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Google's Turn To Be The Villain
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:36 AM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
caesar79 writes "The New York Times has an article titled "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" (also evil but at least free registration required) According to the article, the "go-getting" attitude of Google is coming across as arrogance to many people in the Valley. More importantly, it draws attention to the fact that Google has drained the market of talent, caused a 25% to 50% hike in salaries and made it difficult for startups to get funding."
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Google's Turn To Be The Villain
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Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, Google is a villain for improving the wages of technologists, and also retroactively (circa 2000) making it harder for startups to get funding?
<emote=plea style=Jon Stewart> Oh Google, why must you be so evil?<
Mox
Re:You call yourself a geek? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.jazz-sax.com/)
Klink would be more like HOOOOOGAN!!!!
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/)
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
The startups are offering worse working conditions and so they have to pay more to tempt people away.
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday September 30 2004, @01:33AM)
Some of the benefits might be difficult to reproduce for smaller companies (such as the cafeteria), but there is no shortage of very nice office space in the valley nor is there any great difficulty in allowing engineers a certain amount of time and resources for their personal projects.
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Interesting)
i think it's just stupidity. joel from joel on software has a good article about paying people in things "cheaper than money." and that in the end it's cheaper for the company, for example, to give away free drinks because employees value it more than it cost you. here's the article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
Re:I guess I'm just a money-grubber. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.alterpersanium.com/pictures/main.php | Last Journal: Sunday July 15, @08:20PM)
Re:I guess I'm just a money-grubber. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.outpimp.com/?x=57020 | Last Journal: Wednesday September 12, @09:15PM)
With reference to your reply here to the post about him not giving a shit about group outings, and pizza parties...I do agree with you to a point. An outing on company expense can be fun, and team building. A happy employee does work harder and better. I worked at a place once, that had team outtings for us programmers in the business unit. I ranged from lunch and a day of bowling or laser tag....to a day at the lake where they rented wet bikes and a couple of ski boats for us. Was a blast...we even went 'tubing' down a river once...and got full days pay. It was a fun place to work. But, they started getting cheap and more corporate...and these things disappeared, especially when they didn't give raises enough to cover the loss of the perks.
Since I've gotten older...well, I tell ya, I can put up with a lot less perks...and would rather have cold hard cash. I generally can spend my time and money a lot more effectively to attain pleasure. But, a little group stuff is fun. You need a good balance...but, I lean more towards the cash thing as years go by.
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell wouldn't take a job there. My ideas are MINE, not some companies. I've turned down jobs before because they tried to shove this "all your ideas are belong to us" crap on me. I suggest you offer to refer them to a guy you knew in school who had a straight C average and tell them that he probably values his own ideas little enough to take the job, but you don't. It's not going to make you any new friends, but it's very amusing to watch.
This is all I could think about when I read about their "summer of code", a big company exploiting a bunch of kids who don't know any better and ripping off their best ideas. Do no evil indeed.
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:4, Interesting)
What turned me off was the interview process, the whole rediculous MS style crap; Im suprised I didnt get an ink blot test or have someone read the lumps on my skull. That tells me something very unflattering about a company, and any company that wants to hire me after one of those interviews just increased my cost 50% more than it would have been had they a more-sane interview approach.
The "google evil" index seems flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
In contrast to Microsoft's image of industry dominance at all cost, Google has cultivated a friendlier image with its adoption of open source technology and its philosophy of "do no evil"
'tis an amusing graph, but completely meaningless.
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Platform doesn't matter, as long as it's Window (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's certainly evil if you are an investor, they're behind the great outsourcing spree of Y2K. It's not evil to John Q. Public. (Now whether Google remains the free and helpful search engine we're used to, is still dubious)
But seriously, who in the hell seriously believes they've drained the market of talent? How many readers honestly do not know at least a dozen people who want to leave but cannot due to a poor job market or fear of a pay cut?
The job market still sucks, it's not as awful as it was a few years ago, but it's not good. People aren't going to float their resume's around until they're sure they won't put their existing job in jeopardy.
25-50% hike in salaries? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.welton.it/davidw/)
To me this seems like one of those times where someone just threw out a number and that number instantly becomes the focus of everyone's attention because they don't have any better numbers.
Let's inject some reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Google, Mr. Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" - or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers.
First, Mr. Hoffman begins with a load of steaming hyperbole. Then the reporter appears to add some facts to the stew.
It appears that there has been salary inflation for those who have highly desirable skillsets. However, I can tell you for damn sure that there has not been across the board salary inflation. Ask any engineer in the valley how much his/her salary increased in the past two years.
Re:Let's inject some reality (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.nps.gov/c...reation/ohioerie.htm)
Wait, that's new? Isn't that in every field? Like, what does a top grad from a law school make his first year compared to one in the middle of his class, or even in the top 15%.
Isn't this true in pro sports- the guys who garner competing offers generally make a lot... and so on. and so on...
The only place this isn't true is with unionized places....
Re:Damn you Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
25-50% hike in salary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:25-50% hike in salary (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.triskele.com/actuary/)
I love the idea that talented people can make more money, especially in areas with ridiculously high costs of living.
However, consider the coder who comes up with an idea for the next killer app. If they can't get startup funding to hire a few extra sets of brains and typing-fingers domestically, what are their options? Seek assimilation by a corporation, or get in touch with the folks in Bangalore, it seems.
If the talent pool is drying up, be it from Google's quest for brainpower or from other reasons, then perhaps it's time to seek the means to increase the pool.
(Geeks ordered to reproduce; film at 11!)
Living off the air (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 29 2006, @07:37PM)
That's what venture capital does. It puts food on your table as you develop your product. It seems like an awfully successful system for something that's supposedly a sham.
The alternative is to fund everything out of pocket. If you have no financial resources, well then you're just another talented designer working at McDonalds.
Re:25-50% hike in salary (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, the point is there. Startup company's over there hem and haw about not finding talent this, or talent that. Get a CLUE, most of us don't want to live in Overpriced-everything land, ok ?
So if that there aren't enough engineers in the valley is the excuse start ups are using to try to get in more H1B's then they deserve to crash and burn like they did during the DotBomb Boom. There is NOT a shortage of qualified engineers in the United States of America ( and Canada ). What there IS a shortage of, is legislators who will stop being namby-pamby's whenever someone like Bill G complains that it's costing him 2 Million more to drill out a new wing for his house, and his financials won't look right because he can't get the number of UNDERPAID H1B's and F1's that he wants.
There isn't a shortage of skilled engineers, it's not like we're picking tomatoes out of the ground people, it's that company's have come up with progressively sneakier and more loop-hole clinging ways to try to maintain the pay scales down.
Hence, why I've gone back to contracting. As long as you're going to think you're going to run your company with impunity, I'll charge you for the privilege of that false sense of power.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again,....more power to the company who is prepared to pay for a skill, they will keep that skill longer, and get more ROI dollar for dollar, out of that person, than the company who isn't. Sure, some of you younger guys are willing to work for "wheatgrass" drinks, but just wait until you have a family and have REAL bills, we'll see if that extra indoor basketball court is really worth that absense of a commensurate salary.
Or MOVE (Score:5, Insightful)
Well one option is to leave freaking California! There are a lot of talented programmers that for whatever reason do not want to live in CA. Find a place where a lot of them are and go there.
If you can't stand the heat then move somewhere cold.
Works to a point (Score:4, Insightful)
Google isn't the Borg... (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree. I think Microsoft earned their title, and I doubt it's gonna go away. I'd like to think that the Google invasion is going over more like the story in Doom3:
Or something to that effect, anyways.
Re:Google isn't the Borg... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.veriumsystems.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 06 2005, @11:17AM)
Us: What happened?
Us: Someone set up us the applications!
Google: Hello Gentlemen!
Google: All your searching are belong to us.
Google: You are on the way to destruction.!
Us: What you say?!
Google: You have no chance to survive make your time.!
Us: For great justice. !
Villainy will be temporary (Score:3, Interesting)
So really, it isn't Google's turn to be villain, it's Microsoft's turn to be the good guys.
Hrm, did I really just say that?
--
You didn't know. [tinyurl.com]
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 20 2005, @07:58PM)
Wait a minute...
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://paperlined.org/)
IBM is cool now because they're actively 1) paying for linux advertising (related to IBM, but still), 2) writing lots of Linux articles, 3) contributing to linux, etc etc.
Google Talk is cool because it uses an open, standardized protocol. You can't really go after Google under the Sherman Act for using the Jabber protocol.
It's still possible for Google's management to change, and for them to start leveraging their massive marketshare in a way that directly inhibits search engine competitors. Until they try something like this though, I'm going to sleep well.
(and note that MS is still, by far, the least likely to contribute to open source, or even seriously grok open standard protocols)
Search monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.cellfish.com/)
If Google has a monopoly on search engine services, it's a very fragile one.
Re:Search monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.cellfish.com/)
Doesn't using the word "gatekeeper" imply that without Google, the information wouldn't be available? That really isn't the case..
Google is the "gatekeeper" because it's the easiest, quickest way to find what you're looking for on the net. If Yahoo was markedly better, people would switch (back) in droves, and Yahoo would become the new "gatekeeper".
IMHO this whole Google paranoia meme is pretty laughable. Seems like people need to fret about some big corp threatening to take over, and the once-favorite whipping boy Microsoft is seemingly on the ropes so the paranoid venting gets pointed in Google's direction, mostly undeservedly.
If Google strongarmed ISPs into null routing competing search engines, it'd be comparable to the way Microsoft blocks OEMs from installing competing operating systems, but Google doesn't do that. Google's good at what they do, and they deserve to succeed as long as that's the case.
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://ceejayoz.com/ | Last Journal: Monday June 05 2006, @06:14AM)
No, you have to abuse your monopoly power. MS didn't get in trouble for having one, they got in trouble for trying to keep it through nasty tactics.
As for "support for open source" wake when they have a Linux "Desktop Search", or Linux "google deskbar" or any of a number of other technologies they implement on Windows (and don't give source code away for).
So, what, OSS that doesn't work on Linux isn't OSS anymore?
Google releases useful code to the OSS community. They're basing Google Talk on the open Jabber format. They release useful services with public APIs.
They're "distributing" their software via a web server, but nobody gets to see the code behind the scenens, improve it, or fix bugs, or anything else.
Oh, honestly. If using a Linux server meant you have to release all code running on it, no one would use it.
Can the zealotry. If you don't like people being able to do what Google did, don't GPL it - write a more restrictive license for your code.
Re:Villainy will be temporary (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://paperlined.org/)
Um, Google-vs-MS is a canonical examples obvious example of this, but if you really need it to be explained...
Google naturally became the huge marketshare leader because its product was so damn good. This is a good thing for the little people.
Microsoft may have naturally come upon its OS leadership (there's no need to argue over that for this discussion). Microsoft then continued and tried to use its huge marketshare in the OS world to gain a majority marketshare in several other businesses: office suites, vsideo/audio player, ISP, internet browser, etc. Especially in the case of the browser, it seemes that if MS would not have had the OS dominance that it had, it wouldn't have been able to gain dominance in browsers. MS also got exclusive deals with computer manufacturers (and/or required them to pay for an MS Windows license even if windows was not sold on that machine) to try to maintain its marketshare in the OS market, and artificially supressed competitor OS's from doing very well in the market. (arguably, there are natural pressures that encourages the market to settle upon a single standard [slashdot.org], but in actively going beyond that, Microsoft was acting against the best interests of consumers).
Now, if a real competitor to Google pops up, and Google starts using its largess to hinder its competitors, then that's a problem. If, instead, Google decides to not be evil, and focuses on making the best search engine they know how, and allows the marketplace to choose whichever search product is the best, then google will have no problem, no matter how large its marketshare becomes.
Not even close (Score:4, Informative)