Why should everyone pay equally, rather than people that currently store their private property for free on public land in some of the most expensive real estate in the country?
They're complaining about developing software for Google platforms, not working at Google. The platform will get dropped because it no longer has the opportunity to fuel more L6 promos.
I think the obvious notable exception is Android, which is not going anywhere and which now has a fairly delightful development experience with Kotlin and Compose.
I wouldn't call it delightful, but that is as it is.
Kotlin folks have prevented Java support on purpose, only to be forced to update Java support, as Android slowly started to be frozen in time, thus Kotlin losing one of its selling points, Java compatibility, with everyone on JVM world moving beyond Java 8.
Go check any recent Android conference, and most likely there will be a few talks related to Compose performance and gotchas.
I’ve used this app as an offline maps tool for travel for a long time, when I got it I thought it was just a fine OSM client.
Then years later I hear it was running crypto nonsense (what) and was involved in FTX (what), but out of laziness I’m still using the thing because it can’t do any upsells when I am offline anyways.
Any recommendations for a good iOS offline map app that’s just a map app?
Not exactly sure what you mean. My understanding is Maps.me started trying to extract value from users (via the mentioned means) and that Organic Maps [0], took an old open-licensed fork of maps.me from before Maps.me went bad.
I currently use organicmaps.app as a nice offline back up for my traveling. I don't know how this current drama impacts organicmaps. I didn't realize that maps.me was also a contributor to organicmaps.
“Unlimited” means there is no limit, so logically it means a few months should be fine. If a few months not fine, I think a reasonable request would be to define the limit and claim that instead of “unlimited”.
I work at place with about 5 work weeks off, which is a lot for the US, and there’s never any question about whether you can use your time or not because the number of days is exactly specified. I like that better than a vague “unlimited” (but not actually) policy.
Like most policies at Netflix, or for that matter most workplaces anywhere, judgement is required.
The policy is unlimited. You are welcome to take a year of vacation a week after you start. However, there are other factors, such as remaining employed. You most likely won't be meeting your job duties if you're on vacation for a year.
Not really sure how you got that from what I wrote.
You're expected to do your job to remain employed. You are welcome to take as much paid time off as you want, in which you would ignore your job.
Assuming you did your job well, this won't be a problem. You either set things up to run on their own in the short term, or you've sufficiently cross trained someone else who isn't on vacation to cover for you.
What I'm saying is that if you try to take a year of paid vacation a week after you start the job, it's unlikely that you've set up either of those things before you go.
We have an actual unlimited unpaid time off policy. I have several colleagues who have taken 6+ months off (even repeatedly). Obviously I suspect that wouldn't be well-received within the "unlimited" paid leave at Netflix (but perhaps I'm wrong, I just can't imagine it).
I quite like the unlimited unpaid policy, is there a reason it's rare? I'm guessing the implication that if you can take 6months off you weren't really necessary?
>I'm guessing the implication that if you can take 6months off you weren't really necessary?
No one is strictly necessary. You can bring value to the company and it still doesn't mean that the company would go bankrupt if you left for half a year.
(Author here) It's complicated :-). I will say: it's hard to define "gambling" in the corporate setting.
Is it gambling to do an extra project in hope of getting a "Spot Bonus" (~$250-$1000) in recognition? That was a very standardized process at Google.
Is it gambling to file a patent application, which if approved, would lead to a $1000 bonus and a trophy you'd often see on the desks of Google Brain researchers?
Is it gambling to decline auto-sale of RSUs, and have your compensation determined more by movements in GOOG than in your cash salary?
1. No, Google isn’t taking actual money bets from their employees.
2. No, Google isn’t taking actual money bets from their employees.
3. What employees do with their vested RSUs isn’t at all the same as hosting an internal gambling platform. Once they are vested, employees own the stock, they can do whatever they want. One could sell them all and use the money to bet on roulette, which I think is obviously gambling, but that’s also obviously not Google hosting a gambling platform internally?
I’m just surprised that Google hosting a platform where employees gambled was… allowed? This isn’t a moral judgement, I’m surprised that Google was operating a gambling platform internally and legal etc. thought that was a good idea.
I think you are making a lot of assumptions about how the program was run. For example, are you assuming that the employees were betting their own money or exposed to any downside at all?
I assume they were given free credit for the system, and had the chance to turn it into cash bonus if they won.
It is closer to a company giving out a prize for the winner of a free fantasy sports league.
I'm not even sure there was any way to turn credits won into anything fungible. Everyone was given a small amount of credit to start, and it was perfectly allowable to go negative... Afaict, it was almost more of a "long bets" type sentiment platform where employees could "vote" (with their bets) on one side of a wager or another -- where many of the wagers dealt with inside baseball topics.
Outside of this Google case, that’s what predictions markets are, they’re for gambling.
The Google case turns out to not be real money, but it’s weird that the article never said that, and it’s weird that the author responded with three points of whataboutism instead of just saying “it wasn’t real money”.
If someone wrote an article that Google set up a roulette wheel in the microkitchen and employees “bet” on it, yes I’d assume they were running an actual casino and find that weird too!
Semi-related: I had a dream about a law firm that specializes in suing casinos that prey on gambling addicts (in a way that violates the law), and has to make sure that their constant interaction with the gaming world doesn’t re-trigger their clients into old patterns.
Then it occurred to me that there are a lot of major lawsuits that depend on litigation finance, someone to front the cost of the lawsuit and return for a share of the winnings. So you could have a situation where gambling addicts are forced to resort to “their old ways” to get it off the ground!
(And leading to a paradox where, if they can bet on this case in a controlled way … maybe they really weren’t addicted the whole time? Like in the paradox about the lawyer who sues over getting a bad legal education.)
Well, that explains it. I didn’t see that mentioned anywhere in the article, but maybe I missed it not being real money. I don’t think there’s any legal risk then.
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