Pros

* Great Co-workers. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive in this area. My co-workers are smart, motivated, and trustworthy. I can count on them for design and execution.
* Great products. Loving the product you work on is great motivation for getting up in the morning.
* Engineer-oriented. Product managers for the most part do not call the shots. Engineering bears most of the responsibility for design, timelines, etc.
* Flexible hours. Performance really is king; engineers have a lot of flexibility in deciding when to come in and leave.
* Food. Delicious.
* Idealism. "Don't be evil" isn't just some marketing ploy that insiders scoff at. There's a real culture of accountability.
* Stability. I heard of no one in engineering that was worried about their job due to the global economic crisis.
* Scale. You're probably working on something millions of people use. There's great job satisfaction in that.

Cons

* Limited upside compared to a start-up. You don't come to Google thinking you're going to strike it rich in one fell swoop anymore. This is the price of stability.
* Company has grown quite large. There's something intangible that changes with growth, and even getting to know everyone in your extended team can be hard. There are no all-company events anymore. These have been replaced with organization-specific events.
* Management quality varies. I have a great manager but I've heard horror stories.
* Your initial project is assigned based on expressed preferences and relevant experience. It may take time to get off of it if you don't like it.
* Ramp up may take some time, but don't get discouraged as this is expected. The software stack is almost all in-house and so there's indirect transfer to other systerms.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall senior management is extremely competent, and product vision is well articulated. Better training for middle management should be a priority. Proposed increase to financial efficiency (e.g., by cutting perks) should be weighed against the impact on employee satisfaction (they've done reasonably well in this area).