Having the time of my life - Software Engineer III Google Employee Review

5.0
4 Jun 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

They recognize and reward top performers better than any other company I've worked for. I got promoted in under a year, so of course I think the perf process is fair. They let you do anything you put your mind to. I got to do a 20% project with the self-driving car team. The projects are amazing and interesting, the type that make me excited to come to work every day. Great and talented coworkers can be rare to have in other companies, but they seem to be everywhere at Google. Google contracts with the local music school in Mountain View to provide music lessons at work, for anyone who is interested. I am taking advantage of this, and have music lessons during the work day, which is an amazing perk to have. There are music rooms scattered around where you can play piano, guitar, drums, etc... They really seem to care about your wellbeing, not just how much work they get out of you. There is a focus on long-term development for employees, such as giving us lots of resources to learn new things, from programming languages to music to machine learning, I can get involved and learn just about anything at Google. Then there's the "regular" stuff I now take for granted, like the free food and microkitchens. You can bring your dog to work, which is awesome. I get a full body table massage every other week. There are clubs for just about any kind of thing, including re-enacting ancient battles with foam swords.

Cons

Sometimes long cafe lines while you're waiting for free food. Large campus requires you to use GBike to get around sometimes (I'm lazy), although they do provide buses and even an uber-like pickup service. So many things to see and do, between talks, special events and parties, that it can be hard to focus on your work.

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5.0
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CEO approval
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Pros

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Cons

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4.0
21 Jun 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1) Food, food, food. 15+ cafes on main campus (MTV) alone. Mini-kitchens, snacks, drinks, free breakfast/lunch/dinner, all day, errr'day. 2) Benefits/perks. Free 24:7 gym access (on MTV campus). Free (self service) laundry (washer/dryer) available. Bowling alley. Volley ball pit. Custom-built and exclusive employee use only outdoor sport park (MTV). Free health/fitness assessments. Dog-friendly. Etc. etc. etc. 3) Compensation. In ~2010 or 2011, Google updated its compensation packages so that they were more competitive. 4) For the size of the organization (30K+), it has remained relatively innovative, nimble, and fast-paced and open with communication but, that is definitely changing (for the worse). 5) With so many departments, focus areas, and products, *in theory*, you should have plenty of opportunity to grow your career (horizontally or vertically). In practice, not true. 6) You get to work with some of the brightest, most innovative and hard-working/diligent minds in the industry. There's a "con" to that, too (see below).

Cons

1) Work/life balance. What balance? All those perks and benefits are an illusion. They keep you at work and they help you to be more productive. I've never met anybody at Google who actually time off on weekends or on vacations. You may not hear management say, "You have to work on weekends/vacations" but, they set the culture by doing so - and it inevitably trickles down. I don't know if Google inadvertently hires the work-a-holics or if they create work-a-holics in us. Regardless, I have seen way too many of the following: marriages fall apart, colleagues choosing work and projects over family, colleagues getting physically sick and ill because of stress, colleagues crying while at work because of the stress, colleagues shooting out emails at midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am. It is absolutely ridiculous and something needs to change. 2) Poor management. I think the issue is that, a majority of people love Google because they get to work on interesting technical problems - and these are the people that see little value in learning how to develop emotional intelligence. Perhaps they enjoy technical problems because people are too "difficult." People are promoted into management positions - not because they actually know how to lead/manage, but because they happen to be smart or because there is no other path to grow into. So there is a layer of intelligent individuals who are horrible managers and leaders. Yet, there is no value system to actually do anything about that because "emotional intelligence" or "adaptive leadership" are not taken seriously. 3) Jerks. Sure, there are a lot of brilliant people - but, sadly, there are also a lot of jerks (and, many times, they are one and the same). Years ago, that wasn't the case. I don't know if the pool of candidates is getting smaller, or maybe all the folks with great personalities cashed out and left, or maybe people are getting burned out and it's wearing on their personality and patience. I've heard stories of managers straight-up cussing out their employees and intimidating/scaring their employees into compliance. 4) It's a giant company now and, inevitably, it has become slower moving and is now layered with process and bureaucracy. So many political battles, empire building, territory grabbing. Google says, "Don't be evil." But, that practice doesn't seem to be put into place when it comes to internal practices. :(

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