<story><title>Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>high_derivative</author><text>My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people &amp;gt;30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family).&lt;p&gt;Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual&amp;#x27;s performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.&lt;p&gt;They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of &amp;quot;violence&amp;quot; against them.&lt;p&gt;What I didn&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;don&amp;#x27;t understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.&lt;p&gt;I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what&amp;#x27;s naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.</text></item><item><author>segmondy</author><text>My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.   Most companies have issues, and these issues are not &amp;quot;Company&amp;quot; issues but PEOPLE issues.   Once you&amp;#x27;re large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values.   These are going to clash.   If you happen to be on the losing side and don&amp;#x27;t learn to accept it, you will find yourself miserable.  Accept it and solider on to change if you truly believe in your fight.&lt;p&gt;There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable, back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying to be maimed or worse loose their life.   Dealing with stupid harassment and constant abuse from their boss who makes a $1 more above minimum wage.&lt;p&gt;Folks out there are really going through it.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that we don&amp;#x27;t have tough challenges in tech, but we have become spoiled and a bunch of whiners.   The majority of the population are outside the industry and they roll their eyes when these type of articles come out and these incessant complaints don&amp;#x27;t endear them to us.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jvagner</author><text>At a certain size, corporate roadmaps and people management are inevitably political. Google modifying their search criteria to participate in China&amp;#x27;s market.. is political. Google&amp;#x27;s HR department working towards demographic goals.. is political (&lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m&lt;/i&gt; not judging its political-ness, but it ended up being political, didn&amp;#x27;t it?).&lt;p&gt;Each of the major FAAMG companies has a political&amp;#x2F;dominance issue of some kind, one that comes to mind more immediately than all the political issues associated with those companies. Taking a swag at it:&lt;p&gt;* Facebook: privacy - exploitation (personal data exploitation)&lt;p&gt;* Amazon: automation&lt;p&gt;* Apple: privacy - enforced (withholding from gov&amp;#x27;t)&lt;p&gt;* Microsoft: [I&amp;#x27;m not even sure, they&amp;#x27;re flying low.. perhaps monopolization, or government backdoors?]&lt;p&gt;* Google: politicization&amp;#x2F;curation&lt;p&gt;I would suggest that Google&amp;#x27;s the clearest &amp;quot;ideation&amp;quot; company here, where censorship&amp;#x2F;curation is the most core part of their business model (Facebook is social media, Google is a borg-like machine collection all of the Internet and then putting algorithms around access to it), and most prone to politicization crossing the internal&amp;#x2F;external cultural barrier.
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<story><title>Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>high_derivative</author><text>My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people &amp;gt;30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family).&lt;p&gt;Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual&amp;#x27;s performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.&lt;p&gt;They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of &amp;quot;violence&amp;quot; against them.&lt;p&gt;What I didn&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;don&amp;#x27;t understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.&lt;p&gt;I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what&amp;#x27;s naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.</text></item><item><author>segmondy</author><text>My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.   Most companies have issues, and these issues are not &amp;quot;Company&amp;quot; issues but PEOPLE issues.   Once you&amp;#x27;re large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values.   These are going to clash.   If you happen to be on the losing side and don&amp;#x27;t learn to accept it, you will find yourself miserable.  Accept it and solider on to change if you truly believe in your fight.&lt;p&gt;There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable, back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying to be maimed or worse loose their life.   Dealing with stupid harassment and constant abuse from their boss who makes a $1 more above minimum wage.&lt;p&gt;Folks out there are really going through it.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that we don&amp;#x27;t have tough challenges in tech, but we have become spoiled and a bunch of whiners.   The majority of the population are outside the industry and they roll their eyes when these type of articles come out and these incessant complaints don&amp;#x27;t endear them to us.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joelx</author><text>I agree completely with this.&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive.&lt;p&gt;Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.</text></comment>