We aren’t, and we don’t. You are misinformed.

In Britain, the word ‘biscuit’ means a hard baked cookie, like a graham cracker. Since this is the normal use of this word in the UK, we don’t automatically think of the plain scone-type baked goods for which Americans use the word ‘biscuit’. US English is a different dialect of English, and there are many words which have different meanings from U.K. English (jumper, braces, suspenders, tap etc.)

What on earth makes you think we call bread rolls ‘puddings’? In the U.K., pudding is any dessert, not just the blancmange-stuff which Americans use that word for. It is correct in the U.K. to say “I’m having apple pie for pudding.”.

My clients have seen big changes the last couple of weeks, but all for the good thankfully. The “Fred” update was a biggie and it looks like some websites that have massive ads with little quality content got hit hard. I saw one post where their traffic plummeted 95% and they are virtually invisible in search now……it is times like these I am thrilled I only do white-hat work….sometimes I scratch my head and am tempted when I see competitors outrank me with crappy sites with no backlinks…but I have hope their day will come! 🙂

I know people who left Google for Facebook, they were not walked out. Why would they be walked out of Google? Because facebook competing with Google?

I have left Google twice, both times for Apple, in both cases Apple was a competing organization, in all cases I had a good talk with my managers up and HR discying opportunities in Google, in both cases I was not escorted, I was given two weeks to talk more and to complete my project. I left in good terms with all my friends, managers and Google. Google is very fair organization, it treats people extremely well . I can imagine that some department might be supersecret and they will do it, but I was working for core search quality which is secretive too and I was asked to leave.

I’ve had two times I’ve gotten involved in new business start-ups by friends, and both times it ended badly. Not horrible, we were screaming at each other, friendship ruined forever badly, but things didn’t work out, I wanted out of this deal but now it’s awkward badly. Any time something like this comes up, I find myself thinking, If this doesn’t work out for whatever reason, is it going to ruin our friendship? And do I value the job or whatever the deal is more than I value the friendship?

I think the best you can do is talk to your friend, tell him you saw the ad, you think you might be qualified, etc, but you realize it could be awkward, what do you think, I really don’t need this job so if you say you think it’s a bad idea it’s not like I’ll be unemployed and living in a cardboard box, etc. As someone else said, I’d try to make it easy for him to say please don’t.