Hacker News Reader

Comment by cglong | Hacker News Reader

I remember, during my internship at Microsoft, one of the "perks" everyone loved was being given a beefy machine that we were admins on and an absurdly fast internet connection to go with it. While I do get the security argument, this also seems like yet another signal that Google is tightening their infamous perks.

View on HN

Google also gives (gave?) employees root access on the work machines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32307102) and an incredibly fast internet connection. As a non-employee, you only need to walk into the lobby, sit on a couch meant for visitors, connect to the unsecured GoogleGuest Wi-Fi network and enjoy that absurd speed. I live very close to Google offices and I occasionally bring my laptop there since my home internet has terrible upload speeds.

Xoogler here. You have to get permission to get root access and it's only temporary.

I don't think they're doing this to save money on Comcast bills

I don't mean to say it's about cost savings; I meant that they're choosing the most expedient approach to this problem at the expense of employee happiness.

I'm pretty sure employees will not be cut off from the external web altogether. They can use it at home, they can use it on their phone while at work, they're not living like digital hermits. So how happiness plays into this decision is not clear to me.

They're probably allowed to use separate devices (i.e. sans corporate credentials) to access the outside web when they need to look up specs, SO questions, etc. This is just about air gapping critical systems.

I really have no idea why this is even a news item worth reporting, and jumping at the opportunity to criticize Google for this is a bit of a knee jerk HN reaction imo.

No, but they might be doing it to save on incident response, time wasting, protect IP, and meet a certain security standard in the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com