Deep in Mordor where the shadows lie: Dystopian tales of that time when I sold out to Google – elilla & friends’ very occasional blog thing

I remember 2007, when I got a gmail account and thought it was a much better alternative to whatever I had before.

Google used to nurture an image of being the “good one” among megacorps; they championed open standards (except when they didn’t), supported open source projects (until they backstabbed them), and used language that corporate wasn’t supposed to use, like “don’t be evil” (until they, infamously and in a true dark comedy move, retracted that motto).

my main job was to fix boring bugs on the Ruby on Rails internal user accounting system that someone else had developed. When I complained that this was a far cry from the academia-like, exciting research environment I had been promised, and asked to be assigned to a more challenging project, I was told the following rationale against it: “no”. Moreover the deadlines and expectations were such that even if I worked (unpaid) overtime every day, I was still was at risk of a performance review. Making actual use of the “20% time” felt like a pipe dream.

And all that with wages well below even the local market in our crumbling Third World economy.

Like most employees I blamed myself for not working hard enough to get good compensation—or to have time to exercise my right of 20% free time… Until I saw in the “Googlegeist” statistics that some 95% of employees never use their “20% time” at all, being trapped under the same pressures as I was.

When she dared bring it up, this was the reaction - and I know this scenario all too well though I never worked at Google:

The result of this was my boss having a fit over me “backstabbing” him. See, me complaining about the unfulfilled recruiter promises marked me as an Unhappy Googler. And Google, if you remember, was the Best Place To Work.

I said, “But the issue is real and not my fault, don’t you agree? I just used the data to bring it to attention. Didn't you say we operate under 'radical transparency'?” (I was young and believed in this kind of slogan. Yes, I was a sitting duck and didn’t stand a chance.)

Boss replied, "Radical transparency doesn't mean you get to say negative things."

edit: the article is barely getting started at this point and I'm still reading with great interest. Please give this blog a click even if they say they don't care about it.

Hey @mirrorwitch@awful.systems, your blog post really seems to be making the rounds now!

Edit: not sure why the downvote. It was originally posted by mirrorwitch, of the awful.systems instance, on the tech takes community there. Direct link: https://awful.systems/post/4558700

It also got noticed by Hacker News, which is funny to me given that the original community it was posted to is incredibly anti-HN. Also that roughly half of the comments are people who were unable to follow how it was written (funny given HN's overwhelming elitist slant). Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44200773

If mirrorwitch doesn't want the shoutout, just say so or send me a private message and I'll take this comment down.

At first, I thought I would settle for just the AI summary posted by a commenter on this thread. But then I felt intrigued and decided to skim through the blog. I didn't read it all for lack of time.

And now I feel compelled to enter another comment to say this blog is so beautifully written - and likely conveys ideas that many of us can relate to. I'm very impressed.

Thank you, OP!

I don't really care about this person's life story.