Pros

Google is a company of constant change, and opportunities abound for the hungry. Management are eager to spot talent and bring them forward.

Cons

However, unless you are careful, you might find yourself digging a hole with no way out. It is no longer as easy to climb as it used to be within the organisation.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep going strong, and look for new avenues of revenue. With a smart and world-class work force, you can stay as flexible as you like

Pros

* Opportunity to work with the smartest people ever. Having collaborated (to varying degrees) with quite a few Googlers, I can certainly say Googlers are "la creme de la creme".
* Not only they're smart, but they're dedicated 120% to their work. (The 20% is for the weekends...) "Great is not good enough" for each and every Googler.
* Fantastic development tools (Code Search, the code review tool, the versioning tool, and N others);
* Opportunity to work on products that will be used (directly or indirectly) by millions of people
* Amazing code base, superbly structured, continuously optimized, all at your fingertips.
* Free great food :-)

Cons

* Very long hours. At least where I was, people would seriously work 12-14 hours a day (out of which 90% would be "effective hours", churning away tons of code).
* Peer reviews, while apparently treated seriously, are in fact a half joke. Your manager is your God. You fit with him/her, you're golden; you don't, you're dead meat. Most managers seem at least alright; however, I apparently got very unlucky.
* Code reviews. I have heard many a old-time Googler complaining about the pedantry. "Code review Nazis" are commonplace. From discussions w/ other Googlers, it seems the transition from "this doesn't break anything and doesn't embezzle funds" to state-of-the-art torture has happened over the past couple years. This hurts productivity big time, and given that you're still expected to have completed a ton of work, guess what happens.. yeah, you got it: you'll leave past midnight and work from home during the weekends to barely meet expectations.
* The "transfer to any project any time you want" is an absolute myth nowadays.

Caution: from informal discussions, it seems that I really got the short end of the stick, and that in other parts of Google things are much smoother. YMMV.

Advice to Senior Management

The company is generally headed in the right direction. However: listen to Googlers more, adjust to their needs. Google is not that magic place to work for anymore: pay better, think of the work-life balance (I mean, actually think of it, not just pretend you are).

Pros

I was amongst some of the most hard driven and motivated co-workers while at Google. I had very little to complain about, being surrounded by some of the brightest and most interesting people I have ever met. The team and the atmosphere made for a great work environment, the perks helped but it was more knowing you were all part of a team and accomplishing great things. Senior management wanted to help you and would give you the tools to succeed.

Cons

See review headline - "Great place to work... "

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management wanted to help you and would give you the tools to succeed. They will listen and make 1:1 a priority.

Pros

The people and the food, in that order. I've met some truly brilliant individuals in my years at Google and have learned a lot just by striking up conversations. Coworkers tend to be very cooperative and willing to share knowledge. It can also be quite a fun environment in which to work, but not in an "organized fun" kind of way. Although there is plenty of "organized fun" (well, not as much since the recession began), spontaneous team outings and conversations over coffee are much more enjoyable.

Cons

Google has become very hierarchical, political, and bureaucratic. Over the years, management has distanced itself from its employees and become more and more arrogant. Sales "all hands" meetings have become occasions for management to indulge in self-congratulatory ramblings, pats on the back and vague replies to serious questions.

With the recent departure of many key individuals at the company, morale and the famous "googley" culture are suffering. It is very difficult to be heard, make an impact or receive recognition for successful work.

Creativity and risk-taking are now discouraged as evidenced by the recent closure of several teams who were not bringing in enough revenue. The unfortunate aspect of this new environment is that many talented Googlers were encouraged to join innovative teams but suddenly found themselves scrambling for jobs when the company's strategy changed yet again.

Google's profits are heavily scrutinized and the new sales leadership puts perhaps too much pressure on employees to bring in immediate sales rather than think long-term. This reality conflicts with senior management's statements about career advancement, constant learning and risk-taking and their desire to position Google as a multimedia advertising solution. These factors partially demonstrate the disconnect between senior management's claims and sales management's actions.

If you are patient for promotions (it sometimes takes years), don't mind a confusing and constantly changing org structure, can tolerate impersonal upper management and incompetent middle managers (although some of them are outstanding), and finally, are willing to set aside aspirations to innovate, Google is not a bad place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back in touch with your employees and encourage sales managers to do the same.

Pros

Smart co-workers
Great food
Interesting, high-impact projects
Many learning opportunities
High pay
Good benefits
30 inch monitor
Seemingly unlimited computing resources

Cons

A sense of entitlement from some employees
With so many reports per manager, it is easy to get over looked if you don't speak up
Group offices. Sometimes I really want a door and a quiet place to work

Advice to Senior Management

The management is doing great. The feeling of trust I get from management at Google helps me to feel committed to my work. Of course, mileage may vary depending on individual managers, but I've been very lucky here. And Eric is the best CEO I've encountered.

Pros

The food, the quality of your co-workers

Cons

Long hours sometimes, not being able to talk about what you are working on outside the company

Advice to Senior Management

Keep visiting the London office. It's good to have you around.

Pros

flexiable and creative job.

very special data centre design, advanced clound computing and server system

Cons

too busy and too many meetings

Advice to Senior Management

cut some boring meetings

Pros

Overall good smart people working together in a very open atmosphere where information sharing is highly encouraged and easy to do. Very open communication from management compared to most companies. Best total compensation I've had at any company. Great fringe benefits like the free food, author talks, and political candidates dropping in.

Cons

If you like working in a very structured environment then you might not like it here.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work.

Pros

My story is a little different than most others because I was a temp worker for Google, testing search results for a year. I enjoyed the work a great deal; there were always new interesting things to test, and I got to see things like Maps and Timelines long before they were released to the public and help make them better. The pay was reasonable - $15/hour working from home - and there were good bonuses after a certain number of hours had been completed, or occasionally given for working on specific projects.

Cons

There were two major downsides of doing temp work from home for Google. One was the astonishing lack of communication. This shifted a little while I was working there; they began developing a sort of report card system so that we could see how our rating work scored compared to previous months and how we were doing overall. But while I was there, that system only worked for a small fraction of the projects I was working on, so it wasn't particularly helpful.

More to the point, there was no positive feedback given to anyone at all, and communication between employees seemed to be discouraged - two classic characteristics of a dysfunctional work environment. Occasionally if a rating was very far off of what they were looking for - usually due to a typo or misclick - they would send it back with a warning saying so, but that represented the sum total of feedback given. Personally, I found it very difficult to work with no input about whether they wished I were going faster, whether I was going faster than my peers, whether I was doing a great job, or - most of all - any input about how to improve in general. Sure, it's a year-long temp job, but one which can potentially be repeated after another year has passed - and besides, who doesn't want to receive positive feedback and learn how to improve and receive more? I guess more importantly, who doesn't want to know what the expectations for their work are??

The one saving grace for me was that I found a forum for people working from home where some other folks who were doing temp work for Google could get together and chat a little - without breaking any confidentiality agreements - about what we struggled with, how much we were able to do in a day, and what we thought the expectations for us were, based on all of our experiences.

The other major downside was that the temp agency they used, WorkForceLogic, was just TERRIBLE - specifically at handling payroll, which is a terrible thing to be terrible at. There were many times that I didn't get paid, got a bonus deducted from my check instead of added to it, et cetera - and it was always a different mistake from all the ones they had made before, and it always took them a while to figure out what had gone wrong, track down whoever needed to fix it, wait for them to get back from lunch or an appointment or come back to work the next day or.... And they were no better at communication, really; I had hoped that once this assignment was up I would be able to get more assignments through WFL, but no matter how many phone calls I made, nobody could ever figure out who I should be talking to or find anyone who would return calls.

Advice to Senior Management

From what I have heard, communication and job satisfaction are a growing problem everywhere in Google, and as with any large corporation this has the largest effect at the bottom of the totem pole. I'd recommend getting an expert in organizational development to go through the whole company, and listening to their feedback.

Pros

Smart people, interesting projects. I have never worked at a place where such open discussions are encouraged. Negative and positive feedback are equally welcomed.

Cons

I feel sorry for some of the people who start to work at Google right out of college or academia. They are in for a rude shock when they go to other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay the course: don't let other people tell you what you are doing is wrong. It's a great company to work for and we have great products.