192: Working for Google

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 06:59, 31 August 2013 by Commarchinin (talk | contribs) (Explanation: Slight restructuring of part of the final paragraph.)
Jump to: navigation, search
Working for Google
I hear once you've worked there for 256 days they teach you the secret of levitation.
Title text: I hear once you've worked there for 256 days they teach you the secret of levitation.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect:
Please include the reason why this explanation is incomplete, like this: {{incomplete|reason}}

If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Since the start of Google till now (2013), Google has offered its employees many benefits other jobs don't. [1] Such as massages, toys, video games, free food, etc. This is to make their employees happy and not worrying about staying at work. So for many people a job at Google is the ultimate dream, but they hire only the top 1% of people in every field so there are many, many unsuccessful applicants.

In this comic Cueball's friend is exhibiting the attitude known as "sour grapes", which is immediately picked up by the other speaker, even though it's disguised as mistrust of major corporations. (Google, for its level of control over the flow of the world's information, is mistrusted by some people).

In the last frame it turns out that the friend has been trying very hard to get the job, even resorting to bribing the interview panel by baking them a cake. But he went too far - he tried to distinguish himself from the pack by making the cake relevant to Google's business, but it backfired spectacularly because in doing so he betrayed his complete lack of knowledge about the internet, thus destroying any slim chance he may have had of getting the job. (The internet, of course, is not a physical object and has no shape - although in response to this comic many people have tried to make something up which might fit.)

This comic is a highly accurate indication of why it's important to have a proper idea of your own ability when working in the IT industry. Resume padding will invariably be detected fairly quickly, and a reputation for lack of truthfulness can stick around all your life. (The exception of course is in companies where the IT managers aren't IT experts and can't tell good people from plausible liars - or bureaucratic companies where hiring is done further up the line by non-IT people. Both are like torture to a professed free thinker like Cueball's friend, which makes it a perfect form of poetic justice that those are the only positions a resume padder can expect to land.)

The title text is just a joke, saying that if you work for Google for 256 (2^8) days you get to learn how to levitate. This displays some of the mystique with which Google is commonly viewed.

Transcript

Cueball: Have you read about Google HQ? It sounds like an incredible place to work.
Friend: Man, I ain't going to be chained down in no corporate idea factory! They think just 'cause they've got a nice building and laid back culture, I'm gonna want to come in all day long and work on fascinating problems with the smartest people in the world.
[Cueball stares at friend.]
Cueball: So, what, they turned you down?
Friend: I don't understand it! I even baked them a cake shaped like the internet!


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I honestly can't see anything incomplete about it. But then, I may be naive about it. Anonymous 04:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Neither can I, however there is a bit of irrelevant information such as, how not to pad your resume and having original ideas -- the explanation probably should be edited down to be more consisce and to the proint of what the comic is about i.e. "sour grapes" Spongebog (talk)

Perhaps the cake was foreshadowing http://xkcd.com/195/, the Map of The Internet. 173.245.56.85 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

A cake that has the shape of the Internet might actually be one shaped of Internet Explorer. Greyson (talk) 18:00, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

No, it may not. 108.162.219.223 19:25, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

There are some true stories of people showing up at Google interviews with gifts for the interviewers. In case if you wonder, they don't get hired. 108.162.246.5 02:17, 29 January 2014

The cake should be created with a series of tubes.00:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)~

There is a community portal discussion of what to call Cueball and what to do in case with more than one Cueball. I have added this comic to the new Category:Multiple Cueballs. In this case there is no reason to call one Cueball and the other friend. It could easily be the other way. So I have changed to remove Cueball. --Kynde (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

By saying he baked a "cake in the shape of the Internet," he inadvertently revealed that he has no clue what is the Internet, and that he exhibited said cluelessness openly to his interviewers -- explaining his rejection. Mountain Hikes (talk) 02:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Google {Search} is a monopoly that violates US Antitrust Law. Google pays couple of billions of USD each year to The Congress so The Congress lets it slip. The rest of the Google (including Google re-branding) is a theater of absurd where people with pedigrees think that they are important, but mostly getting paid for non competing with Google. 162.158.62.195 18:24, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

What if the cake he made was shaped like internet explorer, proving to the interviewer he was incompetent. 216.185.90.190 9:10, 11 April 2019 (UTC)~