of my friends have, too, so I don't consider it exclusive at all. It was still a good occasion to write down a few thoughts though.

Author here: I know HR won't read it, and even most people on HN won't. It's totally up to you just how much time you invest into reading others' visions.

In that post, I address much more than just "to work at G or not". I address the general tendency/evolution of the internet, and how I'm unhappy with it.

Re: "video is a solved problem is hilarious": yes, thanks, I'm aware of the codec mess, and I've been advocating for free and open codecs/protocols for a long while. I know computers still generally suck at extracting info from something audio-visual, etc - heck, the post is already too long, do you really expect me to cover all that?

But, again, see the bigger picture. For me, it's a solved problem because most people in most situations can watch whatever they feel like on whatever platform (except for long movies but, again, not because of a tech hurdle). It's solved as compared to, for example, collaborative music recording, with web technologies, multitrack, decentralized, with an easy merging process (the typical use case is producing an acoustic cover of some mainstream track.)

There's so much more I wanted to cover and didn't - if you have particular questions I'll try to answer them here, or if you want to reach out, send it my way at amos@movies.io

Obviously the recruiter and HR will never read the whole thing. In business, most people learn to skip to the end of long emails to get the call-to-action or summary, then read the whole thing if they need more background, so I don't think it's rude to write a long "thanks, but no thanks" email.

Now: Did the author waste his own time? He's the only judge of that. I personally applaud it. Sometimes the act of writing something like this out helps you clarify your own personal mission. It's like putting up a pirate flag on your building. The big companies don't care, but you do, and maybe one day you'll ship something like Macintosh.

I'm not really plugged into the video scene, so I have no idea how cogent Amos's comments are about codecs and what-not. But he does a good job of communicating his passion for independence. If even one person reads that and thinks to themselves, "Yeah! I'm that passionate about origami folding displays, I'm going to stick it out," what a glorious win that would be.

I won't comment on the quality of the post, obviously its a rant.

But the topic of the rant was both how "online video has been solved" and "it's such a shame that Youtube won online video". He obviously hopes for a day soon when there are 5 or more places to go for video online that have equal market share... That will never happen.

Not saying Youtube will be King forever, but fragmented markets are not stable except if there are other forces at play (like government regulation, language, or massive costs to switch providers).

It seems that we as a society like having a homogeneous environment more than a heterogeneous one for most things. I wonder if there are any academic studies that show that?

My theory is this: in this online world we live in, where there are no geographic boundaries any more, we need to have some common references when talking. Take Twitter for example - what if there were 10 other sites like Twitter and they all had equal market share? How do you get the updates from all your friends? All your friends would have to join the same one. And so worldwide, one site would grab the most market share. It HAS to be that way.

Or for video, let's say I create a short video clip, and upload it to 5 different video sites. Now my community is fragmented, and my fan base is divided. Eventually, one site gives me slightly more comments, slightly more traffic, slightly more shares, and then that becomes the best site to use for my type of video and I give more attention to that site. My fans go to that site as well because it has the best and most active conversation about my videos. So there has to be a favorite site for videos.

Not saying that you can't have a site for very specific niches. Like funny videos can be on FunnyOrDie, while Hollywood movies can use Netflix, realtime streaming can be Ustream... but people need to know where the one place to go for the content they are interested in. I think it has to be that way.

Can anyone think of a fragmented online business with no outside influence that keeps it that way? The only one I can think of is "online email", but the costs of changing your email address (time and hassle wise) is enormous so switching is not easy.

It's hard to explain, but to me it makes sense that in each market there is a clear leader and it requires a monumental effort to go to a new leader.

[edited for bad grammar and clarification]

Hey there, thanks for what has to be the most insightful and constructive comment of the thread!

I agree with what you're saying. To me, all this is part of a bigger issue which is the "mass culture". That society is only comfortable with having one, perhaps two, providers for every kind of service is similar to the fact that apparently, society needs blockbusters and music hits to find some kind of balance. So that when you meet someone, you actually have common points to discuss.

I haven't yet taken the time to address that issue in blog form, though, because it's really complex and I don't want to half-ass it. I don't think it'll ever be completely solved in this lifetime either.

Part of the social factors that, for example, prevent a mass migration from Facebook or Twitter are the network effects you mention "People go to that site as well because it has the best and most active conversation.". In my opinion, this can be somewhat mitigated by having open protocols for everything. If the discussion happens not on a single platform, but on a set of platforms all talking the same language, you could (in theory) use any client to follow the discussion and it wouldn't even matter where the video is hosted.

Online identity and presence is very hard to define/to bound: e-mail is hard to switch because your e-mail address contains the domain name of your provider (user@provider.tld). It's easier to switch from a web hosting company to another because there you usually control the DNS (except if you're stuck with a subdomain, which sucks) - so for example, I've been able to switch amos.me from ImmediateVPS to Linode to prgmr without any downtime/relocation issues. E-mail is similarly easy to switch if you own the domain name.

But e-mail and personal websites are only part of your online identity: usually, your whole identity is spread among several services: Twitter, Tumblr, HackerNews, Reddit, Flickr. Most people use their homepage as hub/registry to list all their online accounts, but there has to be a better way.

But, again, the thing about open protocols is that reducing the switching cost from one service to another is generally not in the interest of any single provider. Only few companies have convictions strong enough to really make migrations seamless. For others, they're mostly coerced to do so because of privacy laws (example: Google's Data Liberation Front) and give you a .zip of your data, but you can't just seamlessly import it into another service.

This discussion is too vast, really. I'd love to see the death of mass culture and to see a reversal in the centralization process, but, like you, I have my doubts and questions about it.

Cut out everything but the last sentence, hit send. Good for a long form blog post, utterly terrible as an email to a recruiter. Lots of great, and perfectly valid points presented, just not the right material to turn down a job/interview offer.

I imagine this was written more as an open letter to Google, i.e. it is addressed to a wider audience and written with an eye for publication, rather than in the expectation of a dialogue with the HR department at a huge corporation.

The same thought came through my mind, which lead to multiple revisions of my comment. Granted, I agree with quite a lot of what the author is saying here.

Granted, there's very little chance that the recruiter herself will find interest in the whole post. Hence the blog post.

As others have pointed out, recruiters are trained to skip down to the call for action, so the fact that 85% of it is irrelevant is not really a problem.

As many have commented here, the poor recruiter most probably just didn't understand/read it and quickly hit delete.

For people who have worked on video coding and video content analysis, the paragraph that starts with "For example, for me, video distribution is a solved problem." is hilarious! Video codec landscape is a mess; free codecs still are a problem, wireless video distribution is spotty, etc. And, we still don't have robust automatic methods to label videos for a variety of domains and have to rely on user provided tags, a la YouTube.

His point about licensing being a big problem is spot on, though.

I usually just say:

"Thanks, but I'm insanely happy where I am right now. Check back in a year if you want to."

This gets a polite "Okay, I'll contact you next year," and often they do.

You wasted precious time from your life with this response. They stopped reading after the first few sentences.

But WE are reading it, so, not wasted.

Actually, I stopped reading a few paragraphs in. He wasted precious time from my life too, with this relatively pointless rant. So he disagrees with some of Google's policies. Fine. Great. Why is that interesting again?

You read the whole thing??

I personally read about 85% of it. It was interesting

But we didn't. :)

You guys read the whole thing? Awesome, I wish I had time for something like that. WE just sit here and work.

If you spent less time sniping in comments, you'd have more time to read fresh content ;-)

Your last line "I appreciate you reaching out, but I don't think this is for me." would have been enough. I can assure that the HR did not even read through the whole thing. Not to say that you did not have valid points but you were barking up the wrong tree.

Tried to read a bit of this before deciding to just skip forward to the last sentence. I'm 110% sure that's what the recruiter did too.

What's so "best" about it? Wouldn't a simple "Thanks, but no thanks" have worked just as well?

Everyone's saying it was inappropriate to send this response to a recruiter, but maybe the intent was to see if this email would make its way to Sergey Brin or Larry Page.

I would love to see their response to it.

This was neither a good response to a recruiter nor a good blog posting.

Wants more choices but calls everything but youtube and vimeo crap aggregators.

This guy is no different than someone who protests Wal-Mart and shops there.

You're right, that part was definitely excessive/simplistic.

There are probably hundreds of small start-ups trying to 'fix' mainstream video distribution right now. The point is, their scale is ridiculous compared to the ones I've listed.

For example, in movie streaming, you've got a few biggies: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes - and of course stuff like Ultraviolet, the studios' proprietary solutions for "buy a piece of plastic and be able to stream them from our Windows client". And in the smaller, you've got stuff like Indieflix, KinoNation, Izkara (admittedly more focused on indie content, because of the licensing problems I've discussed above). But none of them can expand to the size of the biggies, because the market is locked.

So, 'low-budget, mildly interesting indie films' is the equivalent of 'cat videos' for movie distribution. It's sad but it's true - every interesting indie flick will be spotted at a festival (e.g. Sundance) and then they'll be contacted by sales agents, whose job will then be to convince the producers that they need DRM, and that they need to sell exclusive rights to this or that entity, and then presto, that content is locked to a single/few platforms and other smallers can't compete.

The reason why mainstream video distribution is locked is more about social than it is about licensing, but I think the situations can be compared.

And decision on the part of a single entity can ruin a lot of people's lives, because we are so dependent on it. (Example: Twitter API rules, sparking the App.net too-soon-to-be-called-a-revolution).

A too-soon-to-be-called-a-revolution that trades one monolithic ruler for another.

Yup. I'm personally a lot more excited about tent.io, but there's already so much irrelevant to a recruiter here that I didn't care to mention it.

While the increasing centralization is indeed worrying, I think this should not be conflated with the contrast big company vs. small startup.

Most startups also seem to be building centralized walled garden solutions, just on a smaller scale than Google.

Entirely agree. Big company acqui(hi)ring smaller start-ups is a different problem than increasing centralization. Both equally worrying imho, though.

HN is just turning into submissions of drivel. This time by a narcissistic code hipster who think part of having a good career involves telling everyone how hardcore you are because you turned down an interview at Google.

I didn't submit it, nor would I have liked it to - but it's a bit too late to stop.

I posted it on my blog for my circle of friends/followers, because I was interested in feedback on my view of the general evolution of the internet. This is not a PR stunt, I don't really care (no offense) what anyone in this thread thinks of it. Besides, that wouldn't really make sense right? I'm not asking for anything, why I would I want a large number of people to read it?

I wouldn't worry about 90% of the comments here. They're mostly from people you weren't targeting anyway.

I thought it was interesting and insightful and I hope you continue to write down your thoughts on the direction and potential directions for the future.

Thanks a lot! It's not my first HN shower, but I'm still having a hard time not caring about negative comments.

I'll definitely keep blogging whatever happens. Thanks again for the support.

I'd like to point out that a great number of the comments here are in violation of the first HN commenting guideline. We are veering away from constructive criticism into aspie-with-a-mean-streak territory.

But if you add a little heart, it makes it less demeaning.. right?

These comments are embarrassing. Writing is a great exercise and more people should do it outside of attacking people for their blog posts on things they're obviously passionate about and working towards a better solution for.

"Best response to a Google Recruiter ever"

Right...

i·ro·ny The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

tl; dr I won't work for Leviathan.

I'm not sure I would write such a letter. It is a half truth, and you might have to eat those words if Google gets involved in something that interests you.

I'm sure he doesn't give a fuck.

Why are you getting so high and mighty, turning your nose when the guy just reached out to you and offered you a job?

If this is how you reject an interview I'd hate to see how you reject an offer.

Only if you think that an uninformed philosophical rant is any sort of answer to a recruiter whose job consists of getting you to interview for her/his employer. They don't control the whims of the whole industry.

Reading the thread before commenting is a good idea - you're not adding anything new to the conversation.

I didn't submit the post to HN, nor did I choose the headline (which I disagree with).

I'm aware the recruiter in question can't change anything, and have no hope of it having any effect at Google. Maybe it'll prompt readers to put their thinking caps and go further in their own reflection about their life and career. And that's all I'm asking for.

I'm interested in your use of "uninformed" though - to the best of your knowledge, is there anything in that blog post that is factually incorrect? I'll happily correct it, as long as it's backed by sources.

My comment was directed at the title chosen by OP. I have nothing against your post, the sharing of ideas and experiences is exactly the right reason for maintaining a blog . I concede that the "uninformed" bit was out of place as your post seem factually correct. We might disagree that “acquihiring” is fundamentally harmful to innovation even outside of the acquiring company, and some of the issues discussed about centralization can equally apply to many other actors in the industry not just Google. So again it was the chosen HN title that I had issue with.

Nor is it likely that they care. This was a huge waste of time if it was really written for and sent to a recruiter.

If they even got one paragraph in I'd be surprised. Delete - next candidate.

This would be true if you were reading this in front of his personal email client.

Fact is, it's an open letter, and therefore guaranteed to connect with his target audience who are not, in fact, google.

Agreed. An amusing read though... "For example, for me, video distribution is a solved problem."

I imagine this person sitting down in from of a mirror and reading this out loud while typing. Naked. This person is obviously pretty full of himself.

Thanks for the good laugh! I ought to try that.

Re your other comments: for someone busy working 100%, how did you get time to create an account specifically to answer to this thread? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nixygirl

Also, let me remind you a few of the HN guidelines (source: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I personally don't mind, but a lot of people have been complaining about HN being aggressive lately, and I fear that kind of comments makes it worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com