the article reads like it was written by some hedgefund manager trying to pickup some goog on the cheap.

this sounds like some high school gossip. someone said that someone knows that joe might be leaving.

I've worked with people who made incredible amounts of money, who had every perquisite they could imagine, took all kinds of time off at company expense, and hated their jobs.

Some people are idiots, and they manage to get paid for it.

SpinStopper: I've worked with people who made incredible amounts of money, who had every perquisite they could imagine, took all kinds of time off at company expense, and hated their jobs.

Some people are idiots, and they manage to get paid for it.



"You betcha!"

/Obvious

I specifically said, NO SALT.

Maybe because their worthless stock options are vesting but none of them are getting supremely rich overnight as a result.

Oddly enough, not everybody at Google is a director or vice president - the article claims that, according to at least one informal poll, a third of the total workforce is looking for other options, and yet uses high-level officers (y'know, the folks that stand to actually make serious money on their stock options) as examples.

Using the "gee, the rich guys don't feel wanted" bait and switch to somehow trivialize the discontent of the rank and file isn't new.

SpinStopper: I've worked with people who made incredible amounts of money, who had every perquisite they could imagine, took all kinds of time off at company expense, and hated their jobs.

Some people are idiots, and they manage to get paid for it.

There's no such thing as a job that eventually gets to be a pain in the ass at times. No matter how good you have it, the human tendency is to look for a better deal. Doesn't matter if it's work, marriage, or whatever. What you don't have always looks better than what you do. Until you make the swap, that is, and realize you were a moron for giving up what you had.

My first sentence made no damned sense. Let's try this:

EVERY job eventually gets to be a pain in the ass at times, no matter how good the pay, hours, or how much fun it seems at first.

The reason Google gives out such killer perks is to keep you at the office for 60 hours a week.

Enjoy your gilded prison, nerdlinger.

SpinStopper: I've worked with people who made incredible amounts of money, who had every perquisite they could imagine, took all kinds of time off at company expense, and hated their jobs.

Some people are idiots, and they manage to get paid for it.

It doesn't matter how great the perks and pay are, if I'm doing work that I feel is a waste of time, is not challenging, or is uninteresting, I'm not going to be happy.

Guess I'm an idiot for being interested in more than just a paycheck.

/ would certainly like a bigger paycheck anyway

"nearly a third" of 14 people? So 4 people at google are unhappy? I think this belongs under the 'not news' tab.

Oh, ok, it says 'more than a third.' Oops. 5 people at google are unhappy RING THE ALARM BELLS!

elle_vt: I think this belongs under the 'not news' tab.

Welcome to Fark.

My sister's company was purchased by Google a few years ago. The employees loved it when all the Google goodies were brought in (cafeteria, video game rooms, free snacks). She said everyone loved working for Google, and I made an offhand comment along the lines of "yeah, we'll see what happens when they have to start cutting back". Flash forward a few years and sure enough, Google started cutting back on the free snacks and people started getting mad. They still had the cafeteria, video game rooms, etc. but because people could no longer stop by and hoard Red Bulls and cookies to take home with them, Google was now the bad guy. Now that company has been sold off to someone else, and all that stuff is gone.

It doesn't take long for people to gain a sense of entitlement, no matter how much of a windfall/freebie/extra they acknowledged it was at first.

bunch of spoiled brats. now they all forgot how to wipe their own asses.

akula: No matter how good you have it, the human tendency is to look for a better deal. Doesn't matter if it's work, marriage, or whatever. What you don't have always looks better than what you do. Until you make the swap, that is, and realize you were a moron for giving up what you had.

So very very true. It's all a matter of whether or not you remember that little point.

BretMavrik: My sister's company was purchased by Google a few years ago. The employees loved it when all the Google goodies were brought in (cafeteria, video game rooms, free snacks). She said everyone loved working for Google, and I made an offhand comment along the lines of "yeah, we'll see what happens when they have to start cutting back". Flash forward a few years and sure enough, Google started cutting back on the free snacks and people started getting mad. They still had the cafeteria, video game rooms, etc. but because people could no longer stop by and hoard Red Bulls and cookies to take home with them, Google was now the bad guy. Now that company has been sold off to someone else, and all that stuff is gone.

It doesn't take long for people to gain a sense of entitlement, no matter how much of a windfall/freebie/extra they acknowledged it was at first.

The infamous "towel revolt" at Microsoft comes to mind. One of the perks there was towel service for the multitude of showers around campus. There were a lot of cutbacks, gradually implemented and grudgingly accepted, until cutting that particular service became the proverbial last straw.

Seriously? No one's posted this yet?

SpinStopper: perquisite

New word for me. Thanks!

Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

BretMavrik: My sister's company was purchased by Google a few years ago. The employees loved it when all the Google goodies were brought in (cafeteria, video game rooms, free snacks). She said everyone loved working for Google, and I made an offhand comment along the lines of "yeah, we'll see what happens when they have to start cutting back". Flash forward a few years and sure enough, Google started cutting back on the free snacks and people started getting mad. They still had the cafeteria, video game rooms, etc. but because people could no longer stop by and hoard Red Bulls and cookies to take home with them, Google was now the bad guy. Now that company has been sold off to someone else, and all that stuff is gone.

It doesn't take long for people to gain a sense of entitlement, no matter how much of a windfall/freebie/extra they acknowledged it was at first.

THIS

SFSailor: Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

mad_prophet_tx: SpinStopper: perquisite

New word for me. Thanks!

Don't be so quick to be grateful -- that'll be a new pet peeve, too -- now every time you see someone write "perk," you'll think, "dammit! that' should be perq!"

Ok, maybe it's just me.

atomic-age: No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

< clicks profile in preparation to make typical-Fark snarky comment about wearing pants and/or not being allowed to sit down >

And you rescue dogs?! You *definitely* deserve something better. That alone is proof that the universe is not fair.

(Unless, of course, the perqs are good.)

/ also considered making the typical-Fark comment inquiring after how, in fact, YOU are doing, but that would be inappropriate

You know why they have so many amenities at Google? It's a subtle way of encouraging employees to be at work more. If you don't leave to say, eat or drop off dry cleaning or relax and blow off some steam, you're more available to work.fark that shiat.

Fuggin Bizzy: You know why they have so many amenities at Google? It's a subtle way of encouraging employees to be at work more. If you don't leave to say, eat or drop off dry cleaning or relax and blow off some steam, you're more available to work.fark that shiat.

Damn, you just figured that out?

atomic-age: SFSailor: Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

Do you work at Harley?

SFSailor: Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

I don't mean any offense by this - but a large part of why Google employees get paid as well as they do and have the perks that they do is because they do things other people *can't*.

It's not that people aren't willing to do the same job. It's that they can't get it done.

A buddy of mine from high school ended up working at Google for a while. He was in the top 10 list on TopCoder.com. In college, his team ended up in the world finals of some ACM programming contest. They sent him to Prague for it.

Most people, even computer programmers, even really good computer programmers *can't* do what the guys at Google can do. Certainly, I'm sure there are exceptions and all that, but just to round out my anecdotal evidence....

When I landed my first real programming job out of college, it was with a great little consulting firm in downtown Chicago. It really was an awesome place to work and the programmers there were truly top-notch. I was blown away by how smart and on the ball they were. Anyway, long story short, we did quarterly fun 'tech challenges' - mostly just for bragging rights. One of these challenges ended up being a cut-and-paste of a TopCoder competition.

Out of 47 professional programmers...and not just any programmers...we're talking really good programmers who billed out at over 100 dollars an hour because they were *good*...I took 4th (and I was the youngest, least experienced developer at the company).

My TopCoder rank is so high I can't remember what it was. Certainly not in the top 100 or even 1,000 or 10,000. I think it was something like 97,000 - but I could be wrong.

I couldn't even *finish* problems that my buddy from Google could do in 15 minutes. Literally. I could work on it for a week and come up with some brute force type hack that would solve it - but it couldn't finish in the time requirement. And my friend could do it in 15 minutes and it executed in less than 1 second.

And as bad as I am, I still beat the crap out of a group of highly skilled computer programmers.

Certainly, there is something to be said for the difference between algorithmic type programming done in these contests and typical business application development where knowing features of the framework/class library you are using is more useful than knowing how to graph a Mandelbrot fractal as fast as possible. But still...

It's no different than me saying, 'Man, I'd totally play in the NBA for 1/10th of what those guys get paid'. 1/10th of a million dollars is damn good money. But I'm a 5'8" white guy who can't jump and has never played basketball. I can't *do* the job. I'm not able.

The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people, even computer programmers, even good, successful, respected computer programmers can't do the job that Google would ask of them.

Hence, the ones that can get paid a lot and have insane perks.

oneodd1: Damn, you just figured that out?

No. I've known it for a while. I just got here. :)

I'm a programmer. I hear lots of jibber-jabber about the sweet amenities at Google, but rarely do I hear anyone mention that they're velvet-lined handcuffs.

SpinStopper: I've worked with people who made incredible amounts of money, who had every perquisite they could imagine, took all kinds of time off at company expense, and hated their jobs.

Some people are idiots, and they manage to get paid for it.

You know why some people get so much? Because they are always the ones to think of just the right thing at just the right time.

Maybe they only work 15 minutes a day. If they use the 15 minutes to think of something that saves or makes six figures, they're earning their pay.

They start hating the job when some bonehead manager says "Times are tough. We need to be better. I want every one in here at 8 AM sharp and we'll have daily status meetings at 3:30"

Fark_Guy_Rob:

What he said...

dofus: Maybe they only work 15 minutes a day. If they use the 15 minutes to think of something that saves or makes six figures, they're earning their pay.

This, incredibly. Creativity and inspiration doesn't punch in.

With that said, though, there's a hell of a lot that person could be doing in the other 7+ hours of the day. Edison's perspiration did just as much for him, if not more, than his inspiration - insight may give you a new direction, but you still have to do something in that direction to call it an achievement.

dofus: They start hating the job when some bonehead manager says "Times are tough. We need to be better. I want every one in here at 8 AM sharp and we'll have daily status meetings at 3:30"

god I hate that. we're not in factory jobs anymore, the actual amount of time I spend at my desk is not proportional to the amount of work I get done. Yes, I should be required to show up at work most of the time, but I don't need to be there 8.5 hours a day, sitting at a desk, staring at my computer screen.

Fark_Guy_Rob: SFSailor: Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

I don't mean any offense by this - but a large part of why Google employees get paid as well as they do and have the perks that they do is because they do things other people *can't*.

It's not that people aren't willing to do the same job. It's that they can't get it done.

A buddy of mine from high school ended up working at Google for a while. He was in the top 10 list on TopCoder.com. In college, his team ended up in the world finals of some ACM programming contest. They sent him to Prague for it.

Most people, even computer programmers, even really good computer programmers *can't* do what the guys at Google can do. Certainly, I'm sure there are exceptions and all that, but just to round out my anecdotal evidence....

When I landed my first real programming job out of college, it was with a great little consulting firm in downtown Chicago. It really was an awesome place to work and the programmers there were truly top-notch. I was blown away by how smart and on the ball they were. Anyway, long story short, we did quarterly fun 'tech challenges' - mostly just for bragging rights. One of these challenges ended up being a cut-and-paste of a TopCoder competition.

Out of 47 professional programmers...and not just any programmers...we're talking really good programmers who billed out at over 100 dollars an hour because they were *good*...I took 4th (and I was the youngest, least experienced developer at the company).

My TopCoder rank is so high I can't remember what it was. Certainly not in the top 100 or even 1,000 or 10,000. I think it was something like 97,000 - but I could be wrong.

I couldn't even *finish* problems that my buddy from Google could do in 15 minutes. Literally. I could work on it for a week and come up with some brute force type hack that would solve it - but it couldn't finish in the time requirement. And my friend could do it in 15 minutes and it executed in less than 1 second.

And as bad as I am, I still beat the crap out of a group of highly skilled computer programmers.

Certainly, there is something to be said for the difference between algorithmic type programming done in these contests and typical business application development where knowing features of the framework/class library you are using is more useful than knowing how to graph a Mandelbrot fractal as fast as possible. But still...

It's no different than me saying, 'Man, I'd totally play in the NBA for 1/10th of what those guys get paid'. 1/10th of a million dollars is damn good money. But I'm a 5'8" white guy who can't jump and has never played basketball. I can't *do* the job. I'm not able.

The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people, even computer programmers, even good, successful, respected computer programmers can't do the job that Google would ask of them.

Hence, the ones that can get paid a lot and have insane perks.



You're partly right. Google has 20k employees. Not all of them are good. They have a lot of people dealing with adds, and a lot of IT people. The coders you are talking about are rather few and far between among a company that size and they are given the really interesting projects. For a lot of companies these people get compensated really well because they are hard to find, and hard to keep.

I've interviewed a few people, they tend to be smart but not terribly impressive. I write driver code, so, i have vastly different expectations.

atomic-age:

No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

Strip club?

My problem with this article is that it's not talking so much about Google employees as the Google braintrust. Which is far more concerned about making money than working conditions.

Do you think that Advertising VP Penry Price gives a damn about what the peons are fed in the cafeteria? Or whether he gets to sit in a bean bag chair while he works?

It sounds to me like a bunch of higher ups are fishing for raises in the recession.

Fark_Guy_Rob:
I don't mean any offense by this - but a large part of why Google employees get paid as well as they do and have the perks that they do is because they do things other people *can't*.

*****SNIP*****


Does your buddy have a website, or blog, where he shares his wisdom? I know he can't share his genius, but it'd be cool if he shared how he approached problems/his thinking process.

Fark_Guy_Rob: When I landed my first real programming job out of college, it was with a great little consulting firm in downtown Chicago. It really was an awesome place to work and the programmers there were truly top-notch. I was blown away by how smart and on the ball they were. Anyway, long story short, we did quarterly fun 'tech challenges' - mostly just for bragging rights. One of these challenges ended up being a cut-and-paste of a TopCoder competition.

Out of 47 professional programmers...and not just any programmers...we're talking really good programmers who billed out at over 100 dollars an hour because they were *good*...I took 4th (and I was the youngest, least experienced developer at the company).

Protip: 90% of those 47 programmers didn't give a shiat about the competition and thus probably put forth a very half-hearted effort.

FormlessOne: dofus: Maybe they only work 15 minutes a day. If they use the 15 minutes to think of something that saves or makes six figures, they're earning their pay.

This, incredibly. Creativity and inspiration doesn't punch in.

With that said, though, there's a hell of a lot that person could be doing in the other 7+ hours of the day. Edison's perspiration did just as much for him, if not more, than his inspiration - insight may give you a new direction, but you still have to do something in that direction to call it an achievement.

Can we turn this into an Edison hate-shiat thread? Cause talking about google is really boring.

Edison never invented anything. Stole 100% of his ideas. And didn't even do the manual labor much of the time, but rather hired people to play with his trial and error nonsense until he found something he could take credit for.

And he poured an absolutely bat-shiat insane amount of molten copper under the streets of New York City, which I think we can all agree was totally retarded.

FormlessOne: With that said, though, there's a hell of a lot that person could be doing in the other 7+ hours of the day.

With software, try 23+ hours. It sticks in your head and won't go away. I've lost track of the number of times I sprung from a sound sleep with the fix for some driver I'm working on that keeps crashing the system.

atomic-age:
No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

I'm more glad than ever to add a smidge of potential joy to your life for at least 30 days.

/HEY! Are you working now?
//Who gave you computer access?
///Get back to your menial job, serf!

dofus:

They start hating the job when some bonehead manager says "Times are tough. We need to be better. I want every one in here at 8 AM sharp and we'll have daily status meetings at 3:30"

Not just start hating the job, start finding the new job. Because this exact thing happened to me (except they were 4:30 meetings, and the guy wasn't even in the same state so they were conference calls) about 4 months prior to him finding a reason to fire me. Went 13 months before getting a contract position where it was uncertain they'd extend it every month. Now I'm in a job which is going to work out rather well, fairly laid back, and reasonably secure. Not google, but a pretty damned good one made especially sweet because I'm now a client to the bonehead manager who fired me after the asshat moves.

They laid off almost everyone else a year later and now there is only one guy on that team left managing a whole bunch of bangalore code monkeys. I'll be he hates his job with the passion of a thousand suns.

Fark_Guy_Rob:

Cool story bro!

dofus: FormlessOne: With that said, though, there's a hell of a lot that person could be doing in the other 7+ hours of the day.

With software, try 23+ hours. It sticks in your head and won't go away. I've lost track of the number of times I sprung from a sound sleep with the fix for some driver I'm working on that keeps crashing the system.

I've done my 70+ hour weeks at Microsoft - my long-term reward was moderate agoraphobia, thanks to years of professional and performance anxiety. Sure, I've a nifty chunk of crystal for my mantle, my work all over MSDN, and a whole collection of T-shirts and swag, but just once, I would've loved to simply not feel anxious about my job.

atomic-age: SFSailor: Hey, Google!

I'll do whatever they're doing for 1/2 what you're paying those ungrateful bastards!

/ unemployed and bitter
// mmmm slashies
/// I fark to redirect the rage

No shiat. I work someplace where I can never ever wear jeans, I'm freezing cold every shift, my purse is searched when I leave, and I am not allowed to sit down.

I would imagine it's to make sure you aren't sneaking animal tranquilizers home huh?

palan: You're partly right. Google has 20k employees. Not all of them are good. They have a lot of people dealing with adds, and a lot of IT people. The coders you are talking about are rather few and far between among a company that size and they are given the really interesting projects. For a lot of companies these people get compensated really well because they are hard to find, and hard to keep.

I've interviewed a few people, they tend to be smart but not terribly impressive. I write driver code, so, i have vastly different expectations.

We recently interviewed for infosec folks - out of the hundreds of resumes and the 25 candidates interviewed - we found only 2 people that could even remotely do the job (one I knew and stole from another company). The third we hired we are taking a gamble on. The bottom line is that any industry has a small percentage of people that are the rock stars - the rest are sheep. The rock stars are difficult to keep around and move around frequently regardless of perks. The sheep biatch about everything.

very jealous of all you people who've worked big jobs like dofus, FormlessOne, and Fark_Guy_Rob, et. al...

/EE student turned GUI developer
//not very good at coding, although I wish I was
///grass is greener, cool story bro, etc.

akula: My first sentence made no damned sense. Let's try this:

EVERY job eventually gets to be a pain in the ass at times, no matter how good the pay, hours, or how much fun it seems at first.


simplify your life. simple is good. then you can do as you please without your job following you home.

in america, the ownership society sells you the pie in the sky fantasy. you work hard believing someday you'll 'make it'.

the truth is that very very few 'make it'. the rest just toil away their lives, believing that they're chance will come some day.

that is sad, bec, when they get older they realize they've been duped but then its too late.


unless you are born 'in the club' or otherwise get very lucky or have extraordinary talent, you will not make much more money than you are making right now.

wake up!! american worker. the game is rigged.