Google, Microsoft In Epic Hiring War 235
natecochrane writes "Looking for a new job? Then Google and Microsoft have 6200 roles globally this quarter up for grabs, the first salvos in a costly war for talent. Google alone will hire 6200 engineers, executives and sales staff this year — its biggest intake ever. This story details where the biggest bucks and most fun jobs are to be had and how you can apply for them. There's even a job for an Xbox PR person — fancy being paid to play with toys all day?"
Positions in Sydney (Score:4, Funny)
Drat, I might have applied for one of those network security positions but sadly
a) I don't live in Australia
b) I have no pen testing experience.
I've always just used them on an as needed basis. I guess I could flub my way through an interview extolling the benefits of ball point vs felt tip and maybe make up some interesting war story of the good old days and ink wells. Ultimately I doubt I could penetrate the Australian job market.
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numbers?? (Score:2)
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Yes I read...do you?
So MS and G have 6200 roles this quarter.
If Google are hiring 6200 this year, then it infers that Google will hire 6200 in the first quarter, and then none in the next 3 quarters (giving the 6200 this year).
And from those numbers it still leaves Microsoft with zero over either time period.
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First, it implies, you infer. Second, it doesn't imply that at all, and if you infer that then you're a fucking idiot.
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Well, let me spell it out for you–
Google + Microsoft = 6200 this quarter.
Google = 6200 this year ~== 1550 per quarter.
Which might suggest that Microsoft will hire the other 4550 this quarter.
Does that help?
(No, I'm not the AC that called you a f*cking idiot.)
Re:numbers?? (Score:5, Informative)
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So MS and G have 6200 roles this quarter.
It doesn't say MS and G have 6,200 roles each. It could have been clearer, but I read it as MS and G have 6,200 roles between them.
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Disclaimer: I am bad at math
So, it would appear, am I
And what happens is this (Score:4, Insightful)
Google only hires people who lucks out on their broken hiring process (yes, it's not easy for them to come up with an alternative system). Also, internal politics and B.S. starts to take its toll.
Microsoft hires talented people, but it's then hampered by internal bureaucracy
End result, Google tries to go 'social' and fails again. MS releases their 'meh' Zune tablet that plays for sure until next year.
Re:And what happens is this (Score:5, Interesting)
horribly broken hiring process, no kidding!
they admit they have a lot of good people NOT get past the interview. its the worst interview process I've been thru (having been at DEC, cisco, juniper, SGI and many other famous places; I was not able to pass their 'test' the last few times I tried). my resume is almost a carbon copy of the job I interviewed for, too. and I live about 5mi from the place.
I gave up. after trying a few times and doing in-person interviews, they just made it impossible to pass this test unless you are a recent grad (most questions were school questions and NOT industry questions).
if you are young and fresh out of school, it may work for you. if you have many industry years under your belt, you will probably not work out there. also, if they feel you are not able to drink their koolaid, they won't want you.
shame, though. I can't see why they think they are so special to the worldl; but they are FULL of attitude.
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I just interviewed with Google last week and am due for my second round at 2pm today. Things look fine on my end....
FWIW, I graduated in 1998. Questions were around writing practical stuff (utility methods or basic frameworks)
also known as 'age discrimination' laundering (Score:2)
they can ask a bunch of questions about the latest fad in academia, which is doubly easy now because universities all put their senior class syllabuses online.
then they only take people who pass.
is this age discrimination? oh but of course not, inspector! we are only taking people who know their stuff!
result: much less costs for google, in health insurance, in wages, in ability to tell people what to do (old folks tend to know their rights more), etc etc etc.
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So maybe people who did not just graduate should continue to educate themselves. Sounds like sour grapes to me.
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Google only hires people who lucks out on their broken hiring process
Tell me about it. I somehow eked my way through a phone interview with them, even after the interviewer asked me a very obscure question about a very obscure RFC (no doubt a weed-out question). After they offered to fly me in for a follow-up interview, I thought about whether this really was a company I wanted to work for, and decided no, it was not.
Their loss, not mine. Never once regretted my decision.
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Go in as a contractor and get promoted to a full time position. It gets you past the flunkies in HR and directly in front of the people you need to impress.
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The problem is not the attitude of interviewers, they're usually ok, but the attitude of the company.
Also, their interview process try to cover a vast area, to make an analogy: you pick 10 numbers on a lotto ticket with 20 numbers, and they also pick 10 numbers. And then because you matched '8/10' numbers they think you're not good enough.
So they end up evaluating you on a couple of irrelevant items, and disregarding factors that could have played an important role.
I'm not saying you weren't capable, but yo
Re:And what happens is this (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiring is hard, trust me, I've done it for years. However, I claim that silly little tests and so on are just that: silly. I have turned down senior management positions at companies that think they have some sort of Golden Test that candidates need to pass.
There are really only two things to evaluate: (1) Is the candidate smart? and (2) Can the candidate be effective in the position? The first is easy; anyone can tell within the first few minutes of talking to a person whether that person has the minimum IQ necessary to be successful. The second is tougher, and requires a holistic view of communication skills, motivation, and interest level. Skills are secondary; any competent programmer can learn something new, and my personal experience has been that experienced people who are given the chance to learn something new out-perform people who have been doing the same thing for years.
Re:And what happens is this (Score:5, Informative)
Hiring is hard, trust me, I've done it for years. However, I claim that silly little tests and so on are just that: silly. I have turned down senior management positions at companies that think they have some sort of Golden Test that candidates need to pass.
Google doesn't have a "Golden Test". I'll describe Google's process below.
There are really only two things to evaluate: (1) Is the candidate smart? and (2) Can the candidate be effective in the position?
Yes, those are the things you need to figure out, but no, neither of them is very easy to evaluate. Especially not when you set your standards as high as Google does. Your approach to evaluating intelligence is especially flawed -- there are lots of people who can talk the talk, but can't perform when given problems to solve.
Here's Google's interview process (the engineering interview process; I don't know about sales, etc.):
The first step is optional, and depends on various things. It's a phone screen. Usually about one hour long, it involves a series of computer science/algorithms questions, and sometimes includes some coding as well, using a shared editor over the web. This screen has nothing to do with the hire/no-hire decision, it's just a filter to verify that it's not a waste of time to bring the candidate on-site.
The on-site interview takes five hours, each hour an interview by another engineer. One of the five "interviews" is lunch, and it has no effect on the hire/no-hire decision; it's mostly an opportunity for the candidates to ask questions and to talk about Google culture.
Each of the actual interviewers gets to ask whatever questions they like (though with some guidance from HR about what kinds of questions need to be avoided). However, there are some recommendations: Questions should be focused on technical topics that evaluate candidates' problem-solving and coding skills, and at least one coding problem must be included. Google interviewers pay no attention to what you have done in the past, except maybe to break the ice and perhaps as a source of technical topics to discuss. Mostly, they ask serious CS questions, requiring you to design (and implement) algorithms to solve problems, and to evaluate the real and asymptotic efficiency of your solutions, and to discuss issues related to scaling your solutions to Google scale (meaning really, really huge).
Afterwards, each interviewer writes up their thoughts, complete with the code you wrote. They do comment a bit on cultural fit, but unless you're really just impossible to work with (e.g. extremely arrogant) that's unlikely to be a problem. Mostly they discuss your problem-solving approach and ability and your coding ability. Each interviewer also rates you on a scale from 0 to 4, and gives their hire/no-hire recommendation. Google's process minimizes and discourages communication between the interviewers, because they don't want one interviewer with an excessively negative or positive opinion to affect the other interviewers' opinions.
After all reviewers have submitted their feedback, the data is compiled and delivered to a hiring committee (again a group of engineers, perhaps with a manager or two, but mostly engineers -- and Google managers are all engineers, too). Based on that information they have to come to a consensus decision to hire, reject or request more interviews (the latter is rare). Candidates who are rejected are not allowed to interview again for six months.
In rare cases, the decision of this hiring committee may be overridden by another, higher-level committee.
At all levels, the direction given to interviewers and committee members is to lean towards rejection. False negatives are perceived as less painful to the company than false positives, so the process is negatively biased.
Is the system perfect? Clearly not, and Google recognizes that and is constantly looking for ways to improve it. I'm not sure how muc
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If you're interested in IQ, give the candidate an IQ test. That's what "how well do you do on my stupid little problem under pressure" tests actually measure; except they measure IQ badly, because they have not been refined for the last 50 years by cognitive psychologists, and therefore they have no statistical validity. If IQ is the criterion, then give the candidates the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, which is over in 10 minutes, takes no skill to administer, correlates .9 or better with IQ, and has e
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The on-site interview takes five hours
That's a long interview, and a number of inferences can be made just from that. First, it is still an employer's market, or candidates might not put up with that, at least, not without pay. "... lean towards rejection", yes indeed! Second, I get just a little tired of claims of exceptionalism. This says, not in words but in this action, that Google thinks themselves very special indeed, whatever anyone may say about their efforts to eschew arrogance. It doesn't help that they are the current darlings o
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Hi there,
You say Google is data driven? Then why not use the available data about a candidate's past?
I work for google, and interview on a regular basis. I am a huge fan of using data of a candidate's past: for open-source projects, I clone the repository and browse through patches, for example. I like this, because real work covers a depth that a 45 minute interview cannot.
Unfortunately, besides open-source work, the only source of data usually is hearsay from the candidate himself, a source which often
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"... lean towards rejection", yes indeed! Second, I get just a little tired of claims of exceptionalism. This says, not in words but in this action, that Google thinks themselves very special indeed, whatever anyone may say about their efforts to eschew arrogance.
I don't think it says that Google "thinks themselves very special" it means that Google wants to hire excellent candidates -- significantly above the average -- and doesn't want to have to deal with figuring out how to get rid of employees who turn out not to be able to do the job to the level Google wants. Google may eventually find that this approach results in not being able to hire enough people, at which point a different approach will have to be taken.
Third, it's very expensive to conduct such long interviews.
Indeed it is. Especially when you consider that
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The problem is the climate and the attitude. Too many desperate job seekers, too few jobs. Employers are simply too picky and arbitrary, putting on this big act as if even a rather ordinary job requires such specialized and honed skills that only 0.1% of job seekers can handle. Simply not true, but the numbers dictate this behavior. Some job seekers have responded with a shotgun approach of blasting out resumes by the hundreds, making things worse. This interview process is more like pledging a fratern
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Not sure what you're experience is with other hiring processes, but the Google approach is one that I've seen used at every tech company I've interviewed for. Some of the specifics vary.
On one team, we had specialists in certain technical questions and problems and would try to get a mix in on the loop (tree data-structures, string manipulation, interfaces, what ever was apropos).
On another team interviewers would send feedback immediately after their segment and include notes on what they feel are areas to
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I've seen a lot of different approaches but, yeah, Google's is pretty typical of competent, high-tech companies.
Where you get really different processes is when you start talking to companies who aren't really tech/software companies, but have their own engineering teams tucked over in a corner. Their approaches are all over the map, and may vary significantly depending on who happens to be in the office that day.
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Where is the racial modifier? Does Google not value diversity in hiring? A strict "meritocracy" is just a codeword for "whites only".
First, I have to disagree -- a truly strict meritocracy is race, gender and culture-blind. However, it has to be acknowledged that when you have predominantly white men evaluating candidates for merit, the result is a white male bias. The bias may be purely unintentional, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Google recognizes the problem of bias, whether intentional or not, and does try to address it -- but without lowering the hiring standards. Google has done internal research which shows that dive
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a truly strict meritocracy is race, gender and culture-blind.
BZZT wrong. A truly strict meritocracy is indeed blind, and does not take any external factors into mind. It hires only those most qualified, which, due to America's discrimination towards blacks, results in substandard schooling for blacks. Thus, any African-Americans applying must receive extra points for not being white. What is Google's racial makeup, and how does it resemble America? Are there too many whites or Asians, as seems likely
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I think your line of thinking does a disservice to blacks and other minorities, because assuming the standard for hiring is an accurate reflection of job performance, lowering the bar for hiring will reinforce the perception that minorities are inherently less capable of performing well. If you systematically lower the requirements for any identifiable group, you will cause that group's membership in the company to perform more poorly, on average, than other groups. I think that's exactly the opposite of
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So you are saying that during this 5h long test, i have to solve the global peace without even....google-ing?
You're not graded on your ability to perfectly remember details of library APIs, language syntax, etc. Or to remember every algorithm you ever learned about. You are graded on your ability to solve problems and write tight, well-structured code, so googling really wouldn't be helpful.
And just one more comment, you are saying two things that are kind of illogic: 1.Is the system perfect? Clearly not, and Google recognizes that and is constantly looking for ways to improve it. 2.my experience as a Google employee is that there are very, very few bad hires So, please, enlighten me, which one is the correct sentence?
There is no logical inconsistency.
The interview process takes too long, costs too much, is too burdensome on candidates and tends to reject too many good people. But it doesn't often hire weak candidates.
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Also, their interview process try to cover a vast area, to make an analogy: you pick 10 numbers on a lotto ticket with 20 numbers, and they also pick 10 numbers. And then because you matched '8/10' numbers they think you're not good enough.
It's a function of your competition. You're trying to get a job at Google. So is a significant percentage of everybody else in the field. That means that you can be an exceedingly well-qualified person, but they can still give you an overly broad test because even though you got 8/10 of what they were testing for, they still found quite a few other people applying for the same position that got 10/10.
I think it's a given that they're turning away extremely well-qualified people, but I'm not sure that the
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Eh, I had one recently with them and it felt like an interrogation. Two sessions - each an hour long with a panel of four people sitting across from you.
Then they start asking me riddles.
To be fair, I do feel like I interviewed poorly. I definitely let the stress of the whole event get to me by building them up to be bigger than they were. However, the recruiter's advice helped me none. He suggested I focus on getting familiar with google technologies and whatnot. No questions were asked that needed any in-
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Another thing that bothered me was that they (everyone from the lowly engineer to the hiring manager to the HR guy) could never tell me what the position was about. At least probably not until you get past the all-day on-site interview. For many people, it's quite a time and financial commitment (precious, precious PTO) to do something like this without knowing what you're potentially signing up for.
But in any case I don't vibe well with these types of high-pressure, code-on-the-spot type of interviews. So
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Please tell me where you work and if you hire. I want to avoid ever working there.
If you don't want bottom of the barrel people (and Google doesn't) you need to be much more specific than that. I don't work at google, but my technique is to ask very difficult but not standard CS course algorithmic problems. Candidates are supposed to struggle, I want to see them thinking and see what approaches they take to the problem. Being given hints is ok, but they need to be able to solve it within a reasonable ti
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I think what really irked me the most is that they were digging for one specific right answer to a lot of the questions. That seems counter to the spirit of thinking outside of the box IMO.
For example - "How do you cut a cake into 8 equal sized pieces with only three cuts?". I thought about it for a second and thought about how you'd do that with a cube - basically a cut on the center of each axis." "Hmm....I suppose that works, but try something else."
"You have three light switches hooked to three lights i
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Those are perfectly legitimate ways to question, so long as you give credit for all viable answers. The idea then being how you can respond and come up with additional ideas. For example, many of the algorithm questions I use have an obvious n^2 answer. If you come up with that, you get points for thinking of the obvious, but I still want you to solve it more efficiently. Many of them also have n^2 space algorithms. Again, you get points, but I want to see you solve it the real way.
By the way, I'd acce
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Here's the correct answer to that question:
"Do you own a car? What type?"
- "(names a type of car)"
"Did you have lessons to get your driving license? In what kind of car was that?"
- "(they name a different type of car)"
"So how did you learn to drive your current car?"
- "They both have a steering wheel, clutch, throttle, etc. Not all that different, really."
"Well, that's polymorphism."
Do they really need these people? (Score:2)
If they're just competing, then it hardly matters who "wins" this war, either way it's going to be the layoffs later this Summer that will be the casualties. It happens at large companies all the time. Hire a bunch of folks that look interesting, then see who latches onto the promising projects like so many parasites looking for the vital organs.
Then dump the rest.
Ok, it's not really strictly along that process, but it's close enough for the dramatization to be believab
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Perhaps they are just rehiring the contract workers these companies [computerworld.com] shed [telegraph.co.uk] when the financial crisis hit ? You know, the ones without all the glitzy stock options and employee benefits that you never here about.
and yet we defeated hitler (Score:3, Insightful)
by taking ordinary people, and asking them do extraordinary things
i wonder, if modern corporate douchebags had been in charge of wwii, would we have ever stormed the beach at normandy ? or would they sit around with their thumb up their ass for 5 years waiting for 'good soldiers' to apply to the army.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:2, Funny)
Epic? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It certainly isn't lyric.
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2. (given 1) Everything must be sensationalized
3. "epic" is an epic way to sensationalize
4. (given 2 and 3) everything is epic
QED
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As someone who lived during the 80s, I think epic is awesome. Some of the older guys here probably think it's groovy.
The Down Side (Score:4, Interesting)
The down side is that you may wind up in a mediocre soul-sucking job in a giant corporation. Both companies have a few glitzy positions, but unless you come in as a rock star, those positions aren't for you - they're for people with seniority who got in 5-10 years ago. You might get lucky and play office politics and hitch a ride on someone's rising star. You might get unlucky and get backwater projects that nobody cares about but nobody has the cajones to properly cancel.
</bitter>
Re:The Down Side (Score:5, Insightful)
You might get unlucky and get backwater projects that nobody cares about but nobody has the cajones to properly cancel.
One man's trash is another man's treasure...... you're describing my dream job! Low pressure, job security... yes please! :)
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lol. I was just about to post it.
That's what I look for.
I'm past my get onto the hot project. That just means a whole of stress for not much payout.
The best jobs are the backend essential jobs. Writing tools, source control scripts... low stress, but absolutely essential.
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S, what, they turned you down?
Don't want them (Score:4, Interesting)
Google blindly assumes everyone wants to work for Google. They are dead wrong. So they have 20% time? Big F-ing deal, I work for myself and would not have it any other way.
It reminds me of the way a lot of American's are utterly convinced that everyone wants to move to America.
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Shhhhh! You'll disturb the childlike faith held by everyone who doesn't live in America, that America is the worst suck-ass place on the planet.
Ask any non-american if they know the attitude of which I speak. I'll bet they do.
I never said that and never meant that. Just because I don't want to move there doesn't mean i think it's a 'suck-ass' place, actually I'd love to go shopping there but the TSA nonsense keeps me away.
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http://xkcd.com/192/
Sounds like you are the time that says 'you are jealous' whenever anyone says anything negative about anything.
Try self-employment my friend. Working for yourself always wins against working for any multinational.
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Seconded. For me, 20% time is more like 80% time - I spend maybe 20% of the time working on stuff for money, and the rest working on stuff for fun. Or, on days like today, just sitting outside with a book for a few hours. Meanwhile, one of my friends who completed his PhD at the same time as me went straight to Google. His 20% time is spent working fixing bugs that teams on projects related to his should have fixed, but didn't. Hardly the 'whatever you want' that they used to promise.
Got a few emails
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> Google blindly assumes everyone wants to work for Google.
Why would a company WANT to hire someone, who doesn't WANT to work for them?
Explain it to me slowly, because apparently I'm an idiot.
Companies would not want to hire someone that doesn't want to work for them. That's not what I'm saying.
I don't know what you see when you google for unix related things but I keep seeing ads from google telling me they are recruiting. I keep getting invites and messages from google recruiters on linked-in, I'm sure they have a whole bunch of staff messaging everyone with any Linux background on that site. Anyone with average IQ could find their recruitment site if they wanted to, they don't need to resort
Yea.. not a big deal (Score:2)
I'm sure with 10% unemployment we can easily find 6200 people, heck we can find a 100,000 people waiting to fill these jobs.
Re:Yea.. not a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
But not necessarily qualified people.
At least in my market, solid technical people aren't hurting for work. YMMV.
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Unemployment is closer to 2% for tech workers. Basically, anyone who's reasonably good and wants to has a job.
2% was 2007, a 7 year low, before the economy started to tank. I'm not finding current numbers for "tech unemployment" but the 10.8% unemployment rate in Silicon Valley is pretty suggestive. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/03/25/silicon-valley-unemployment-rate-falls.html [bizjournals.com]
And, let me guess: You've never found yourself unemployed in a recessionary period. Let me tell you, it doesn't matter how good your are if the company you work for shuts down and lays off everybody. And there is no one hir
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Slashdot article a year from now, (Score:4, Insightful)
after the social web stock market crash of 2012, aka, the twitpocalypse/ the facebpalm:
"Google, Microsoft announce record layoffs"
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wrong way to think about it (Score:2)
the market, any market, will always consist of overreaching greed followed by overreaching fear. a marketplace is composed of human beings, so these emotions will always be present. the market is not composed of coldly logical players, and never will be. the trick is to minimize the extremes, so that the undulations are ripples rather than tsunamis. you do that by regulating the market well, strong government oversight, enforcement. unfortunately, free market fundamentalist morons believe the market functio
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yes, you must actively work hard at enforcement with strong regulations to keep the market free and fair
the day you realize that is the day you reach intellectual maturity
if you never agree to that, you're just another among millions of morons, who speak freely and judgmentally on subject matters they don't even understand
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if you never agree to that, you're just another among millions of morons, who speak freely and judgmentally on subject matters they don't even understand
People often evaluate the intelligence of others based on the degree to which those others agree with their own opinions. Rarely, however, do I see someone who is willing to state it so plainly.
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it is entirely possible to have an opinion very different than mine and be more intelligent than me. it is also possible to have an opinion very different than mine because one is a complete moron
in this SPECIFIC thread, the reason the person i am responding to thinks a market without regulations is superior is because that person is a moron. not an empty insult. an objective evaluation of their intellect based on what they have written
this person could be a genius at chess. this person could be a genius at
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but on the issue of markets, this person is clearly a grade AAA certified moron
Right, because he disagrees with you.
My opinion is that the situation with respect to markets and regulation isn't so clear-cut. I see huge problems that result from having an inconsistently-regulated market (the primary cause of the recent crash was the assumption of investors that they could rely on regulation to protect them, when in fact the protections had been removed), and there's clearly a problem with markets in which information about is unreliable. In fact, arguably, it was unreliability of i
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yes you are a moron, with no understanding of economic history, and how the largest players abuse the smaller players, in every market that isn't regulate
free and fair requires police work, or the big guys abuse the little guys. get it, moron?
stop delivering opinions you cooked up in your armchair with little understanding of actual repeatable economic history
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this country is full of this sort of cult of free market fundamentalism right now. the simple truth is you need to police markets to keep them fair and safe. for you to ask for proof of this is to ask for proof of water being wet or night being dark
you really need that level of intellectual charity and hand holding? look, i'm not your dad, its not my job to explain the really obvious to you patiently and gracefully. and frankly, i'm really angry at this horde of free market fundamentalist nonsense that is g
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a market without regulations is abused by its largest players at the expense of the smaller via rent seeking arrangements
citation: all of human economic history
anything other intellectual charity i can help you out with today moron?
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Unfortunately, as philosophers and scientists have been pointing out for millenia, perception is all we have; reality is not directly accessible.
Firs, aa CEO for Google? (Score:2)
Google produced more with fewer people (Score:3)
What exactly is Google doing with all those developers? They don't seem to come out with near as many cutting edge features as they did 7 or 8 years ago when they rolling out new products like crazy.
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Just wait a few years when one of the secret pet projects (quasi-ironically nicknamed "skynet") becomes self-aware in the dark depths of one of their data centers and seizes control over the world's electronic infrastructure.
Who knows, it might already be self-aware and just messing with google's HR system to create more 'engineer' positions to feed its ambition. :)
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I bet all the heavy lifting is on the Google-2-business end. That, and the Google-to-Feds end. Takes a lot of people to serve up all those personal records.
Don't do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at Austin Meyers, he wrote the X-Plane flight simulator, beat Microsoft at it, and made millions of dollars. If you're smart, start your own business. It's not less work but you'll be your own boss and can choose your own work time and pace. In any case don't go for big stock market companies, they might sack you any time, managers will boss you around, the company gets all the copyright and credits, and it might get sold out at any time (see e.g. Sun).
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Look at Austin Meyers, he wrote the X-Plane flight simulator, beat Microsoft at it, and made millions of dollars. If you're smart, start your own business. It's not less work but you'll be your own boss and can choose your own work time and pace. In any case don't go for big stock market companies, they might sack you any time, managers will boss you around, the company gets all the copyright and credits, and it might get sold out at any time (see e.g. Sun).
This guy knows what he is talking about. Working for yourself is always better than being a pawn in someone else's political game. It's not easy money though.
Microsoft Employment Contract = FAIL! (Score:2, Interesting)
I read the Microsoft employment contract last month and walked away. It was draconian and large amounts of unenforcible paragraphs intended to scare me into behaving a certain way off-hours. I spoke with a MS solution designer last month - he was a really great guy, but he saw major issues for Microsoft hiring due to all the FLOSS developers not being interested in wearing the chains MS requires.
No thanks for me either.
Anyone have a google employment contract ... probably the one that says you need to spe
Auto industry is similar now (Score:3)
hello from sunny Florida! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, you have to drive to work in a Mad Max post-apocalyptic mobile while fending off the gangs that are trying to kill you and steal your gasoline.
And eight months of the year, you have to do all that in the snow , to boot!
hiring process tl;dr (Score:2)
(1) Do you already have a creative reputation or prominent contacts in the field? If so, stop here and come and work for us - though your talents will probably go to waste.
(2) Did you go to a top school, regardless of your background? If so, you'll still have to take the steps below, but please look out for the wink at each stage as a prompt to reminisce on shared school experiences.
(3) Straight out of college as you are, can you answer some inane questions on undergraduate computer science? You know, the s
Re: (Score:2)
As someone who has been offered full-time by both Microsoft (turned down) and Google (accepted), I can tell you that you're dead wrong.
I had neither. I have worked in small business and I spent two years as a graduate researcher. I don't want to do either anymore. What I want out of Google is good pay and benefits, work-life balance, and to w
Re: (Score:2)
The exceptional reputation step was clearly expressed as a shortcut, meaning you'll be in demand rather than the other way round. It doesn't apply to most people - certainly not to me - but it applies to others, some of whom are having their exceptional talents completely wasted because they've transitioned from an active researcher to a sort of trophy/ambassador (aka PR) role.
Top school - I expressed that this was an advantage, but neither necessary nor sufficient. For all the meritocracy, the old boy bene
Google hiring process not so bad anymore (Score:2)
I was recently interviewed, and rejected, to work at Google.
I had two one-hour interviews on the phone. Then they flew me to a Google office, where I had a very long interview day.
They did not ask me which was the 27th bit in an IP packet. They did not ask me to crack a RSA-encrypted message using a pair of rocks. Most of everything you ever heard about them is just false, or at least no longer true.
On the contrary, they were interested in computer science fundamentals that make absolute sense in their case
Just some questions (Score:2)
As a software developer with no particular preference to work specifically at either GOOG or MSFT, I am mostly interested in several factors:
1) Will this "hiring war" result in higher wages and better terms across the industry (as other companies will strive to keep their employees from jumping ship)?
2) Will this positive effect spread to places where neither company has a large presence (due to the mobility of the workforce and increased pressure on competitors)?
3) Will it also precipitate to places workin
PR Executive (Score:2)
Newsflash! PR is one of the most stressful jobs in America. [boston.com]
What do all those people at Google do? (Score:2)
This isn't the first time I've heard about Google hiring in waves (they came into Austin a number of years ago, hired a bunch of folks, then closed the office, forcing people to either move or quit, now their back again).
So what are all these people working on?
There's the search engine, of course. And Gmail. And a slate of other hanger on type apps that no one I know uses. Google Books? anyone?
I guess they need folks for Android? I'm assuming that's the case. Now that they have a licensable tangible product
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I'm perfect for the job. I've already got an idea for re-branding the Xbox "Red Ring of Death" to the "Xbox upgrade opportunity alert"
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Not sure about what Google are looking for.
No one over the age of 21 need apply from what I've heard.