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  • #1

    Google engineering

    this feels dumb to ask given that I know very few of you, but I suppose I think many of you are at least kind of intelligent, so...

    my recruiter at Google is harassing me for engineering referrals. If you are a computer professional of some sort (programmer, sysadmin, etc) and you'd be interested in working at Google, let me know and I'll see about getting you a referral. I will need some contact info. I can't guarantee anything but you'll probably at least get a phone call out of it.
    In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.
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  • #2
    I love phone calls.

    Is it really as cool as The Internship portrays it?
    After former Broncos quarterback Brian Griese sprained his ankle and said he was tripped on the stairs of his home by his golden retriever, Bella: “The dog stood up on his hind legs and gave him a push? You might want to get rid of that dog, or put him in the circus, one of the two.”

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    • #3
      My wife probably thinks I'm a computer professional as much time as I spend on mine....does that count?
      Considering his only baseball post in the past year was bringing up a 3 year old thread to taunt Hornsby and he's never contributed a dime to our hatpass, perhaps?

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      • #4
        I regret to admit that I didn't actually see The Internship. We had a company screening but I wasn't in the office that day, I am way too cheap to get a babysitter to go to a movie, and then I forgot about it. It must be on Netflix by now, maybe I'll check it out.

        If there are specific things from the movie you want to know about I can tell you though. I know we actually stole the colored paddle thing from the movie but it only gets used ironically. We do have a Kegerator in my work area but I don't think it gets used that often. The food is great, the shuttles to work are very nice since I can be productive while commuting and I don't have to stay as late, we have on-site gyms and doctor's offices and subsidized massages...

        Really the best thing I can say about being here is that the people are fantastic. Everyone here is smart and (almost) everyone is friendly and some amazing things get done. The employees actually care about our users and our reputation, which sadly isn't always obvious from the outside, but I can guarantee you that any decision Google has made in the year I've been here that you thought was dumb or not in the user's best interests, the employees hated it even more than you did. Usually it turns out that there was a good reason for the decision, and sometimes the company doesn't do a great job of communicating that with the outside world, but the average employee has about the same opinion of Google+ that you do.
        In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

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        • #5
          btw, if you're in the San Francisco or Mountain View area and you want to drop by for a free lunch sometime, let me know.
          In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

          Comment

          • #6
            Originally posted by mjl View Post
            ...the shuttles to work are very nice...
            Ah, so you're one of those elitist, nouveau riche gentrifying techie scumbags, eh?

            Had any bricks tossed through the window of your shuttle yet?
            "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
            "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
            "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

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            • #7
              Originally posted by senorsheep View Post
              Ah, so you're one of those elitist, nouveau riche gentrifying techie scumbags, eh?

              Had any bricks tossed through the window of your shuttle yet?
              I have the advantage that my wife is a female black artist, so my diversity credentials are first-class. No bricks through my window fortunately. I get picked up on Van Ness in a not-particularly-residential area so maybe it's a bad spot for protestors.

              I did take the boat to work a lot last month. It was pretty good. I'm sure people are grumpy about that for some unobvious reason though.

              The general consensus internally appears to be that the hipsters that gentrified the Mission and pushed out the Latino residents are now resentful that the gentrification is continuing and the shuttles are a convenient target but it's hard to see how the shuttles themselves are actually the problem. God knows there are problems in this city, but SF is interesting in that it's one of the few cities where it's not actually run by the rich people who own the politicians. The public is very good at blocking things that they don't like, and what they don't like is any sort of housing development that would relieve the economic pressure in the city, so...
              In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

              Comment

              • #8
                to clarify for those of you who don't pay attention to San Francisco:

                Imagine that there are five families who want to live in four houses.

                solution #1: build a fifth house.
                solution #2: raise rent until one family can't afford it.
                solution #3: have four families call the fifth family jerks in the hopes that eventually they won't want to live there any more.

                solution #1 seems like the obvious one. #2 is the status quo. #3 is the tactic chosen by the protestors.
                In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

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                • #9
                  you left out option #4, complain about any new housing that might get built
                  "You know what's wrong with America? If I lovingly tongue a woman's nipple in a movie, it gets an "NC-17" rating, if I chop it off with a machete, it's an "R". That's what's wrong with America, man...."--Dennis Hopper

                  "One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." -- Klaus Kinski

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                  • #10
                    mjl- sounds like a great place to work. I have no plans to move to CA. If I did, it might be worth a conversation.
                    After former Broncos quarterback Brian Griese sprained his ankle and said he was tripped on the stairs of his home by his golden retriever, Bella: “The dog stood up on his hind legs and gave him a push? You might want to get rid of that dog, or put him in the circus, one of the two.”

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      my best buddy that works there estimates that he eats about $40 in food a day
                      "You know what's wrong with America? If I lovingly tongue a woman's nipple in a movie, it gets an "NC-17" rating, if I chop it off with a machete, it's an "R". That's what's wrong with America, man...."--Dennis Hopper

                      "One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real." -- Klaus Kinski

                      Comment

                      • #12
                        Originally posted by mjl View Post
                        ...but SF is interesting in that it's one of the few cities where it's not actually run by the rich people who own the politicians. The public is very good at blocking things that they don't like, and what they don't like is any sort of housing development that would relieve the economic pressure in the city, so...
                        Interesting. I've heard that a lot of the strife out there is being driven by resentment towards the rich tech companies and their puppet mayor giving them sweet deals like the free use of the public transportation system to run their shuttles. That's the take from my cynical hippie rebel Facebook friend out there, anyway. He's convinced that Google and the current slate of big tech corporations in San Francisco are the most dangerous corporate overlords the city has ever seen, because after coming in with a community-friendly face and reassuring "corporate responsibility" rhetoric, they've successfully infiltrated the local government, and now they're running roughshod over the will of the local citizenry. Is he exaggerating?
                        "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
                        "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
                        "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Well, the "free use of the public transportation system" is that Google has shuttles, and many but not all of the shuttle stops are in marked bus stops. Historically the city has not done anything about this, but it does occasionally inconvenience the SFMTA and force their buses to wait a minute or park in a traffic lane or something. They have just instituted a rule where the private shuttles will be charged $1 per stop per day, which is basically no money, but they are hamstrung by a regulation that says that SFMTA can't charge more for this program than the cost of administering it, and that cost is pretty minimal. This is probably not the optimal solution but it's what they can do now. I'm not sure if that price is fair; I'm sure the collective impact to being delayed a minute or two for everyone on a city bus is more than $1 but I don't think every stop blocks buses.

                          I would agree that Ed Lee, the mayor, is very friendly to high tech when he can be. Twitter got some crazy tax benefits for locating in SF, he didn't do anything proactively about this shuttle thing, he has allowed Lyft and Uber to run here in a quasi-legal state (I'm sure those companies have their own opinions about how they're just organizing private individuals to drive and so they shouldn't need taxi medallions, but if we think taxis should need medallions and government oversight then those companies shouldn't be able to get around that requirement), and various other things. So he's probably a bit lenient on things where he can be helpful without requiring a lot of cooperation. But the will of the local citizenry is quite strong for anything that actually gets onto a ballot; there has been strong pushback on various developments along the waterfront (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...it-5201678.php), including the proposed Warriors arena there (http://www.sfgate.com/warriors/artic...in-4976182.php), various proposals to build new museums in the Presidio (http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancis...nt?oid=2695483), and a common thread in all of those is strong support by the tech community and local government. Note in that first article that the protest is entirely funded by a wealthy couple whose view of the water would be blocked by the proposed development, and read the comments on those articles; people are pretty well split in their opinions.

                          The general tone of the shuttle protests isn't so much "this is costing us time and money" as "by making it more convenient for people to live in SF and commute to jobs elsewhere, this is making living in SF more appealing to rich tech employees and so rent is going up and we have no idea how to solve that other than by making those people not want to live here".

                          I think having an organized local citizenry is generally a good thing and I don't trust politicians any more than you do, but for whatever reason SF culture has for a long time revolved around "this place used to be awesome when I moved here and now it is beginning to suck unless we stop everything from changing". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_San_Francisco and look at the post-WW2 "Freeway Revolt" and the 1980s "Manhattanization" and the late-90s "Dot-com boom" sections. Personally I think it would be possible to maintain the culture of the city while still having some new developments and added room for the people who want to live here... but who cares, my apartment is rent-controlled.
                          In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Hammer View Post
                            mjl- sounds like a great place to work. I have no plans to move to CA. If I did, it might be worth a conversation.
                            Depending on what you do, we have offices in a lot of places. I am pretty sure from your sports sympathies that you're either in New York or a transplant from there. We have two offices in NYC, one in Boston, one in Reston VA, and one in Pittsburgh that do engineering work, and there are sales offices in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and various other places. If you want to, take a look at http://jobs.google.com and see if there's anything local that looks appealing.
                            In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Fresno Bob View Post
                              my best buddy that works there estimates that he eats about $40 in food a day
                              Definitely possible, especially if you eat all three meals here. For whatever reason, the cafe menus are on an externally visible site; if you're curious about the food you can look at http://menudisplay.appspot.com/notfound. Charlie's is the biggest cafe on the main campus, and not all of those links still work - many of them are for cafes that no longer exist - but it's a data point.
                              In the best of times, our days are numbered, anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.

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