Why I won’t work for Google

  I appreciate you contacting me, but I'm currently in the process of
  raising a funding round for my startup which precludes me from
  looking at other opportunities right now.  However; if you know any
  investors in the IoT space, I would love to chat.

Funny thing is that in about 6 months, they are going to probably contact Him, and Me again.

davidw• 12 years ago

Here's what I wrote them last time, more or less:

Thank you for your interest and taking the time to discuss employment opportunities, but at this time I have decided not to pursue a further relationship with Google as an employer. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

twic• 12 years ago

Mine was:

"Unfortunately, Google is not a company i have any interest in working for. Thanks for getting in touch, though, and good luck with your hunt."

The impression i've formed is that Google is full of people who are quite smart, but think they're really smart, and have decided to build themselves a technical ecosystem that has no interaction with the rest of the world. That doesn't sound like fertile ground for personal growth.

Also, given that i am in London, it would have meant working on AdWords, which sounds dull.

sidcool3• 12 years ago

The response doesn't seem convincing. By this standards he's not supposed to work for any corporation. I am a Google fanboy, I agree, and this might skew my opinion, but I am always open to debate.

joeblau3• 12 years ago

He may make enough money freelancing that he doesn't need to work for any corporation. If you're good at what you do in the Software space, you can command very strong 6 figure salaries and only have to "work" part of the year to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle.

nutjob2• 12 years ago

Who do you think freelancers work for, exactly?

chaired• 12 years ago

He could work for a corp that is small enough that it still seems like it is made of decent human beings.

My interview experience with G was more than enough to ensure I never seek to work there again.

And, the trauma of having all my media accounts force-Hoovered into G+ left me little choice but to revoke the last little bit of admiration I had for this once-cool-as-beans company.

harshreality• 12 years ago

Agreed. The response seems to conflate a bunch of different things and pretend it's all Google's fault. Snowden didn't blow the whistle on Google. Google can't control what the NSA is tapping or what court orders it gets. Maybe some people inside Google knew about inter-datacenter taps and didn't do anything about it, but once all of Google became aware, they started encrypting those links. Automatic indexing of email contents leaves Google open to subpoenas for information about that indexed content, but the emails would be there to subpoena either way. I don't understand the problem.

What has Google ever done to help TLAs wiretap anyone?

Apachez5• 12 years ago

Encryption is worthless if you have handed over the cipherkeys... but I guess this might fool some of the public at least.

politician2• 12 years ago

Occasionally, I wonder if HN sells data on which way we vote for articles and comments. I guess we'll never know since they could be under an NSL.

erddojo2• 12 years ago

People tend to forget we are Google's product. Not their customers. Advertisers are their customers.

Plenty of tech companies don't sell souls for a living, therefore by working there you may not be required to also sacrifice yours for a paycheck.

Flip side; there are those who believe ads aren't evil. Google builds a lot of interesting tech. It's probably a great place for engineers. But one look at their financial reporting and it's still evident that advertising pays the bills.

Oletros8• 12 years ago

The products is ad space, not the users

gnaffle• 12 years ago

I think the big problem with Google is their obsessive compulsiveness in collecting data. Searches, chat logs, locations, everything is collected because storage is cheap. The collect it to improve their services, sure, to better target their advertising, of course. And Google may strive to protect that data and not share it with others. However, all this data makes Google a gold mine for governments, and giving out the data is not really in their control.

There are other companies that have business models don't necessitate all this data collection. When these companies have to cooperate with governments, there's a limit to the amount of useful information they can hand out about their customers.

hpaavola• 12 years ago

I think you should work for Google. They might teach you a thing or two about how to handle traffic.

Apachez5• 12 years ago

Yeah, I suppose you (hpaavola) have one or more thing to teach Cloudflare about how to deal with traffic (which this host is using as frontend)?

Intrepidd• 12 years ago

Cloudflare is not having any issue, it's just used here as a proxy to help with caching and static files. The real server hosting the application is down.

However this comment was a bit useless.

ikusalic• 12 years ago

To be fair Google is a great company. But because of some actions they have taken they are not so outstandingly appealing as they were few years ago. Of course that's natural given their size. Many big companies are way worse. But still, they are now just another company that's good to their employees (many of whom are still quite passionate about it). No more, no less, that's all Google is.

primitivesuave• 12 years ago

Pretty well-written sentiment, only thing is that recruiters cast a pretty wide net and certainly wouldn't read through anyone's life story if presented with the opportunity.

However, I'm sure that if every person who gets contacted by a Google recruiter responds with a similar diatribe about their disillusionment with Google's ways, they just might take notice.

charlesism• 12 years ago

Since it's made the top spot on HN, the recruiter himself no longer matters. Hundreds of Google employees will read it today.

theboss• 12 years ago

"Nicklas, a simple no thank you I am not interested would have sufficed -Patrick"

quaunaut6• 12 years ago

I'm still waiting on proof from Snowden as to Apple/Google/Facebook's direct, illegal cooperation with the NSA. So far, all I've seen proof of is compliance with warrants(which admittedly are questionable, but Google has a direct financial gain in fighting them, not helping them), claims that they've fought them, and evidence that the NSA is both tapping the trunk as well as decrypting SSL'd communications.

Apachez5• 12 years ago

This might give you a hint?

http://thehackernews.com/2014/05/ios-apple-iphone-data-prote...

Apple iOS 7 Updates Silently Remove Encryption for Email Attachments Thursday, May 01, 2014

quaunaut6• 12 years ago

From what I'm reading in other places this seems more like an oversight than malicious intent. It was present in iOS 7, then broke in later versions. The e-mails themselves are still fully encrypted, and the iPhone data itself can be encrpyted, the main trouble seems to be what's transmitted during sync, since the actual researcher[1] claims a valid workaround is simply disabling mail synchronization.

1. http://www.andreas-kurtz.de/2014/04/what-apple-missed-to-fix...

eurleif3• 12 years ago

Google has a direct financial gain in fighting them

Wait, what? Google has a direct financial gain in fighting warrants? How do you figure?

quaunaut6• 12 years ago

In fighting overbroad warrants, via the National Security Letters. Having NSLs at all significantly increases consumer distrust in Google, and gives them literally zero gains in return. It even costs them work, if you're looking at the small stuff. They don't get anything out of it.

Edit: Clarified what NSL means.

odonnellryan• 12 years ago

My opinion would be: We trust them with our data, if they prove untrustworthy (ultimately) we'd stop using their service/giving them the data they need.

Some already have stopped, of course.

whoismua• 12 years ago

They absolutely do not want anyone asking about user info, or their "store everything here forever so we can index and show ads next to it" is in trouble.

On the other hand, Google doesn't want to piss off the Feds or the Military Industrial Complex. They spend a lot of money and have friends in high places.

samstave• 12 years ago

Yeah, so basically nothing with respect to the most egregious violation of every single tenet of what the US is marketed to the globe supposedly is!

So, Cool - its great that Snowden hasn't proved shit to make anyone believe the reality is the inverse of what one may think it to be.

Look, the will of our politicians must only be the whole of the Law! So, we're good here....

leoc2• 12 years ago

Snowden never made a claim of illegal cooperation. Glen Greenwald more or less did, but he was wrong.

quaunaut6• 12 years ago

Yes he has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9L1PD7Cpo

Go to 4 minutes into that video. It's his first interview post-reveal, in Hong Kong.

"Beyond that we've got Prism, which is a demonstration of how the US Government co-opts US corporate power to its own ends. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, they all get together with the NSA, and provide the NSA with direct access to the back ends of all of the systems you use to communicate, to store data, to put things in the cloud. And even just to send birthday wishes and keep a record of your life. And they give the NSA direct access that they don't need to oversee so they can't be held liable for it. I think that's a dangerous capability for anyone to have, but particularly for an organization that's demonstrated time and time again that they'll work to shield themselves from oversight."

holri2• 12 years ago

It does not matter for the OP if Google's behavior is illegal or not. Ethic is independent from law.

quaunaut6• 12 years ago

I suppose, but his arguments are primarily couched in the notion of 'what nefarious thing can be used with your private data', of which Google's committed a grand number of... zero, bad things with. And as far as any evidence whatsoever has shown, they've actually fought FOR your privacy from the government.

Are you trusting them with it? Most definitely. But you're using their services, that trust is implicit. The same way that it's implicit that your bank has your money, or that your phone carrier holds your calls. To ask them to absolve themselves of any ability to snoop is literally to cancel out their reason for existence.

panarky• 12 years ago

OP says "we never saw Google shut down its service in protest"

Do you remember this headline? "Google Shuts China Site in Dispute Over Censorship" [1]

Google withdrew from the largest, fastest-growing gold-rush market because censorship violated their principles.

Show me one other large company in any industry that has taken a stand like this. Not Microsoft. Not Cisco. Not Bloomberg.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

api• 12 years ago

This isn't just about the NSA, PRISM, etc. It's about surveillance as a business model and as the core purpose of the service. Mass surveillance by advertisers and potentially much creepier private sector entities (astroturf PR firms, think tanks, political parties, ideological pressure groups, insurers, private "intelligence" firms, etc.) is just as violating and potentially worse in the long term than surveillance by the NSA and its kin.

The surveillance-based "free" business model is not our friend.

Oletros8• 12 years ago

We witnessed Google sending cease and desist letters to the developers and maintainers of the popular Android CyanogenMod for violating some patents by modifying open source elements of an open source licensed project

Taking into account that this is not what happened between Google and Cyanogen I doubt about the knowledge of him

apozem• 12 years ago

My thoughts exactly. If this guy didn't care to look up that the toss-up was about gApps (Google's proprietary products), that casts doubt onto the rest of his piece.

jccalhoun2• 12 years ago

He doesn't even get the phrase "Don't be evil" right. He writes "Don't do evil" multiple times.

Then he is surprised that google reads email. How else are they supposed to find out if something is spam or not if they don't read it? And email isn't secure in the first place. Anyone that doesn't know that shouldn't be up for a technical job at an internet-based company in the first place.

It seems like his complaint is that google allegedly turned emails over to the government. Well then why is he bringing up the distraction of "google reads my mom's email!!!"?

eclipxe• 12 years ago

Wouldn't want to work with this guy. Fair points but come on, the poor recruiter is the wrong person to rant to.

Apachez5• 12 years ago

Better to accept the offer and some months later become a Snowden v2?

microtonal3• 12 years ago

the poor recruiter is the wrong person to rant to.

Why? If enough talented individuals reject a Google position (or more accurately, entry to Google's interview process) for moral reasons, the message will be sent up the chain of command.

Google thrives on talent. If it becomes hard to acquire new talent, they have a serious problem.

saalweachter2• 12 years ago

Well, for one thing, rejecting it at the point of a recruiter reaching out to you is a weak signal. Get through the hiring process and then reject the job offer, and it will become a much stronger signal. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that way fewer people reject job offers than turn down recruiters soliciting for a phone screen.

With only a little bit of sarcasm, I would also say that accepting the job offer, working loyally for some amount of time, and then quitting in protest would be a much stronger signal still.

aendruk• 12 years ago

It's an open letter; he's writing for us, not the recruiter. The recruiter merely serves as a prompt.

dscrd• 12 years ago

Well, I suppose this is not entirely unlike applying for them and not getting the job.

etfb2• 12 years ago

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough. But I like to tell myself that the ethical shortcuts they've taken in pursuit of the almighty dollar are a good secondary reason. It's just that I don't need a secondary reason, so yay, consequence-free ethics!

sk5t• 12 years ago

Although I agree with the thrust of your comment, re. intelligence, I will nevertheless downvote you for being petulant.

eternalban2• 12 years ago

This (GP) current top comment is an indirect ad-hominem and taking valuable real estate in this page. Up voting you.

vixin• 12 years ago

Your honesty is to be applauded.

id• 12 years ago

It's not enough to be smart, you have to convince them that you're smart. And if the recruiters dislike you for whatever reason, there's nothing you can do about it.

jschuur• 12 years ago

I think Google's recruiters realize that some really smart people have certain personality types that may mean they don't perform well in classical interviews.

mmahemoff• 12 years ago

It's not enough to be smart reason 2: Intelligence is not the only quality they're selecting for.

threeseed• 12 years ago

Google in the beginning made hiring PhD types a priority but that has absolutely changed in recent years. It would be truly surprising if they would turn down someone with an exceptional list of open source projects or working experience.

lamby2• 12 years ago

Mm. These sort of posts ("Why I won't work for Google", "Why I won't sign your NDA", "Why I won't do your technical interview") often come across as having a different agenda, and not necessarily one based on insecurity.

kumbasha3• 12 years ago

What agenda? Google sucks, NDAs suck, etc?

mehrdada• 12 years ago

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough

I think plenty of people tend to vastly overestimate Google's (or Facebook's, ...) hiring bar. I know quite a few people who would be happy to work there and (I believe) can easily beat the hiring process, but they self-eliminate themselves from the game, so I definitely recommend to folks not to make a prejudice about whether they can get into, because they generally don't have many data points, and go interview anyway. Let them figure out whether you are smart enough or not; don't self-eliminate. Never let the widespread propaganda lead you to believe that everyone hired by a successful company in the valley is a genius. They collectively hire many thousands of people; it's hard to believe they are all geniuses.

67726e3• 12 years ago

Honestly, I used to think the same way. I am a college dropout that has about 3 years professional experience (thoigh I have been programming since I was a kid) and I suddenly have a Google recruiter coming after me and trying to get me to interview. I have worked with a guy who now works at Google and some people who interviewed at one time or another. They say the same thing as the parent post; Google hires good programmers, and they happen to have some geniuses. Don't quit the race before you even start it.

brown9-23• 12 years ago

The other half of this is that the skills required to get past the interview bar are not quite the same skills that would make you a great developer. There is some overlap, but the interview process at Google is a game in itself.

rikacomet• 12 years ago

Just want to note that, ethics are not just simply things people have been doing for years, but in fact human progress/efficiency measures built into social behavior.

Such a ignorance towards ethics is like debt: initially you grow, keep doing it, and soon enough you take a nosedive.

sidcool3• 12 years ago

I agree with you. I feel the same. At the same time I wonder if I suffer from the Impostor Syndrome. It's difficult to tell.

smikhanov3• 12 years ago

It's also funny to see "I have to decline your job offer" line in the response to a recruiter's first cold email.

Recruiter reaching out to him is nowhere near the actual job offer, so this guy publicly flatters himself big time.

ntakasaki• 12 years ago

I won't work for them because they're increasingly becoming more and more evil. As an example, they've been secretly building ad profiles of Google Apps for Education student users even if ads were turned off by the administrator to show them ads on other Google sites. They give schools free Chromebooks and all, but they should atleast declare what kind of profiling they're doing to the students who are forced to use the Google cloud for student email. They denied it when asked, but couldn't get their employees and lawyers to lie in federal court, silently removed language about not tracking from their site and finally a few days ago turned it off! If not for a lawsuit, this tracking would've not come to light. Couple that with massive spending on lobbying compared to Apple and MS makes me feel uneasy. The below article makes me wonder if they use paying Google Apps for Business email accounts to build ad profiles too? Anyone know?

From http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht... :

"As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools. In the suit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising."

"A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes, including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned off—even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads. The company would not say whether those email scans are used to help build profiles of students or other Apps for Education users, but said the results of its data mining are not used to actually target ads to Apps for Education users unless they choose to receive them."

...

"Student-data-privacy experts contend that the latter claim is contradicted by Google’s own court filings in the California suit. They describe the case as highly troubling and likely to further inflame rising national concern that protection of children’s private educational information is too lax."

"Mr. Thiele said his district has used Google Apps for Education since 2008. Officials there have always been aware that the company does “back-end processing” of students’ email messages, he said, but the district’s agreement with Google precludes such data from being used to serve ads to students or staff members. As long as the company abides by those terms, Mr. Thiele said, “I don’t have any problem with it.” In an emailed statement provided to Education Week, Bram Bout, the director of Google Apps for Education, said that “ads in Gmail are turned off by default for Google Apps for Education and we have no plans to change that in the future.”"

...

"Those plaintiffs in the California lawsuit allege that Google treats Google Apps for Education email users virtually the same as it treats consumer Gmail users. That means not only mining students’ email messages for key words and other information, but also using resulting data—including newly created derivative information, or “metadata”—for “secret user profiling” that could serve as the basis for such activities as delivering targeted ads in Google products other than Apps for Education, such as Google Search, Google+, and YouTube."

"The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around 2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’ inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off."

"While the allegations by the plaintiffs are explosive, it’s the sworn declarations of Google representatives in response to their claims that have truly raised the eyebrows of observers and privacy experts. Contrary to the company’s earlier public statements, Google representatives acknowledged in a September motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ request for class certification that the company’s consumer-privacy policy applies to Apps for Education users. Thus, Google argues, it has students’ (and other Apps for Education users’) consent to scan and process their emails."

"In November, Kyle C. Wong, a lawyer representing Google, also argued in a formal declaration submitted to the court in opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification that the company’s data-mining practices are widely known, and that the plaintiffs’ complaints that the scanning and processing of their emails was done secretly are thus invalid. Mr. Wong cited extensive media coverage about Google’s data mining of Gmail consumer users’ messages, as well as the disclosures made by numerous universities to their students about how Google Apps for Education functions."

microtonal3• 12 years ago

You might be interested to hear that e-mail scanning for the creating profiles for advertisements was killed a few days ago for Google Apps for Education. They are also ending it for Google Apps for Business and the grandfathered free accounts:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.de/2014/04/protecting-stude...

jw2013• 12 years ago

The primary reason I won't work for Google is because I'm nowhere near smart enough.

But as long as the hiring process keeps the same as of it is now, it can be hacked not that difficultly by keep practicing on coding exercises (e.g. http://oj.leetcode.com/). All of my friends spent several weeks working on the coding exercises got into Google (for those cared to apply). Several of them are really not that "smart" and they are below-average in project-coding & general computer science understanding (sorry my friends), but repeatedly working on coding exercises and even memorize some common problems' solution just works for Google or Facebook's hiring process.

That process of cracking the coding exercises can be boring, though. I would be immediately returning to do my side-project even after I do one or two coding exercise. Not worth of the time at least for me; there are tons of great companies packed with people smarter than the average Googlers and they don't emphasize on algorithm in hiring process that much, why not work for them?

coldcode• 12 years ago

If that's true then Google's hiring process is as broken as everyone's. If below average people are hired by your process then it's the process that sucks. Of course if you keep doing that then eventually your company will suck too.

bstar77• 12 years ago

Being smart enough for google is a fucking myth. If it takes a genius to engineer google analytics or google ads, then thank god I'm a mere mortal.

cscurmudgeon• 12 years ago

Not this FUD again. If Googlers are so smart why are they not rich?

There are lots of professions that the average Googler couldn't get into which makes more $ (e.g. finance, doing a profitable startup). If you ask an average Google, they would give similar ethics-based reasons like OP (e.g. Wall street is bad.)

Get off your high horse, you are not smart, you just gamed the interview process. If you are smart, quit and start a company.

auvrw• 12 years ago

from the panic_bcast source

    s.bind(("", 1337)) # Listen on all devices

haha

p4bl02• 12 years ago

I can't access the linked blogpost because the website is offline, but from the comments here I understand that the main reason the author is invoking for not working at Google is because of Snowden's revelations and Google implication with the NSA.

I think this is strange, we knew way before Snowden's revelations what Google did with the privacy of their users. That in itself should be enough to not want to work there, if you care about it. I know more than a handful of people (including me) who refused jobs from Google (often more than one time, for example I had to ask them to write down to not contact me again after the third time) before Snowden's revelations. The reasons were multiple: "don't be evil" is a joke, Google has been a big company for years now and not really a fun startupy place, it may happens that the job you want is not the kind of jobs that Google offers, and it's not even true anymore (or at least, it is less and less) that having worked at Google make your resume special.

enscr• 12 years ago

cache:qnrq.se/why-i-wont-work-for-google/

provemewrong• 12 years ago

I don't know if ironic is the right word, but it certainly is funny reading the Google's cached version of the article.

hitchhiker9994• 12 years ago

Perhaps a few people don't understand why OP takes this so seriously. This is the 'long game', the game for the betterment of human existence. (Cliche? yes, true enough? - probably)

If you still feel these huge corporations have our best interests at heart, you are being a touch naive.

They are not 'evil' ofc, but they're probably not the best idea for the future.

l33tbro• 12 years ago

What is your best idea for the future? Do you think I or anyone else would find it palatable?

Here's the thing: the profit motive is the impulse of corporations, not the sum total of all behavior. There are great people in corporations that do amazing shit within corporate structures. Coca-Cola have done incredible social art installations recently - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_4vOUDImE

Google is a huge corporation based on the profit principle, but making coin has been the means for Page to fulfil his dreams of being remembered as our modern Tesla.

hrktb2• 12 years ago

About Coca Cola, there is this very good talk by Melinda Gates about what they do in the developping world: http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_french_gates_what_nonprofit...

I think enabling enterprising people to do business may be the most positive thing Coca Cola does to the world.

For Google, it seems making money is not the end game. What they do have many positive fallouts, but I'm not sure they move the 'real' world forward as much as Microsoft (while openly evil, they brought a unified computing environment to the world) or Apple or even Amazon.

hitchhiker9994• 12 years ago

My best idea for the future? First one that comes to mind: Decentralisation of key services. Perhaps you don't find that palatable - others may.

While I truly like 'Page', he seems like an interesting chap; It's a stretch to portray him as today's 'Tesla'.

VikingCoder3• 12 years ago

We live in a capitalist world.

Corporations are the natural extension.

So, your choices are: go Amish, go Entrepreneur, or pick the least bad Corporations.

Nemcue• 12 years ago

In typical american fashion you paint the world black or white, when it is not so.

javert• 12 years ago

This is the 'long game', the game for the betterment of human existence.

There is no rational moral justification for this ethic. It's arbitrary. Don't devote your life to something morally arbitrary.

hitchhiker9994• 12 years ago

No, it's fine - as a person who's been surrounded by coding and logic since I was 6 years old (32 years ago). I'll choose the 'arbitrary' (from your perspective) choice. In my somewhat silly opinion -> All choices are arbitrary beyond 'i exist'.

presootto• 12 years ago

There's plenty of people who still believe that, even inside of Google. Then there's the group of employees, known as the 'memegen consenus', who have come to realize that Google is not different from any other large corporation.

Color me cynical, but after witnessing things like the 'no poaching' settlement and the internal memo that calimed they didn't believe to have done anything wrong, I can't see why Google should be anybody's dream company.

Google's reputation is worse then Microsoft these days, so it seems the public is finally waking up.

Disclaimer: I work for Google.

tompagenet2• 12 years ago

I think this unduly conflates his displeasure at the automated scanning of emails to target advertising and the NSA etc. bulk access to data. The former doesn't make the latter any more likely. All webmail services must hold their customers' emails, and they are therefore open to being read by a government or third party. Users could encrypt their emails, but it's very hard to do this while also making logging in and accessing anywhere fast easy for all users.

loup-vaillant• 12 years ago

There you go: webmails, while extremely usable, help government snooping by their very nature. If e-mail was decentralized like it was meant to be, spying would be that much harder. (Yes, everyone could host their mail at home. Yes, it can be plug&play useable. No, no one bothered to sell the damn stuff, probably because webmails were more profitable —or believed to be.)

But when you think of it for like 2 seconds, automated scanning does help the NSA. Such software is easy to re-purpose. With the right subpoena, I give Google a week before it gives away a nice social graph of US dissidence to the NSA.

flavor82• 12 years ago

Yes, exactly.

Any webmail service that stores email unencrypted on its servers is subject to subpoena / FISA requests, and there isn't much they can do about it.

They could roll out client-side encryption -- but there's little business incentive for them to do so on free accounts. That said, as an option for paying apps users, it would be quite valuable.

Automatic scanning of emails isn't ethically suspect in my opinion.

My reasons for not working at google right now are: lack of desire to engage in big company politics, the apparent softening of the 20% time policy, regular-corporate/long hours, and the commute I'd have to take. Otherwise it'd be near top of my list should I go back into full time business.

kumbasha3• 12 years ago

What about the fact that they colluded with Apple and other companies to keep their engineer salaries as low as possible?

AliAdams• 12 years ago

A better Google is one you pay for and whose income and subsequently motivations align with the customer, not third parties.

The idea of Google being a virtual personal assistant who knows everything about you but who you can trust to keep that information private is very cool and I think more aligned with where Google really wants to go. The problem is that they need to rely on advertising for now which means you'll never really trust what that PA says and what it is telling others about you.

puppetmaster3• 12 years ago

Some searching shows he is supportive of #anakata, and maybe people can read up.

ptr• 12 years ago

They both live (lived?) in Cambodia, it seems.

etherael5• 12 years ago

All mainstream modern technology companies are in a no win tragic situation. They are accountable to the state which overrides their ability to make any kind of actual independent decisions when the interests of the state are at stake. Going against this would be an exercise in futility and you may well end up in prison for doing so.

Getting angry at them for what they are forced at gunpoint to do is just wasted energy, though I do agree with seeking alternatives free from the influence of the state and not patronising companies that are forced to operate in those interests purely from the perspective of pragmatism.

All they can do is stick to the letter of the law. I think the harder the state clamps down and the more totalitarian it becomes, the more black market alternatives for mainstream services will come into being and the more pressure there will be for a truly free parallel economy to flourish.

clarry• 12 years ago

All mainstream modern technology companies are in a no win tragic situation.

Actually the big companies (and to a lesser degree other significant entities like Wikipedia) that essentially hold the keys to the Internet and have the money -- if anyone, they are in a position to change things. They have tremendous power. Think civil disobedience. Corporate disobedience? There are many legal as well as illegal things these corps could do to flip the bird at the state. And the result might be that they get heard, unlike all the EFF campaigners and individuals who can only complain on Internet forums.

etherael5• 12 years ago

Think civil disobedience. Corporate disobedience?

Not a great approach, see Lavabit and associated businesses. Or that telco executive who was imprisoned (Qwest, thanks rwallace) on trumped up charges due to not playing ball with the national security apparatus to the requisite degree of submission. You paint a target on your back taking this path in a big way, it's simply not worth the risk to insulate people from the consequences of their own political decisions.

rwallace• 12 years ago

A company called Qwest tried that, and its CEO ended up in prison on trumped-up charges of insider trading. Calls for other people to become martyrs for your favorite cause don't have a lot of moral authority in my book.

microtonal3• 12 years ago

All they can do is stick to the letter of the law.

That's not all that they can do. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. are some of the most powerful entities in the US besides the oil industry. They matter to the US economy, and for that reason they are clearly in a position to influence government decisions.

This has both positive and negative outcomes. Since trust in terms of privacy is important to Google et al., they are (probably) trying to prevent eavesdropping. This can be witnessed in Google's push to push SSL everywhere, their increased transparency with respect to information requests, and Facebook's lashing out at Obama over domestic spying.

On the other hand, some outcomes are detrimental as a result of a fierce battle between the technology companies, resulting e.g. in blocking of patent reform.

etherael5• 12 years ago

Influencing government decisions is typically done by lobbying, handing more power to the state by way of smothering them in funds. Yes you might get your pet project some extra attention, but it's likely that the funds you use to accomplish that objective will be used for heinous ends elsewhere. It's much like negotiating with terrorists from a game theoretic perspective.

Other alternatives are massive public awareness campaigns with regards to any given issue, but these appear to be losing potency as it becomes clear that basically everything the state is doing is broken from the perspective of citizens in some way, and they are not much interested in "fixing it" as it is working perfectly from the perspective of political parasites.

The only unalloyed good that can probably be done is financially contributing to improved security and other technological innovations that directly thwart the interests of the state. Doing so more advances the interests of their potential free market competitors than their own however.

atmosx• 12 years ago

That's not all that they can do. Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, et al. are some of the most powerful entities in the US besides the oil industry.

Above the oil industry and the US government there's the power driving the world (into oblivion): Wall Street (the financial services industry).

reikonomusha2• 12 years ago

There are more reasons to not work for Google, including their (sometimes?) rather poor interview process.

sidcool3• 12 years ago

That comes as a surprise to me. Poor interview process? They have the world's best engineers at their disposal, don't they? A poor interview process would point otherwise.

skj4• 12 years ago

Poor process from the candidate's viewpoint. It is long and fraught with false negatives.

The fact that there are very few false positives is what allows Google to have "the world's best engineers".

idlewan• 12 years ago

"They have the world's best engineers at their disposal"

That's what they like telling the world. They probably employ a lot of smart people, because they can afford better work conditions and salaries.

However, they don't have the monopoly on smart engineers. You can't rank people from best to worse: everyone is different. You can certainly recognize that some people are smart, but there is more smart people outside of google than inside.

The notion that they "have the best" is ridiculous, because there is no such thing as "the best engineers".

I'd prefer saying they have optimized picking their engineers so that they have more chance of picking smart ones.

threatofrain• 12 years ago

Industrial / Org psychology is a rather new sub discipline. It's still hard to beat a metric like general mental ability in predicting job performance across a variety of jobs.

reikonomusha2• 12 years ago

Here is one such account: http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=2055

level09• 12 years ago

a bit offtopic: I suppose cloudflare's "always online" mode wont work unless the origin server sends a cache headers that lasts for long ?

jrockway• 12 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what do you folks see as the difference between looking at text with the intent to correct spelling (like this text box does) versus looking at text to put an advertisement next to it?

(If I wanted to go reductio ad absurdum, what about looking at text to change <a href="...">foo</a> into a link?)

To be clear: I'm honestly curious, not trying to defend or advocate for one interpretation over another.

jaseg• 12 years ago

During spelling correction, there is not any need for any data to leave your computer. In fact, the spelling correction on this text box is a feature of your browser, not of news.ycombinator.com.

The whole point about serving targeted ads is aggregating multiple sources of data to build an extensive "customer" profile.

prolde2• 12 years ago

In my opinion, Google's activities are "evil" because they intentionally profile their consumers through parsing all their personal data (email, shopping history, etc). Furthermore, Google chooses to spy on their users through a matter that allows the NSA to collect entire profiles for Google's users. Google does this mainly for the money involved.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

hmm having Google extend more effort after finding out that their data pipes to their servers were being spied upon by NSA seems to discount part of this

Compare Google and USPS..whereas the USPS has stated in public that their customer is the mass mailers(spammers) ..Google attempts a balance between two different customer groups..

partridgeeater2• 12 years ago

Agreed. I also have no visibility into the data Google has gathered about me, or any way of telling them to delete all the data they have on me.

raphaelj• 12 years ago

It's not so hard to get in touch with Google recruiters. You just need to get a not so bad score at their Codejam contest.

As a side note, about a year ago, a girl from Google called me from London for a job opportunity (in French, my mother tongue, it nicely surprised me). Anyway, I put the girl call down as I was waiting a call from my then girlfriend to meet up for our first date. We all seem to have different reasons to refuse a job opportunity from Google !

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

Google says “Don’t do evil” on one hand.

They stopped saying that, so past tense should be used when mentioning it.

partridgeeater2• 12 years ago

So they didn't actually mean what they said?

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

They did, but only for a while, until it became too inconvenient for their company goals.

saalweachter2• 12 years ago

The informal Google motto has always been "Don't be evil.". Volumes could be written about the fine distinction between "Don't be evil." and the phrases it's often confused for, "Don't do evil." or "Do no evil.".

juggty_dev• 12 years ago

Google Should Modify these 8 Points http://www.thegeekyglobe.com/google-should-modify-8-points.h...

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

Are you even serious? I read your post. Its a nice fairytale. Let me explain to you what my dad has tought me: We live under structured societies and under a specific set of rules we call LAW. (I most certainly disagree with that... but thats life and how it is) Yes under my fantasy world everyone would have the same possibilities and everyone would be happy yada yada. But under the Actual world we are living at ... Google is just another part. The set of LAWS that have been up there and been built for the past 200-300 years made it clear that Goverments are above those Laws and can do anything they like.

If it wasn't Google tracking your data, it would be someone else doing it cause thats how the world that they setted up works! Do you think Google is happy with handing out info to goverments? No, its done cause they are forced to, and yes they can ask something in exchange. Thats the game of Power (Read Game of Thrones, you might understand that.)

So I suggest you to get out of that imaginary world of yours and live life (I don't say change your ideas), but if you really want to blame someone - BLAME YOURSELF, for voting for the politicians in your country and for not being able to force them into taking your opinion and stop spying on you.

Also regarding adSense and all the tracking... Well thats how business works, if you don't like it then its ok. Noone forced you to use google search or gmail or whatever it is that google has included in their adSense algorythm

Regards, A friendly man that lives TODAY!

Spearchucker• 12 years ago

I'm not sure he's naïve enough to think that his not working at Google will change Google. Nor that if Google didn't do it others wouldn't either. He's saying that given their attributes, he chooses not to work there. I doubt he'd work for Microsoft either, for much of the same reasons.

This is no different to my own choice of not working for Oracle (or Google for that matter). I did work for Microsoft though, and have no regrets about that one. In fact it was one of my best experiences. Either way I know it changes nothing, beyond possibly being able to influence people close to me - but I like myself more for it.

kumbasha3• 12 years ago

Blame yourself? No, I'll blame the people who have more than 1/360,000,000th of a unit of political power in the country, i.e. the actual rich people and politicians who actually do these things that we hate. I will take 1/360,000,000th of the share of the blame, and nothing more.

qnrq2• 12 years ago

Hi, OP here.

> We live under structured societies and under a specific set of rules we call LAW.

We don't, you do. I packed my backpack and moved to the 3rd world at 22 and haven't ever been back because I need chaos. There is practically no law where I am, and that was one of many reasons for abandoning your structured societies.

> Read Game of Thrones, you might understand that

Amazing insult. "Read a book, you idiot! A really stupid one!" Thanks for the smile. :-)

> So I suggest you to get out of that imaginary world of yours and live life (I don't say change your ideas), but if you really want to blame someone - BLAME YOURSELF, for voting for the politicians in your country and for not being able to force them into taking your opinion and stop spying on you.

I live in the jungle, life is great here! You should try it. I never voted for any politician. I will never blame myself for something that I didn't create.

> Noone forced you to use google search or gmail or whatever it is that google has included in their adSense algorythm

Agree, but on the other hand the general public is uninformed about these matters. I consider customer unawareness to be quite a problem in general. How can we fix it? I don't think asking those that you disagree with to change is a good approach.

muyuu2• 12 years ago

He made Patrick read way too much. I wouldn't work for Google because I consider it to be an extremely dangerous and immoral company. It's not the only one but it's up there at the top with the likes of Facebook and to some extent Microsoft, Oracle, Apple.

One could go on forever on this but an email to them is probably not the right place to do this (although he did publish it).

mqsiuser• 12 years ago

There are typical kinds of people. He seems to be very idealistic. And it's awesome and free advertisement for him as a person/hacker, where he (and his github projects) now can profit. He is in high dept towards google now :)

raverbashing4• 12 years ago

I won't work for Google for a very simple reason

After you went through an unsuccessful interview with them (even if it's more than 5 years ago), if you send them your CV again, it goes to /dev/null

Really

So, yeah, other companies are hiring... And there are good possibilities outside of the big companies, it may even be more fun and less red tape

ktran03• 12 years ago

I believe you are misinformed. Google wipes your slate clean, and you can try again in 6-12 months.

raverbashing4• 12 years ago

Did you actually experience that or you just heard about it?

skj4• 12 years ago

This is untrue.

For one, I am a counterexample.

Also, I know members of hiring committees, and they tell me that if you have a failed interview one year, and a pretty good interview the next, that is a stronger hire signal than a pretty good interview without the previous failed one. That is, it shows growth.

raverbashing4• 12 years ago

Hard when you don't even get an interview anymore and recruiters leave you hanging without an answer.

Your experience doesn't match mine, I'm not saying you're being untrue, I'm saying YMMV

dekhn• 12 years ago

This is absolutely not true. I interviewed, didn't get the position, and some time later another recruiter contacted me and I got hired there. Like other posters said, it's something like a 6-12 month period and we're recontacting because we expect motivated people might have improved and want to try again.

xkarga002• 12 years ago

I think it's naive to be that proud. Sure Google isn't the best company in the world as far as its policies about costumer data and privacy but if OP's mother or friends are really concerned about their privacy they can opt out and use another equivalent service to Google Search, Gmail, etc. But then again most mainstream services if not all have their own dark policies, don't they?

snarfy• 12 years ago

I won't work for google, apple, or microsoft due to the illegal no-poaching agreements they made. I don't want to work for amazon because they are retail - engineering is overhead to be trimmed.

Through some weird twist of fate I find myself actually admiring Facebook, not the site, but the company.

rabino• 12 years ago

I can't really explain why, but I agree with you re: Facebook. Of all the big ones, is the one I'd like to work for the most. Maybe is the amount of social experiment you could do, I dunno.

Re: Amazon, I think you are totally wrong. They are a tech company that happens to do Retail.

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

Most of the large tech companies mostly turn me off, though there are little glimmers of things they do that are positive. Ironically, I've been breaking my radio silence on G+ over the past couple of days discussing some of this in relation to Gundotra's exodus and the "death of G+" discussions (short answer: yes and no).

I just got accused of having favorable views of Facebook (I don't -- I think what the company does is detestable and Zuck's morals are beyond reprehensible .... except that the company's stand in breaking the wage-suppression collusion cabal was a stunning case of doing the right thing).

But in terms of a company which could tempt me ... there aren't many.

yuhong• 12 years ago

Personally, I want to fix them if possible. That is why I posted a wishlist for Satya on a blog's comments for example, and why I like to discuss Google with for example michaelochurch. On Facebook, I posted this: http://www.quora.com/What-has-happened-to-Mark-Zuckerbergs-o...

pabb• 12 years ago

I mean, I get that he's trying to make a point here, and he clearly feels as strongly about this as he's written. But it sounds like an idealistic 13-year-old wrote the whole diatribe: "Boo, how dare you you big jerk spy. Spying on my mom and friends. You just want money. Like a big fat bully jerk."

Seriously? All corporations are in pursuit of profit. I get the underlying issue he has, but only through the context of growing up with Google and seeing them grow to what they are now. His post is littered with tons of hard to believe idealistic BS.

Berating them for not closing down their service like Lavabit? Are you kidding? "Yes, let's shut down our 15+ year old company, one of the most profitable and successful in the world, just to prove a point" -- surely that's the rational thing to do. I'm not a fan of Google's "spying", but you need to look at the situation from the lense of this being how they (and Facebook, and probably any other web-based company that had the clout) are seizing a competitive advantage that almost no one else can provide. People are feeding them petabytes of data, and it's in their best interest to turn that information into financial gain. Yes, I think a big side-effect of that they appear to be intrusive and "evil", but to pretend that the company is the issue, and that only Google would take advantage of such a situation is comical, and incredibly naive. The writer of the article surely can understand that any other entity with such great access to user information would use it.

eternalban2• 12 years ago

These are posts by workers in the tech field. Instead of dismissing it, you may want to consider if you are (a) a hopelessly powerless entity caught in a socio-economic regime that you can not in any way alter (e.g. "do no evil"); or (b) a member of a sub-set of society that actually has both the power and knowledge to get Nikola-Tesla-wanna-be-Page and fellow travelers to toe the required tech-ethical line.

qnrq2• 12 years ago

Profit is wonderful, even more so if earned through other means than tracking users' Internet activity unknowingly. Most users of the Internet don't know that Google sees them in most corners and much of the data collection remains.

Most users don't know how to defend themselves pro-actively. For example we have the disaster of people being connected with their political views in France[1]. The same (not really, hashed emails) vulnerability was then used by the Swedish Researchgruppen[2], an extremist leftwing organization, to publish who said what under the assertion of anonymity and as a direct followup leftwing journalists are now chasing outed "trolls" with baseball bats and cameras[3] for a TV show(!).

1: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/29/de-anonymisin...

2: http://torquemag.io/if-you-wouldnt-say-it-in-person-would-yo...

3: http://www.friatider.se/plansch-for-nya-tv3-serien-aschberg-...

Nedless to say these individuals are being directly targeted and harmed due to what they wrote on the Internet. It's not the fault of Disqus or Gravatar, it's the consequence of uninformed users.

Now imagine the hoards of victims that will emerge in the shadows of a Google database leak. For it will leak, of course it will, it's only a matter of time. If data can get out of North Korea it can get out of Google.

The dangers are not necessarily what Google is doing but what Google enables others to do.

Google closed down their service in China in protest againt what they said was anti democratic; remaining in the US is a hypocrisy, although perfectly aligned with other propaganda.

You are right, this is very much government driven. I agree - we should remove the government. Google can lead the revolution by closing down or switch jurisdiction in protest. Their voice is heard, ours is not.

teddyh• 12 years ago

Google first approached me in 2010. Here is the relevant part of my otherwise short reply:

Google follows what I believe to be unethical business practices – including, but not limited to, condoning censorship, invading their users’ privacy, [publishing] proprietary software, and making available and encouraging the use of network services with far too little user control of the programs.

A little more than a year later, Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote this, which I thought was the best explanation of why one wouldn’t want to work for Google:

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/...

karangoeluw• 12 years ago

Oh please. You got contacted by a recruiter and NOT given a job.

jorgecastillo• 12 years ago

Quite frankly if we put in a balance everything good and bad Google has ever done, the positive things they've done outweigh the negative things by a ton. I think that of all the tech companies Google is the most awesome. Seriously I am glad I don't have to pay an Apple tax or a Microsoft tax to develop mobile apps. I am grateful that Android is OSS just for that Google will always have my sympathy.

eevilspock2• 12 years ago

You are paying a Google tax. It's simply being paid on your behalf by advertisers, who get reimbursed from you when you buy products from companies who advertise on Google. If you don't buy any products that have advertising costs, then you are being subsidized by other consumers. In addition, we all are paying for the overhead inefficiencies of this indirect system, with all the middlemen and middle-pieces involved. Lastly, we all pay for the social costs of advertising. We'd all be better off if Google and the other so-called free web services nixed ads and just charged us straight up.

There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. We all have to start seeing this truth.

mlinksva• 12 years ago

A 2011 version, different author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2933619

varelse• 12 years ago

If you want Google to leave you alone for the rest of eternity, all you have to do is go work there and enjoy the perks for a few months (the food is excellent and they pay quite well) and then try to find work more suitable to your skill set than what the Hogwarts Hat of blind allocation has assigned you to for the next 2 years of your life(1).

Since you will most likely have been assigned to a team no one wants to work on (hence the openings), the mere act of questioning the almighty G will enrage the inept mid-level management chain and they will in turn blacklist you with HR. Once you are blacklisted, you will be cordially invited to not let the portal barrier impact your posterior on the way out. And beyond occasional accidental profile views on linkedin, no more Google recruitment spam.

It worked for me. It can work for you.

1. Exceptions to this rule are when you are hand-picked for a moonshot, an acquihire, or for your specific skills, at which point, Google is an excellent place to work. Ignore everything I'm saying in these cases, you've hit the jackpot.

Why I won’t work for Google

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