Category: Random, But Interesting

The raw material the software relies on is an archive of my writings and notes, plus a few thousand choice quotes from books I have read over the past decade: an archive, in other words, of all my old ideas, and the ideas that have influenced me….



…The other day I ran a search that included the word ”sewage” several times. Because the software knows the word ”waste” is often used alongside ”sewage” it directed me to a quote that explained the way bones evolved in vertebrate bodies: by repurposing the calcium waste products created by the metabolism of cells.

Now, some will read it this way: We hope those of you that may have passed us over – perhaps when we were a bit arrogant and full of ourselves – will take a look again. Or – we hope those of you that we passed over – perhaps when we weren’t so well organized, and all had our hair on fire, and basically were only hiring our friends – well we hope you’ll take a look at us again too. At least, that’s how it will read to the scores of folks I have spoken to in the past 18 months who had an interview there, but didn’t end up at the company.

But there’s an elephant in this post which is not discussed. The IPO is over, the first thousand or so have gotten rich. Why come and work at Google when the stock’s at 200? That’d be like taking a package at Yahoo in early 2000, right? I wonder if this reality has slowed the torrent of resumes that has flooded Google from the get go. Or, more likely, I wonder if it’s slowed the flood of resumes that they want to get.

FWIW, “Google” on Yahoo (55 million or so results).

UPDATE: I have it on very good authority that Google is fiddling with its “results crowding” algorithms, and not targeting Yahoo or filtering in any way.