Google will take over your life - Account Executive Google Employee Review

2.0
16 Mar 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The perks and salary are very competitive, you are able to afford a high standard of life for the country you're in, go on lavish vacations, and have a nice business casual wardrobe. The rest depends on the team you are in. Some people are genuinely kind, smart and friendly, some teams genuinely work well together, but overall it is a stressful and competitive environment, which affects people's dynamics in adverse ways.

Cons

While Google staff is made up of many interesting individual personalities, you often get the feeling that you need to think, feel, and breathe Google culture. Your individuality basically gets subsumed into this giant business machine, and good luck to you if your opinions, tastes, and interests don't match the corporate culture. Basically, you need to be into the following things: yoga, inspirational quotes, American left-wing liberalism, going to the gym, new techie gadgets, office fashion, blockbusters, Netflix, travelling, bragging about your accomplishments, money. You need not be into the following things: literature, art, academic pursuits, creative writing, alternative viewpoints, having friends outsie of work, aspiring to anything other than middle management at a huge corporation. All your time with your work friends - the only friends you'll have time to make and keep - will be spent conversing about metrics, meetings with your boss, and how best to make yourself look good for your next performance review. Your mind will be filled with these things all day long, don't kid yourself that you can have brain space for anything else if you want that promotion (and you will, just to get ahead of your office plankton job). The open plan workspace is hugely distracting and exhausting for anyone trying to do some quality work, yet is sold as "teambuilding" (in reality, it is simply the cheapest way to house 1000s of employees)

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5.0
1 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Meeting interesting people, working with most advanced tech.

Cons

Too many people working, not gonna stand out.

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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