July 30, 2013 @ 21:08 EDT

More ramblings about Google

Back in January I was cold-called by a Google recruiter regarding an opening with their Site Reliability teams. To make a long story short, I aced the initial screening only to flub the first (and only) phone interview. They declined to take it any further, but said they'd keep me on file for future opportunities.

Mere days after I'd accepted my current position at SMD, they popped back up again asking for an informal chat. I never heard back after I told 'em my status had recently changed.

Nothing until this evening, that is. My inbox has a confusingly-worded message, leaving me wondering if this has to do with the candid feedback I left after the initial interview, or about something new entirely.

It's a shame I can't talk about what I'm up to at the moment, the reasons I relocated, and why I'm here for the forseeable future. The joys of startups in stealth mode!

Folks that have read my occasional ramblings may know that my views on Google have soured considerably over the past six months. That has nothing to do with my experience interviewing with them; instead it's more due to Google abandoning their old gung-ho stance on open standards and loosely-coupled-but-interoperable services with an attempt to integrate everything both vertically and horizontally, ala Facebook.

I recognize the business necessity behind many of those transitions, but I am still pretty disappointed that they're trying to justify those business-driven decisions by falsely claiming they're driven by engineering needs -- while chastizing others for doing the very same thing.

Google isn't some scrappy underdog any more; in many ways they're now the dominant incumbent trying to dictate TheWayThingsShallBe(tm), with a growing all-or-nothing attitude. That isn't something I can support, and it pains me to see Google become the "evil entity" it once decried.

Ah, well. I should take something for this headache and just go to bed. I think tonight is a lost cause.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS