Does Google Have A Class System For Googlers?

May 2, 2011 at 9:35am ET by Barry Schwartz

Former Googler, Andrew Norman Wilson posted a very interesting video on his blog about a group of Google employees who were portrayed as a “lower class” of Googlers.

These Googlers were primarily responsible for the Google Book project where they manually scanned books all day. Andrew Wilson documented how these Googlers worked, starting their day at 4 am and leaving at 2:15 pm every day. He also said they were hired by not only Google but also by Transvideo Studios. The building they worked at was near the other Google buildings in Mountain View, California and was building number 3.14159~.

Andrew felt they were lower class Googlers because they wore a yellow badge, weren’t allowed access to the Google shuttles, free Google food, the Google bikes and tons of other Google perks.

You can watch the video Andrew created while at Google of this group of people below. The video was created because he was interested in documenting the issues of class, race, and labor within Google.

Google has yet to post a statement on this video, from what I can tell:

For more details, see Andrew’s blog.

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Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Employees

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Michael Martinez

They way he describes how the situation was handled, Google should count itself lucky these allegations came out on the day Osama bin Laden was killed. I grew up around racism in the South and I can tell you that if there’s one racist incident there are probably others. They may be skating on the edge of a major PR disaster here. Even the *appearance* of enforcing racism however bureaucratical the blunder truly was is something they want to avoid.
http://www.Match.ccom Simon Serrano

I don’t understand most of this video.

Why would Google use a video production company to hire “book scanners?” Maybe Andrew was confused about who really hired these employees? Maybe they were officially employees of a 3rd company who are using Google’s facilities to complete their jobs and are therefore not official Google employees?

Also, I have to call into question his character because of the fact that he admitted that he lied about the 2nd tape. Additionally, he said that he was going to quit anyways in 2 months … this makes me think that he thought that he didn’t have a whole lot to lose if he did something or created something that he knew he would get fired for.

@michael, he said that most were colored workers, not all. Is there still a case of racism if the entire populace of a group isn’t a minority or of one race? (Serious question, i’m not a lawyer or know enough about race issues.)
David_lou

@Michael Martinez: the author and the maker of the video is not a ‘former Googler’ he was a contract worker, similar to those who conduct the manual labor of book scanning, they are not Google employees but the workers of a company contracted by Google (contract workers).
Sadly those occupying low wage contract jobs are minorities.

These are the ramblings of a delusional guy who doesn’t understand that those who when to college get payed more, as for security getting involved that is merely procedural and it’s what happens when you go snooping around company grounds.
http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Michael Martinez

@David_lou: “…These are the ramblings of a delusional guy who doesn’t understand that those who when to college get payed more”

That sounds like the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist.