Life In The GooglePlex

This is just sick...

[celgins]

This is just sick! If Google's business can be run like this, shouldn't all of our places of work be run like this? :)

[time.com...]

[BigDave]

Actually, I have seen very few successful engineering companies that use "business managers" to direct the engineers. Business managers tend to ruin compaqnies faster than letting programmers completely do their own thing. They do cause things to ship, but what they ship is not ready and tends to be bloatware because things were specified by customers and managers that love bells and whistles.

Good engineering managers are a different matter. They are essential to meeting deadlines and keeping the business types from screwing things up.

[Alex_Miles]

>No wonder they can't relate to real people losing jobs, shedloads of money and businesses due to 'tweaks' in their algo.

Exactly. I knew there was something dreadfully wrong with the place and you hit the nail on the head there.

Theres something wrong with an employer who provides and onsite hairdresser. What on earth can that be for? Don't they get days off?

I'm suspecting the reason Google behaves as if it if full of psychopaths is precisely that. Kiddies who went straight there from university and never for one second saw the real world. Who could take such devasatating decisions that wreck other peoples lives if the had any empathy?

I suspect we naturally empathise with 'that which we see'. Hence the discouragement of any kind of life outside the 'Plex. Half those people would slash their wrists if they ever really came face to face with the consquences of their decisions. They live inside a toy bubble. They have to.

Besides which, anyone else find it a bit creepy? If I worked there, I might start wondering what was in those 'gourmet dinners' and why I never saw anyone over 30..