Pros

I like Google for it's transparent culture, free food and other perks (well, but those are baked in the total compensation package anyway).

Cons

Relatively flat org means there are few chances for one to advance. It is not uncommon to have a senior manager with 40+ directs. There are lots of smart people. In a way, it is a good thing. The downside is that a lot of them want to play safe, which hampers innovation.

Advice to Senior Management

H

Pros

Google has a tremendous brand equity, incredibly brilliant colleagues, and it has a culture that truly fosters innovation. The work environment is generally fun and challenging environment.

Cons

The hours are very long and hard, and work/life balance still needs to be improved. Management says they are doing their best to make this better, though it has not improved.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to avoid changing things at the last minute for certain functional groups within the organization. Sometimes they make last minute changes to decisions, which causes a pain for the employees down the ladder.

Pros

Google is like Disneyland for geeks. It's an incredibly great place to work: the food, the people, the projects, the opportunities...

Cons

It's extremely disorganized. There's either not enough work or way too much. No feedback. No structure. It's not always clear how to contribute.

Advice to Senior Management

One word: divestiture. Google should spin out some of its projects to a separate company so they can be run more efficiently. Management is too decentralize.

Pros

ITs a great place to work and expand your knowledge. You will love the people and location is great. Dont hesitate to apply

Cons

Sometimes managment has issue with letting people know to stance of the company. You will find more information if you look yourself

Advice to Senior Management

Let your employees know where the company stands. Better to hear it from you than on the front page. Thank You

Pros

The food is great and Google offers learning opportunities and personal growth.

Cons

Senior management lacking the skills / experience to manage.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire managers and leaders and not just people that receive high marks on standardized tests.

Pros

Great place to work, cutting edge industry, excellent online marketing training

Cons

Job growth could be limited as company gets older. Sometimes job growth gets a bit stale.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep paying attention to career development opportunities for Googlers

Pros

2 types of people that will find a great place to work: (1) recent college or B-school graduates looking for a first job where they can learn a lot, and (2) more senior corporate executives with many years of experience who aren't overly ambitious and are looking for a role where they can put life on auto-pilot and glide through their day-to-day activities.

Cons

There is no clear career progression, and management is arrogant.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward employees based on achievements as opposed to favoritism by one's direct line manager. Ensure that rewards / bonuses / promotions are not entirely up to one person (ie the specific team manager)

Pros

The perks are great as you probably already know. Who can complain about free gourmet food and lots of freebies. But even over the last few years the company's growth has caused many of these once great perks to go downhill (but don't get me wrong the food is amazing). There are so many smart people at Google so if you want a place to learn and find out anything you've ever wanted to know, this is the place for you. People are typically very willing to give you a helping hand any time you have a question. Google also does wonders on your resume of course.

Cons

It's really hard to shine. As the company has grown at an amazing rate, you become a little guy amongst hundreds of strong performers. Even if you're doing well, there's probably somebody else putting in more than the extra effort. By this I mean, so many people work day and night and achieve great things, but for those who have other things going on in their lives it's just hard to compete and be noticed. It's hard to blame managers as they can't reward everybody but it's really hard to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't try so hard to suck all the free time out of everyone's lives. While it's great that some employees love to contribute extra, it's unfair to punish those who just do a great job during the business day.

The hiring process is also horrible. It weeds out thousands of extremely qualified applicants as it focuses strongly on GPA over real industry experience. Often times the smartest and most applied people are the people who didn't do well in school. Many of the great innovators have not appeared to be the most 'book smart'.

Pros

Google has consistently smart people in literally all areas. This includes the receptionists, the food service folks and the help desk staff.

Google is also still a fairly democratic and open workplace in terms of culture and idea solicitation.

Cons

Google has extremely uneven career development support and bottom level management. Though there are classes and other tools for development, it can be difficult to good guidance on where to focus your efforts. In the last 6-12 months there has been improvement on bottom level management issues, but it has been gradual overall.

Also, Google does a generally poor job of recognizing technically unglamorous though needed contributions.

Advice to Senior Management

The company should invest more energy in guiding the development its employees. I know there are managers who want to do better at this and would jump at training specifically to address this.

Pros

The perks at Google are really cool. The free food and Google wear are all good. But the recognition of working at a cool company is a reward itself too

Cons

It is a very disorganized environment. The company still feels chaotic and like a start up. Also, it seems the company takes advantage of people by lowering the salary.

Advice to Senior Management

I would advise the leadership to be more structured. Sometimes the environment is too loose and too casual. Perhaps this is to preserve the Google reputation of being a "cool" company to work for.