I'm pretty sure that I agree with you, but if I had to steelman the argument against Eng Res it would be that since pay and promotion seems to follow percentage increments year to year, if you start at a lower point than someone else, you are going to be consistently behind them. So, having this program essentially creates a second class of engineer at google, predominantly URMs, who will be given lower pay and lower prestige assignments.
Personally, I don't buy this because the alternative is not that these Eng Residents would have been given entry level roles at google with the commensurate pay and benefits but rather no role at google.
Made an HN account to respond to this. I was in the Eng Res program, and that's not how it worked.
When you converted to being a regular SWE, they gave you a BIG pay bump -- comparable to a new-grad starting salary, but rather higher than average. My comp the year after Eng Res was higher by 20-40% than my friends who started at Google right out of school.
I imagine the target audience probably won’t write lengthy emails on this thing. Either way, glad to see some cheap and small Android phone that looks relatively nonsense-free.
I have pretty small hands, and I find the on screen keyboard okay. I do make a lot more typos than I used to with a bigger phone, and type slower, but it's not a big deal for me.
The biggest downside is the camera sucks. I'm hoping the next version (Jelly Star) will be better.