TL;DR;AS(AI Summary):
Title: Deep in Mordor where the shadows lie: Dystopian tales of that time when I sold out to Google
The blog post “Deep in Mordor where the shadows lie: Dystopian tales of that time when I sold out to Google” details the author’s disillusionment with Google after working there in 2007. Initially drawn to Google’s progressive image, they experienced overwork, underpayment, and a stifled culture that belied its promises – particularly regarding “20% time.” Attempts to voice employee dissatisfaction were met with management backlash, exposing a stark divide between full-time staff and exploited temps/contractors. This experience sparked a political awakening, revealing the inherent cruelty of capitalism and the moral compromises of working for a company built on surveillance and profit. The post critiques Google’s practices and, more broadly, systemic injustice, detailing a personal journey of realizing and resisting exploitation.
Not GP, but reading gnarly code and making definitive statements about who/what/when/where/why such that your documentation is accurate, especially in a corpo context where there are not clear boundaries of responsibility, requires quite a bit of brain power. Not to mention the ever increasing entropy in systems driven by profit means that whatever you write in terms of documentation will have a pretty short shelf-life. The code might stick around as an unholy amalgamation of copypasta after a refactor or two.