bunburying

I think you're being a bit mischievous with you definition of customer.

You're really a user; not a customer. Customers pay. Google is selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Advertises are Google's customers.

Interesting to compare and contrast American and European attitudes toward social mobility [1].

Apparently Americans are far more likely than Europeans to believe that hard work gets you to the top.

However, these expectations are apparently quite divorced from reality. Apparently hard work is far more likely to get you to the top in Europe (especially continental Europe) than in the US.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_t...

I was in the London office (until a year ago) and led an engineering team spanning London, Zurich and New York. The majority of Google Zurich's engineers are not Swiss—elsewhere from Europe, from across Asia and many from the US.

As a former Googler who was involved in comparing pay across Google sites, Zurich was on par with Mountain View in gross pay (and ahead of New York), and after-tax pay was markedly higher in Zurich.

While Berlin is a great city, it is very far from being a top-pay city in Europe.

As at least one person has already struggled with this (subthread now deleted), hopefully the following will help others.

To read the article in full, please click the "web" link above, between "past" and "[...] comments".

WSJ articles can be read in full, if you click through from Google search results.

Note: simply copying the Google link and pasting it here won't work. Presumably Google needs to be the referrer.

Following this link doesn't work. Presumably Google needs to be the referrer.

Click the "web" link above, between "past" and [...] comments.

In accepting this position, are you not allowing others to be harmed? I'm assuming you're not uniquely being abused by the powers that be.