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News:Opinion: Working at Google seemed like a dream job. The reality has been a pointless nightmare.


Arcadia
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News article. Not me.

 

“There is nothing cool about my job as a "talent channels specialist," a type of recruiter charged with soliciting new applications from qualified people who haven't thought to apply or who might need persuading. I scour LinkedIn, a factory farm of fluff, for engineers with a specific skill set and then send hundreds of canned messages to unsuspecting professionals each week.

 

Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates with salutations, job description links and questions. All we have to do is press two keys (mine are semicolon followed by the letter "C"). There's also space for fill-in-the-blanks: one for the candidate's name ("Hey Mark") and another at the end for the day of the week ("Enjoy your Thursday!"), so the message is personal.

 

We then hold 10-minute phone calls with interested candidates, conversations comparable in depth and variation to a drive-through order at Burger King. Our mouth muscles get so accustomed to the spiel that we can think full separate thoughts - about our next career move, say - while talking. We might feign curiosity in a candidate's ideal role, pitch them on working at Google and finally ask a few technical questions from a spreadsheet that gives us the correct answers, thankfully, because computer science is Greek to us.â€

http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/Working-at-Google-seemed-like-a-dream-job-The-12284402.php

 

ETA:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/10/17/my-google-job-was-tedious-and-pointless/

Edited by Arcadia in CA
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Sorry...  I am certain that you are not alone and I am certain it is not only at Google.  I got an email from a Headhunter for a Firmware Engineer in Prescott AZ, for up to USD $120K today. Relocation and Housing assistance. PM me if you or your DH are interested.

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LOL, I got one of those certainly-bulk-generated headhunter type emails recently via LinkedIn. It sort of cracked me up and flattered me at the same time, lol. I imagine your job would be a bit stressful. Sort of like selling but on steroids. 

 

That said, working for Google really does sound cool. My CS daughter says Google is known for having really good snacks. The things that kids look for in 6 figure jobs really crack me up, lol. Snacks? Really? 

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My CS daughter says Google is known for having really good snacks. The things that kids look for in 6 figure jobs really crack me up, lol. Snacks? Really?

The free dinners are good according to friends whose spouses work there. Family members get to eat dinner there too.

 

People in my area are looking at stock options though rather than the free food. Google stocks is now $992.18 per share and some friends had cash out Google stock options to use for down payment and mortgage payments.

Edited by Arcadia
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I'm confused. Did you just quote someone else's article?

It’s an opinion piece originally from Washington Post that was also posted on SFGate. I put in quotes and listed the source. I am not sure why people were mistaken but I edited the first post to clarify that it is a news article.

 

I’m near Google’s headquarters and I posted this article because others may find it an interesting read that’s all.

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the Google Has Good Cafeteria Food thing reminds me of how you can bribe a teenager (in a classroom setting, anyway) to complete a worksheet for a tootsie roll or a jolly rancher.  A teenager can generally buy a hundred of those things if they want, keep them in their bag, and never finish a worksheet - but they'll work double time for the jolly rancher you give them.  It's weird.  People are weird.

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Yup.  Dh was showing me his LinkedIn related email this week.  He had a dozen or so contacts from recruiters.  A few of the recruiting emails happened to be from the same headhunting firm. The ones from the same firm had almost identical language; it was obviously cut and paste.  It's fascinating to me that the same job can be available through two different avenues--one, a contract to hire position where the recruiting firm offers temporary benefits (sometimes including even a flat fee relo) or two, direct hire through corporate's HR. The differences in packages is typically tremendous, and I suspect that many if not most of the contract to hire positions don't ever transition to corporate.

 

Arcadia--dh's circle runs with the same criteria.  Salaries tend to cap out at a certain amount, the real negotiation is over % of stock options and vacation time.  Dh's work also offers free food--but there's no joy in that when you don't have time to eat lunch and you're hitting the snack bar at 7pm because you have a bit of work left before you head home. All of those "benefits" (free food, laundry, etc.) just allow you to be productive. It makes financial sense for corporate to offer them--if they stay long enough to achieve a couple more hours of work--$5 in food will allow $$$$ more in work to be done.

 

Dh's previous employer brought in an Indian/SE Asian chef to keep employees happy.  He rotated through various regional cuisines so that almost everybody had a favorite day to eat in the cafeteria.  He would even do custom dishes on request. Not surprisingly, productivity went up quite a bit and overall employee satisfactions scores also improved.  Given how expensive it is to hire people, any small bump in retention saves a huge chunk of money. 

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the Google Has Good Cafeteria Food thing reminds me of how you can bribe a teenager (in a classroom setting, anyway) to complete a worksheet for a tootsie roll or a jolly rancher. A teenager can generally buy a hundred of those things if they want, keep them in their bag, and never finish a worksheet - but they'll work double time for the jolly rancher you give them. It's weird. People are weird.

They are also forgetting that the fact that google has good food means you don't have to leave the property to eat and can be more product. It's the same reason families can eat there. A family dinner takes on a whole new meaning when it's only 30 min that you've managed to carve out of your workday that seemingly never ends. The number of hours the employees put in is pretty crazy, IIRC. Bribe might just be the word for it.

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My daughter is good at sniffing those out (google isn't the only one using them.) - she loathes them.  She also flatly refused to have anything to do with google when she changed jobs last spring. (they're up here too.)

she especially hates the ones coming from someone who knows nothing about computers.  she'll ask them questions - if they can't answer (because they know nothing about comptuers) - she tells them to take her off their list.  click.

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Arcadia--dh's circle runs with the same criteria. Salaries tend to cap out at a certain amount, the real negotiation is over % of stock options and vacation time.

The company my husband rejected offered him $40k higher for base pay than what they originally offer after rounds of negotiations. My husband’s base pay has already maxed out but the stock options are high enough to help pay for college if stock price don’t drop and they offer to switch him to the management pay scale so that his base pay can go a bit higher while keeping his job scope as mainly technical.

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They are also forgetting that the fact that google has good food means you don't have to leave the property to eat and can be more product. It's the same reason families can eat there. A family dinner takes on a whole new meaning when it's only 30 min that you've managed to carve out of your workday that seemingly never ends. The number of hours the employees put in is pretty crazy, IIRC. Bribe might just be the word for it.

THIS! THIS!

 

Every single place dh has ever been in or knows of that praises things like “we serve breakfast and lunch here!†Is company lingo for “we will bleed every ounce of your energy and time.†If you ever complain that for the love of sanity can you just go home and see your family or go hang out with people you do not work with - they will claim you aren’t a “team player†or don’t you understand they are family too?

 

Yeah. No. Hard pass on that.

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the Google Has Good Cafeteria Food thing reminds me of how you can bribe a teenager (in a classroom setting, anyway) to complete a worksheet for a tootsie roll or a jolly rancher. A teenager can generally buy a hundred of those things if they want, keep them in their bag, and never finish a worksheet - but they'll work double time for the jolly rancher you give them. It's weird. People are weird.

My dh and his (salesmen) coworkers will go to a lot of extra lengths if a honey baked ham gift card is on the table. It's pretty funny.

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Wait a minute...

 

 

So a guy, gets a job in which he is recruiting people into the tech industry.

And he is whining because he has to push a few buttons, send some form letters, and ask a few questions. What did he think it would be? LOL And why blame Google for that??? Making information available, in a concise way, to the masses...... and collecting data is what they do.  He was being hired to be a cog in that giant wheel.

 

Sounds like he needed to spend some time looking into what job he was recruited for himself before getting hired and complaining after the fact. LOL  

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THIS! THIS!

Every single place dh has ever been in or knows of that praises things like “we serve breakfast and lunch here!†Is company lingo for “we will bleed every ounce of your energy and time.†If you ever complain that for the love of sanity can you just go home and see your family or go hang out with people you do not work with - they will claim you aren’t a “team player†or don’t you understand they are family too?

Yeah. No. Hard pass on that.

That is not the experience my oldest had at tech companies that provide free breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course, there were some differences between work/life balance between different teams (and/or locations) within a company.

 

This article has a different take on the free food. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidburkus/2015/07/02/the-real-reason-google-serves-all-that-free-food/#796393d595f6

 

My CS daughter says Google is known for having really good snacks. The things that kids look for in 6 figure jobs really crack me up, lol. Snacks? Really?

 

When my oldest was a college junior, she had to decide between computer science internships for the next summer. She had an offer to return to the tech company where she interned that summer that offered free snacks as well as free meals. Another tech company flew her to their headquarters for an interview. As part of the daylong interview she ate at the company cafeteria, where her salad would have been $10 if she wasn't given a voucher for lunch. She ended up with an offer for an internship with this company too. In the end, she had to decide between the company where she would need to pay for lunch or two companies where snacks, coffee, energy drinks, breakfast, lunch and dinner were free. All 3 companies are well-known tech companies that paid well. (It was an internship, and no stock options were involved.) When she eliminated the company that didn't offer free food, she wondered if that made her spoiled for refusing to work for a company that didn't offer free food. But, she had done the math. If she only ate lunch at work, choosing one of the other internships would save her $50 a week or $600 over the course of a 12-week internship. That is real money. Add to that breakfast, dinner, drinks, and even snacks, and it made financial sense. (So, much so that she chose to work for a company with free food after graduation too. Her grocery budget for food is definitely less than it would be without without this perk.)

 

On an unrelated note, this kid has food allergies and the companies were great about providing safe food and snacks for her.

 

 

Wait a minute...

So a guy, gets a job in which he is recruiting people into the tech industry.

And he is whining because he has to push a few buttons, send some form letters, and ask a few questions. What did he think it would be? LOL And why blame Google for that???..

Sounds like he needed to spend some time looking into what job he was recruited for himself before getting hired and complaining after the fact. LOL

Exactly, sounds like he is doing what tech headhunters have been doing for as long as there have been tech headhunters ... first contact that I remember was almost 30 years ago when my husband was in college. The writer did have more tools than a recruiter back in the day, but the job of any recruiter is to recruit someone to fill the position that needs filling. I'm confused too.

Edited by *LC
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Well, I read the entire article yesterday (so my comment doesn't specifically relate to the quoted part above) and overall it is a giant whine about how horrible the job is. I guess I feel that not every job needs to be fun/fulfilling/enriching. It's great if it is but there are many jobs that need doing that by their nature just aren't that fun. As long as employees are treated okay and paid appropriately, there is nothing wrong with that. Most of my extended family has worked in jobs that wouldn't be considered fun etc. and I bet they would have gladly changed to a job as easy as this one sounds.

 

Obviously, I do think people should look for a different job if they feel unhappy in their current one. But I don't get all the complaining/whining in the article. If you don't like it change it! I am of course not talking of people who are forced to stay with a bad job due to lack of other opportunities etc. but that does not seem to be the case here.

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