Gold as an investment? Yes (also art, wine, baseball cards, ...). Obviously gold does have legitimate value as an industrial commodity, but IIRC the price is about twice what it "should" be based on the industrial/decorative uses.
It means that software (the product, not the community) tends to offer a binary choice for gender and a lack of gender-neutral forms of address (I go by Mx.). It means that the conversations around gender in tech tend to reflexively focus on "women" with "men" as their opposite, both essentializing gender and reinforcing a fictional dichotomy. It means being able to come to work dressed the way I want to dress without someone complaining that my leggings are revealing when half the office is in Lululemon (yes, that actually happened). It means that I can ask other people to respect my pronouns and feel supported by management and colleagues rather than feel afraid to speak up.
Your tight leggings create a bulge of your genitalia, societal norms don't yet accommodate the visual enhancing of the penis or vagina such that they are prominently displayed. Unfortunately the penis/scrotum are much more bulgey than the vagina.
But by trying to pretend that it's ok for the 'other half' but not you, you're failing to advance your argument - which is that people should get comfortable with your package being prominently displayed. Because to you it is the equivalent of an ass/breasts/pecs being enhanced in some way?
Look I'm all for drinking kosher soda. It doesn't affect me.
Having to adopt my language to accommodate every minority group (of which there is an infinite number) is just too heavy a cognitive load with zero benefit to me. It benefits my friends who ask me but I refuse and ask them to instead accommodate my not wanting to. And I think that's fair?
Is it really that difficult to address people how they wish to be addressed?
If someone said to you, "Please call me Matt" do you respond with "But your birth certificate says Matthew! How am I supposed to handle this cognitive load? What's the benefit for me, Matthew?"
"Matt is coming with us. He said he'd be at four. Jemima is also coming they said they'd be here at five."
Matt is coming at five? No Jemima is coming at five. Matt is coming at four.
Also Sarah is coming with her partner Zoe. Ze said ze would be here at 4 also zey're getting a ride with Matt.
Umm. Ok.
Not to mention that now when I talk about women, I have to also consider every other gender non binary person as requested by OP. He doesn't want it to be essentialized and pragmatically to be inclusive one has to therefore moderate all language relating to gender.
That is a significant cognitive load and I wish people would stop pretending it's simple. I live around and have friends who are trans/binary non gender people and it's hard work keeping up.
If you don't quite remember, or are unsure about, their preferred pronoun, it doesn't matter. Really, don't sweat it.
What we're trying to tell you here isn't "you should concentrate harder, learn it by rote, and never ever say it wrong". Rather: "just give it as much thought as you'd give someone telling you to call them Dave." No more, because nobody wants to make your life any harder, and any sane person would understand it if you forget. This is a preference, not an imposition.
And also no less, because at the end of the day it's a very little thing for you, and might mean a lot to them.
Grammar and plurals become weird? - You've already given it more thought than I think I'd have :) In my case, because I'm not a native speaker, I would have probably messed the grammar anyway.
Not sure what's your point. wsh91 is explaining how much it means to him/her that at Google we're generally happy to personally do those kinds of "accommodations" (for lack of a better word).
I couldn't care less about any team-mate of mine coming dressed the way they wanted. And I'm not surrounded by "every minority group", so if someone told me tomorrow he rather I use "he"/"she"/whatever when referring to them in public, they'll be the first one and I'll have no problem at all. I might forget some times, but that's fine too. Pronouns are also more of a personal thing than a minority group thing: I don't change my language when I talk to black people, or to white Americans, but if a person asks me, sure, why would I give a damn about language if that makes them feel better.
I gave up reading the comments, but just wanted to say that not everyone thinks like the person who started the thread.
I mean, you know that, but I just wanted to come out and comment here, lest the OP thinks that things like having single-stall bathrooms and keeping your opinions of how others dress to yourself makes one a social extremists.
What can I say - I admire your patience, and glad that there are places where you are not forced to exercise it as often.
I guess for me the question would be "why are you trying to scrutinize my genitalia?" Google is famous for its dress code: "you must wear something." Seems to work out okay for us.
But see that betrays the hypocrisy in the request. Tight fitting clothing highlights the sexual organ. The absence of clothing does the same thing (and yes in the minds of others). Why you are comfortable with google's insistence of clothing but uncomfortable with the request of others to not wear something that has a similar effect?
So whether I'm interested in your genitalia or not is beside the point. You were trying to draw a false equivalence, I wanted you to understand why it was different for you and not 'half of the office'.
I don't think anything I say will convince you that I merit being accorded with dignity, so I'll leave it at this: you're welcome to apply and come try to convince us otherwise! You know where to find us. I recommend Cracking the Coding Interview and lots of whiteboard practice. :)
That's disappointing, I was hoping for a robust defense of your stance and I don't believe I didn't treat you with dignity but I'm sorry if there was a misstep on my part.
p.s. I'm a big fan of Google, they helped me to quit being an employee for good, but I appreciate the advice :)
If your starting position is "you're not worthy of being referred to in accordance with who you are", then I'm not interested in negotiating with you.
I don't quite know what you're implying. If you got rich on our stock, good for you. If you actually used to work here, you are fundamentally different from the people I've met so far and I'm glad you're not here any more.
That's a cheap mischaracterization of my position and probably yours(?)
You'll either learn to appreciate the other parts of the spectrum of thought that exist at google or you'll form cliques.
And I wasn't implying, just responding to your suggestion and advice.
Let me also offer some unsolicited advice - I don't recommend encouraging people to leave because you disagree with them. I also don't recommend assuming to represent google and the thousands of people who work there.
You should try having this conversation with those trans friends you ostensibly have. I can assure you it's not a spectrum, and yours isn't a position so much as a retrograde claim about who I am. I'm not claiming to represent Google but your position is thankfully not one I've heard here. I'm happy to amend the epitaph I'm pretty sure you don't actually have to reflect your opinion, if you'd like.
I wish people cared about exploiting others, but they just don't seem to care, unless exploitation is so appalling it makes them look terrible. Even then--they rationalize, and go into denial.
If they could cut corners they would already. Battery cages are a prime example. At least in the UK free range only took off when consumers pushed for it.
Also writing good code (easy to maintain, few bugs, easy to extend) is a craft not something you do spontaneously when you need to fix a problem. It takes time to develop and get a good sense for it. This is the key thing I see with all these bootcamp grads - they know the terms and they know how to throw crud apps together but they struggle to write clean code that adheres to SOLID that isn't littered with antipatterns.
I taught at a bootcamp. My takeaway was that out of a class of 30 there were roughly 5 individuals I would want to work with as developers for sure and maybe another 5 potential. The remaining 20 I wouldn't want to work with at all. I disagree on the conclusions from the author here. A lot of these people were just naive and foolish. They genuinely believed they were going to be interviewing with facebook and linkedin and get several job offers (they didn't).
The reason we don't hear more about them is because they feel shitty about it and keep a low profile.
This is exactly what I was thinking, I worked at a similar company and there was a lot of promoting of values and having fun but it was like most other work places most of the time. And it would be super easy to exaggerate and mischaracterise it. However I did see one or two people who resented the talk about values and saw it as brainwashing that attempted to hide the fact that we were there basically to help the founders get richer and I got a sense of that from his article.
That in a sense is of course true and you'd always be wary of such narratives and keep your own cool and detached judgements. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the "having fun" bit anyways. Surely at the end of the day only the major shareholders get super rich and you'd have to be well aware of this fact, but the fun and relaxation you had would be something nobody can take away.
Yup. I saw this happen at my last company. They knew exactly who they wanted to hire internally but were under pressure to recruit externally so went through the rigmarole of advertising, interviewing and rejecting people only to give the job to the person they were already pretty much decided upon.
I've lived and worked in the UK most of my life and moved to SF three years ago. There were a few things you omitted in your comparison but probably won't immediately apparent in the short time you were here.
Salary difference. On average Most decent experienced devs in London make around 50-60k pounds which is around 80-85k dollars. An entry level dev in SF makes anywhere between 90 - 120k dollars and most experienced devs earn at least 120k dollars with the range around 110-150k. So roughly a 30-60k+ dollar/year difference.
Healthcare. Almost all the companies I've worked for have covered my healthcare costs so I only have to pay copays - as an idea 20 dollars to see my GP and 30 to see a specialist. I had 8 weeks of physio last year and my total out of pocket was around 600 dollars including a CT scan, which I could pay using pre tax dollars.
So the overall cost was pretty low. I also got to see a physio the same day rather than waiting 6 weeks+ on the NHS. My total max out of pocket is 3000 meaning I don't pay anything more than that. Given the significantly higher salary even if I were to hit my max it would still be worth it.
The cost of living is comparable although certain things are cheaper - gas, trainers(sneakers), car insurance to name a few. Food is roughly the same I reckon.
Overall working in London vs working in the US I saved significantly more money - it's not even close. Although a tin of heinz beans costs two dollars so that's made a pretty big dent in my savings ;-)
It is difficult to find a well paid senior developer job in London. I'm not sure if this is the cause or effect of so many experienced developers becoming freelance consultants. Rates of £500-700/day for long term contract work with corporate / finance clients are fairly common, so you can easily double your salary vs permanent employment (or work half the time.)
