FAQ on Leaving Google

A nice writeup but

"achieving really cool things in the [..] Ads [..] divisions"?

Come on, no need to fool anyone now that you are free.. There's nothing cool to be achieved in ads, unless you were working to dismantle the entire industry from the inside.

Morally? Probably not.

In terms of challenge and complexity? Sure!

It's the same thing as working in military tech. You shouldn't be a huge fan of blowing people to bits but the challenges and solutions are incredible.

Also, morally - I would argue that the billions of people who choose to use Google for free every single day because it makes their live better, thanks to ads, might think it’s pretty cool too.

Please stop demonizing the very thing you enjoy using. If not you then probably your parents, etc. Google became so valuable because it gives people a lot of value.

Some people can be won over by the technical minutiae of a problem alone, regardless of what problem it actually sets out to solve.

Personally I can’t remotely relate to that.

I spent almost the entire first decade of my career being uncomfortable at how...unenthused? I was to solve business problems. I now have landed on this; technical aspects of a problem aren't enough for me to give a shit about what I do at work. It's a means to an end. My current role has interesting technical problems but the product means nothing to me, I think I'm going to take a hefty paycut for my next role if only to just have some sort of emotional investment in my work.

That's like saying that people should feel thankful for paying their taxes because that's what paves their roads and builds their schools. Yes, ads bring in money, and maybe they do enable Search - but it's at most a necessary evil, not something to celebrate.

This sentiment seems out of place on a site dedicated to startups. Targeted advertising is often an important part of growing a startup and acquiring new customers. You can't just ignore advertising if you want to create a billion dollar company!

Even as a staunch capitalist and borderline libertarian, I am thankful for taxes, why shouldn’t I be? I am not going to celebrate it, but I don’t see it as immoral in any way.

Personally I appreciate progressive tax system for its... progressivity. Much much better than head tax. It's a necessary evil yes, but so is giving money for any other thing. If it can be fairer and even win-win it ought to be appreciated.

I'm on board with paying taxes in an abstract conceptual sense. It's generally how it's spent and how it's collected (who pays how much) that are problematic.

Also worth noting that Google originally aimed to create less intrusive ads. Relevant, text-only ads with no Javascript, clearly distinguished from the search results by being on the side instead of above the search results. Those days have long since passed.

Nah taxes solve a variety of collective action and common goods problems that we are apparently unable to solve otherwise. They are to be celebrated, not simply as a necessary evil.

Really? We're still considering the reaping of your personal info and resale of it to 1000s of morally deficient corporations and likely by extension 100 governments is "free"?

Yeah ok.

Look, there may have been a very brief time when Google was not part of the evil ad empire (maybe before the acquired Gator/Doubleclick/etc) and was in the business of relatively innocuous ad targeting.

NOT ANYMORE.