Google Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Pros

-Google Full Timers are very helpful in terms of meeting with interns to give advice.
-Information is freely shared and the company is very transparent.
-Great recruiting staff that are an awesome support system for interns
-Fun perks
-Sweet pay
-Opportunities to learn and network
-Surrounded by intelligent and savvy people

Cons

Hardly any, there are literally no reasons not to intern here.

Advice to Senior Management

None, keep up the great work!

Pros

Smart and driven people, managers open and willing to speak with you.

Cons

Party culture, some people seem to be there for the perks.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work.

Pros

Perfect job as noticed by press.

Cons

Difficult to get an offer.

Pros

A large company with well known and famous mentors. Foods are free and are delicious. Lots of activities.

Cons

No particular cons I can think of

Pros

In the right Eng group, young engineers will learn a lot. The food is good. The bicycles are handy.

Cons

For more senior people, odds are, you're going to be waiting a long time for any kind of promotion. You will also be way older than most of the people you work with, and your manager may or may not understand family commitments. (Google in general does.)

Your manager may or may not care about you. If you get a good manager, great. If you get a lousy one, it may or may not get fixed in any reasonable amount of time, and it can be hard to transfer out if you're having any difficulty with your manager. I had the worst manager of my 30 year career there, and should have just quit after I figured that out.

Advice to Senior Management

Emulating the secrecy, siloing and hierarchy of Apple will not result in Google being as good at focus and product as Apple.

Google needs to encourage lightweight experimentation (in a way that 20% time doesn't really do, since it's often "120% time"). Once there are a bunch of organizations who all want to prevent you from launching quickly and easily, innovation suffers.

Even line engineers, TLMs, and lower level managers are not in fact interchangeable, and the company (or at least the Sales organization) shouldn't re-org every few months.

People get promotions based on politics and who sucks up to whom, not based on merit.

Pros

We are plied with small perks like espresso and organic vegetables.

Cons

The first month was very rough for me. I was given no real introduction to the company, and had to learn by fire. The security restrictions on your personal computer and network get in the way of productivity, and are generally frustrating. I need to have a field tech come to my workstation to install software that doesn't happen to be whitelisted.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't take away sudo on linux machines. Make Noogler classes available to contractors.

Pros

The people here are super cool. Everyone is so smart. Everyone is so nice. Lots of opportunity

Cons

There was nothing wrong there!

Pros

Great perks, work-life balance, little hierarchy, genuinely friendly coworkers, great place to network and meet future entrepreneurs, diverse workplace, LGBT friendly, open culture, smart coworkers.

Cons

As a contractor there is a lack of transparency about the opportunity for conversion to permanent roles. Also, many young colleagues complain that no other company recruits so many bright people to then put them in very low level jobs with remedial tasks.

Pros

Very open communication from senior management all the way down to interns
Vested interest in employees and personal development (GoogleEDU)
Smartest / most creative people I've met

Cons

Slow recruiting and conversion process
Such a large company that it's difficult to be organized (in terms of knowing how to get a certain piece of information or resource)

Advice to Senior Management

Speed up the recruiting process because you lose valuable candidates when you wait too long to give decisions

Pros

Everybody who's paying attention knows how great the perks are. Between on-site gyms, massage, a wide selection of health benefits, 401k and stock grants, competitive salary, and of course the free, gourmet meals, it's one of the cushiest jobs in Silicon Valley.

The technical challenges are interesting, and the code base is enormous. Engineers are encouraged to fix any and all problems, on their own teams or completely separate projects. There is a lot of freedom to do anything that interests you, as long as you have time.

Cons

Having good management seems to be a non-goal, at least below the highest levels. The only requirements for becoming a manager are having good enough technical skills to reach the correct job level, and expressing interest. Because of this, middle management is extremely hit-or-miss. Employees are often expected to figure out how to grow on their own, with little or no guidance, even for those fresh out of school. Many managers still have technical responsibilities, and let their people-management responsibilities fall by the wayside.

It is unclear so far just how Larry Page taking over as CEO will affect the company as a whole, at least in terms of work environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to be transparent about company direction and motives. When you hire the best and brightest, they don't want to feel like they're being lied to.