- cross-posted to:
- technology@piefed.social
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@piefed.social
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Tech isn’t an airport: you don’t have to announce your departure.
I took a voluntary layoff from Google last year. It’s probably self-rationalizing, but IMO I had an excellent role at the company for the last 5 years of my time. I helped design a system that locks down and redacts server logs across many of Google’s services. Only on-call engineers with an emergency backed by a post mortem review could get temporary access to original server logs. The system doesn’t delete all data but it can enforce codified contracts, country/state regulations, make certain privacy gurantees, and surface problems for auditing.
Google has made and continues to make poor business decisions, but from my experience they are one of the best big companies managing user privacy. I can’t speak for all of Google’s business units (well I can’t speak for the company at all, heh), but the privacy zeitgeist says the opposite which I’ve found misleading, but could never really speak to while being employed.
User data is taken extremely seriously at Google, and I worked with hundreds of people that would gladly get fired if asked to do anything unethical with user data. They audit and lock down access, build systems for guaranteeing anonymization (systems in place long before I worked there), report compliance, and most importantly they work independently from the employees that use the data. Every business unit had committees to consult and review privacy specifically. I was also an expert consultant for several privacy incidents and the number of people involved and the seriousness taken was personally impressive for even minor incidents.
IMO it’s still one of the best companies to work for, but there’s many legitimate reasons to cut them out. My opinion switched when Google had their first layoff in January 2023. The company had issues (I am sure there are plenty of legit lawsuits that I know nothing about that can be fixed with money and internal/external controls and improvements), but in that moment I realized it’s not the company I thought I knew. Rough ordering of reasons for my exit:
- Government contracts supporting fascism (Israel, CBP, ICE, face tracking, etc.).
- The layoffs.
- Pichai going to inauguration and capitulating. GOP donations.
- 180 on remote culture.
- AI slop.
There’s probably more if I reflected longer. Maybe I should have resigned sooner, idk. I’m glad I made the choice that I could.
Google was good to me for the years I was there. I got up to L6 and saved enough for my family to exit on my own terms and find a better environment. I’m still looking heh.
Happy to answer some questions (culture, privacy, SWE/SRE, oncall, etc.) if there are any. The company is massive and I saw only a small slice.
As a young adult these were the innovators to aspire to. But the last 3/4 years things have turned. I keep thinking back to the apple 1984 ad and that they have become what the hated. Big tech are no longer innovators. They are becoming exploitive and controlling.
Your list is pretty much my thoughts on them. I have mostly de-googled as far as i know. Good luck in your next adventure.I hear you on that. It seems like there’s room for it, but it’s just covered in this gross amorphous hyper-capitalist structure.
I am inspired by DeepMind giving away the AlphaFold protein structure database for free. That was awesome!
Or developing and giving away anonymous, decentralized, Bluetooth-based proximity detection for COVID tracking. That’s freaking awesome!
YouTube too is awesome, and it’s profitable, but they slowly make insane, gross decisions to chase 30% YoY growth. 1.5 hour ads, double ads, cutting creator payments, etc. Just make it sustainable!
Repeat ad nauseum across the business units. It’s upsetting.
Do you feel you are turning away from tech as a result? I have pushed the other way recently and started to enjoy stepping away, regaining control of privacy an adjusting to suit my needs.
I have for sure been avoiding programming since I left. Yes avoiding some tech as a result. I’m de-googling as they say. I’ve spent a lot of time with my family, pursued other hobbies, and volunteered more, which has all been fantastic.
I know I will get back into programming at some point. I really enjoy the selfhosting community and I think I will likely be focusing on the areas of decentralized private networks (similar to Tailscale), decentralized apps (not really web3, but open source apps that can leverage ipfs easily and make it dead simple for others), and tools for public good (promoting good information, skepticism and rational thinking, promoting democracy, fighting against fascism/GOP, etc.).
I don’t the issue with Google is that they are careless with user data. It’s extremely valuable so of course they protect it, even from their own employees. That doesn’t mean they don’t collect, analyze and monetize shitload of data on everyone. Their business model is the problem.
I hear a lot of different far out theories: microphone spying on Android (as a feature, not some 0-day bug), manipulating search results nefariously, handing information over to the government, and dozens more. Google wants user profiles to sell ad segments, but beyond that they do not want your data:
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Some data is product-scoped. Emails, pictures, YouTube videos, etc. Google can’t just delete these because people want them back heh. Most product-scoped data is not accessible for analytics at all. For example, there’s no scanning gmail to inform ad decisions. Data is encrypted in ways that would make that impossible, e.g. only an SRE or bug investigation might be able to review a specific email. Another example is Maps tracking data. Maps Timeline is now user-device local. Google no longer has the data. Thats pretty impressive, to have a timeline feature and not have the data!
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All the other tracking and analytics data (that comes from every individual user) have time-locked controls. Data types expire at specific business intervals ranging from hours, weeks, months, and more rare is a about 1.5 years. Some very special types may get retained indefinitely, such as legal holds, or data that is business-produced (as opposed to user-produced). There are both row and column wipeout processes always running for hundreds of reasons.
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Google has aggressive internal goals to cut costs. They don’t want to host infinite pictures and videos. They improved consolidating user data so that Google Wipeout is pretty much a guarantee that you are gone from their system. Very few people do that though, so they also push the data plans to recoup some of those costs.
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All the user data they collect is downloadable: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en. Everything there can be deleted.
Yeah, they are excellent at monetizing data, but IMO it’s not for sacrificing user privacy. From my engagement with privacy communities, that is not well understood at all.
You are 100% right, people tend to make up crazy theories while trying to make Google more evil than it is. My main issues with Google are:
- using Youtube viewing data to push braindead clickbait content at everyone to maximize engagement. It’s been proven many time that watching Youtube radicalizes people and it’s a huge problem affecting entire generations
- Locking down platforms like Android: first paying companies to put their apps and services on phones and now locking down AOSP and side loading. It’s just a dick move to force everyone to use their platform and sell more ads on it. They are trying to do the same with web
- supporting fascists financially and selling tech to war criminals, obviously, but that’s unrelated to data
I don’t care that much for other products because I don’t use them, I have all the ads blocked and it doesn’t really affect me.
All fair criticisms that I also hold.
Search and YouTube’s ranking algorithm (and all the dimensions and weights/coefficients) are trade secrets and 99% of the company will never see for pretty good reasons. I never had access to them. I have discussed with multiple YouTube people that know the algorithm skewed towards bubbles for exactly the reasons you said: it is literally more engaging. My understandimg is it was the kind of unintentionally, institutional bias-type when you don’t properly control for human psychology. The top line metrics get adjusted to try and compensate for these things in ways I am not too familiar with (for example changing the metric from “watched minutes” to “positive engagement” because Google does not want angry viewers). IMO they were too slow to respond and are definitely culpable in misinformation and radicalization in our culture. I was never in YouTube so I can’t speak to it in any more specific terms.
Android I wholeheartedly agree, but to play the devil’s advocate, I provide a lot of support for non-tech folks. They are constantly losing their email credentials, getting spyware/adware/malware, etc. There’s a lot of cases of scams guiding people to allow third party apps and allowing permissions they should never be allowing. People are far too gullible and can’t see warnings right in front of their eyes. I don’t know that Android is improving it by locking down AOSP. I personally moved to GrapheneOS after leaving Google and I know it’s not for everyone, but it’s got some nice improvement. Google gets paid by phone companies to have play store and a bunch of services installed, and then Google pays back the companies to have their search as a default. The first part never really gets brought up, but phone companies could go without Google services. They just don’t want to make the competitive investment. It’s disappointing.
100%. Google could easily disallow specific uses of their systems. ANTIFA and anti-police state could be terms, but they don’t. And Google is so freaking profitable, theres zero reason to cater to those business segments AT ALL. It would be a boon to their company image to actively NOT participate. So disappointing.
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I would add exploitation of precarious workers both in the USA, Europe and third-world countries. That said, were you involved in Alphabet Workers Union? If not, why?
Good question. I wasn’t. I was not located in California, and the union never really came up in any of my conversations with colleagues. I vaguely thought dues were 5-8% of total compensation (I see now they are 1% which seems reasonable, either I am misremembering or they have since lowered, or maybe I looked at a different union) and they did not have any negotiating rights. Admittedly, if the union isn’t negotiating then I don’t know what it is for. But maybe it just needed to get to critical mass to have that negotiating leverage and I could have helped by joining. My total compensation was very good though, so it didn’t really seem like something a union had to protect. I had excellent work-life balance, good benefits, etc.
Edit: Internally, Googlers are fairly transparent. There were multiple anonymous surveys run by employees for collecting compensation statistics broken down by gender, role, region, office, etc. It had a pretty high number of participants. That was very informative and I always participated.
No union in the world asks rates that high. You’ve been probably have been served some kind of management union busting material if you have ever seen a number that high. 3% is considered very high already.
Anyway AWU is not necessarily trying to bargain for higher wages, but they do work on better job security, better working environments, fairness against abuses, sexual harassment and similar stuff, and obviously they support the political work of anti-genocide groups within Google.
There’s always a reason to join a union if you’re a worker.
Pretty tragic story of a man who knows for years he is doing evil, but is unable to get out of his comfy bubble of exploitation before being actively laid off. It reads as a case study of how evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Kind of like the state of the USA right now.
America is an example of the narcissism and psychopathy that extreme wealth creates, and capitalism rewards, rotting a society to its core.
It’s most prevalent in America because it has the highest wealth inequality, and the most religiously indoctrinated poorly educated population, but the ultra wealthy tend to be narcissists everywhere; especially those born into extreme wealth, like Trump.
Never seen it put so concisely before. Well done.
I didn’t mind this article. It highlights a struggle of someone clearly at odds with the betrayal brought on by tech The example of IBM is a good one, and the fool me once concept. And for many they got into tech to bring good change, that got hijacked by the greedy.
What I struggle with is the fact corps gonna make money with that and people have made big money and gone with this, and it’s only after being laid off they are open to the ills of the what has happened.
The bigger question is if you are still willing to support and perpetuate big tech and bad behaviour in other ways. There’s no indication of the viewers nationality but do they have investment funds in tech? are condoning bad practices against minorities? or only the ones that align with their background beliefs. For many in the tech industry introspection is a good practice. It’s easy to say at the end of your career hey I don’t wanna work with them. It’s even easier when you are comfortable.
I suppose it is a start people are openly voicing this.
He’s a brown guy immigrated to NA and writing on a Marxist magazine. I don’t believe in reducing the personal to the biographical like Americans do, but also I think you can guess the answer to a few of your questions.
