Google Reviews

Pros

- Relatively flexible in trying new ideas
- Smart colleagues
- Relatively easier to move (to another job/role) within Google

Cons

There are frequent organizational and/or structural changes within the organization.

Pros

It is the best place for software engineers. You can lean a lot from smart googlers. Also, meals are free.

Cons

MTV is in California, which means higher tax rate, higher living cost, etc. However, you may make more money in google than other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

In general, they are doing really good. I cannot think of anything bad about them. I like the way Larry Page is leading Google.

Pros

High concentration of smart + great people.
Employees empowered to change the word in the good way.
Full compensation package (base salary + bonus + stock + perks) is great and not easy to beat IMO, People who criticize it must have not done the math right and/or are performing poorly.

Cons

Career growth is somewhat difficult for non standard profiles (i.e. not Software Engineers or Site Reliability Engineers).
Managers need to be good to get their reports promoted.
Being on the "right" project (aka high impact with high visibility) does affect substantially career growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to focus on career growth at all levels. Train managers well too.
Reward well people doing the grunchy work/production/maintenance work.

Pros

Great pay, great projects, smart people to work with

Cons

Now Google is big or even huge, all kinds of people, hate the bureaucracy there, reminds me of IBM or Microsoft pyramid management

Advice to Senior Management

Let junior people complain

Pros

Quality of individual hires, strength of business, free cash flow which funds perks and benefits, less politics than other companies of a similar size

Cons

becoming a big company, too many mckinsey types in sales roles, politics starting to grow, easier to come in new to a senior role than be promoted into it

Advice to Senior Management

Take the "act like a small company" ethos to every level of the company and make sure it is being implemented - it sounds good, but is falling on deaf ears in middle management

Pros

Big problems to deal with

Cons

Hard work if you are not based in MTV (this may not be the case if you are not in engineering)

Pros

Culture actually means something in Google; it's something management depend on, and everyone believes in. It ensures most of the time we are all going in roughly the same direction, even if no one seems to have the time to verify it's the right direction

If a mistake is made, large or small, it's acknowledged, fixed, and people move on.

There is an honest believe that if there is a right way to do something, it will be done that way, even if it's a huge amount of effort initially.

You can depend on the fact that when you work with someone, they aren't an idiot; so any disagreement can be resolved sensibly.

Every company gets the odd manager who is not suited for their position occasionally. In Google, anyone can report a problem, so a manager gets help or a more suitable role.

Cons

The rate of change can upset people; nothing is constant. If you think you are making progress on your project, it's time to receive an email about deprecating an old database API or requiring every product to integrate the latest greatest security technology.

Because the company has shown it can completely change direction very quickly, many people desire such changes, even when they may not be needed.

Hiring relies on strongly on non-biased interviewing (the worst predictor of future performance). A desire to keep things 'fair' means people hoping to work in Google can often get a poor experience. I don't like referring people to work here - even though I know they'll kick ass at the job, my opinion is deemed too subjective to be useful.

Advice to Senior Management

Resist the desire to grow exponentially; our culture our most valuable asset. Diluting it terrifies me. I love Larry's desire to focus - we need that now, more than ever. Decide what the core projects are, staff them well, while keeping 10% of R&D for crazy blue-sky projects.

Pros

Amazing perks, benefits and pay
Interesting work and smart colleagues (middle managers are the exception).
Concern for change is there, empowerment to do so unfortunately isn't given to the recruiting team.

Cons

Shocked by the rather incompetent recruiting leadership on the sales team supporting at best a rather mediocre experience for hiring managers and candidates.

Rote, robot like recruiting process which is driven by levels and espouses "in the box" thinking.

Middle managers (Staffing Managers) are the epitomy of let's do things to please Larry vs. let's question and innovate.

Google Recruiting is like a big filter. Mediocre Staffing Managers that measure against silly metrics and measure the team on a curve they themselves could never meet.

Everyone is afraid to question the process or make changes. HR is a puppet at best with no strong recruiting leaders pushing innovation.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in a consultant to revamp the entire recruiting philosophy, map the right team based on this revised strategy. Get rid of middle managers more concerned about their upward mobility vs. smarter ways to hire. No one has questioned the hiring process @ Google and yet that's exactly what needs to be done.

Pros

high pay and passionate and challenge job.

Cons

huge workload and the boos sometimes overlook empolyee's feeling

Advice to Senior Management

pay more attention to inferior's thought

Pros

Open culture and treat employees nicely. High respect and freedom to engineers. Encourage innovation and taking risks. Well rounded employer.

Cons

Company is growing bigger and bigger and getting problems of a big company - complicated and segmented processes preventing fast movement.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the open culture, foster innovation and risk-taking, increase opportunities for career growth, be more aggressive in exploring new markets.