i am in some servers where a lot of very intelligent guys are (ASIC, FPGA, Hardware DEV, ML, Robotics) some of them struggle to even buy the right HW and/or have more time to Dev their visions because they work jobs which are in my opinion not paying enough or have to jump through bullshit hoops in corporate,they get nothing but the guy who is a fucking car salesman turned cult leader gets all the money, its mindblowing

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/o...arassment.html

warning warning warning hot take incoming:

this girl had problems. she admits it. she grew up in foster care. that comes with a price. she thought google fixed that, that google was, literally, her family now. and im sorry, thats not googles job. so right off the bat im like fuck outta here.. *a little*. because i empathize with how truly fucking awful this must have been for her, dont get me wrong. but again, she took a bunch of shit to heart and shouldnt have and got stung over it. and if we are being totally honest, if you want to work at a shop like google, part of that is having the wherewithal to contact HR immediately when your boss starts calling you 'beautiful'. google assumes you have those sorts of basic survival skills. its really on the employee to grab a fucking life preserver when the ship starts listing, thats just common sense in that environment.

but yeah she got fucked over and she deserves a lot of hugs and a big cash payout and i hope she got both.

that said, from friends who work/worked there:

once upon a time, google was dot com camelot. it was where the best and brightest minds worked and if you got in there, it was like a badge of honor. and you got life changing money for the experience. the in-house masseuse they hired when they started fleshing out the campus retired a few years later a multi millionaire.

those days are fucking over.

no one in the engineering roles at google, including the tier 7 cats like lcamtuf or geohot or any of those literal gods are making boat money anymore. that shits done. an entry level gig doing data science for a new jersey hedge fund will make you real close to 2x more than a tier 7 google job if the bonuses work out. c-level? well yeah, those bonuses are still porno mode. but the tech rockstar days are over.

what isnt over is that its become a very lord of the flies style party where its extremely clear that all these 'google = life' perks like "nap pods" and actual chefs in the cafeteria and laundry on site etc etc etc all that exists to keep you at your desk. focused and working.

its a crucible. thats where the pendulum has swung at google. and people are talking about it a lot. the turnover is staggering. and because of that, the people inclined to not bail at the first sign of trouble (aka not millenials) get fucked to pieces by their own loyalty. the on-call rotations tear people apart emotionally.

and remember, they were the ones feted with 'youre special enough to be here' so its doubly hard for them to say hey wait this isnt fucking healthy.

my big takeaway from wework was that they got suckered in by yet another shady sociopath narcissist. and what i found so bizarre about the story is how totally obvious it was.

but at some point we also have to wonder how this would have gone if masa hadnt handed adam a 4bn check on the single condition that adam 'go insane' with it. like that 100% happened.



anyway...

if you love having a budget for all the best hardware, work for the NSA or a hedge fund. everything else is going to be a relentless series of compromises that no one is ever quite happy with.