Google Reviews

Cons

i can not find any yet.

Cons

Some stress and uncertainty post-layoffs

Cons

1) Work/life balance. What balance? All those perks and benefits are an illusion. They keep you at work and they help you to be more productive. I've never met anybody at Google who actually time off on weekends or on vacations. You may not hear management say, "You have to work on weekends/vacations" but, they set the culture by doing so - and it inevitably trickles down. I don't know if Google inadvertently hires the work-a-holics or if they create work-a-holics in us. Regardless, I have seen way too many of the following: marriages fall apart, colleagues choosing work and projects over family, colleagues getting physically sick and ill because of stress, colleagues crying while at work because of the stress, colleagues shooting out emails at midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am. It is absolutely ridiculous and something needs to change. 2) Poor management. I think the issue is that, a majority of people love Google because they get to work on interesting technical problems - and these are the people that see little value in learning how to develop emotional intelligence. Perhaps they enjoy technical problems because people are too "difficult." People are promoted into management positions - not because they actually know how to lead/manage, but because they happen to be smart or because there is no other path to grow into. So there is a layer of intelligent individuals who are horrible managers and leaders. Yet, there is no value system to actually do anything about that because "emotional intelligence" or "adaptive leadership" are not taken seriously. 3) Jerks. Sure, there are a lot of brilliant people - but, sadly, there are also a lot of jerks (and, many times, they are one and the same). Years ago, that wasn't the case. I don't know if the pool of candidates is getting smaller, or maybe all the folks with great personalities cashed out and left, or maybe people are getting burned out and it's wearing on their personality and patience. I've heard stories of managers straight-up cussing out their employees and intimidating/scaring their employees into compliance. 4) It's a giant company now and, inevitably, it has become slower moving and is now layered with process and bureaucracy. So many political battles, empire building, territory grabbing. Google says, "Don't be evil." But, that practice doesn't seem to be put into place when it comes to internal practices. :(

Cons

* It *is* becoming larger, and with it comes growing pains: bureaucracy, slow to respond to market threats, bloated teams, cross-divisional tension (though nothing remotely approaching that of Microsoft's internal tension). * The quality of the engineers is possibly dropping, but possibly not. It's hard to get real metrics, because as the absolute number of people grows, naturally the number of bad apples grows; as a percentage it's supposedly the same as it ever was, but with larger numbers of poorer quality engineers it just _feels_ like things might be changing for the worse. * Also with growth means more internal-confidential data leaks (again, because of the raw numbers of people) -- product announcements being ruined, etc. That means the company has to be tighter-lipped internally to avoid leaks, which makes things less open. It's still an amazingly open place, but less so than it was even a couple years ago. The good thing is they recognize it and actively look to improve things because they know how important it is to keep the good culture.

Cons

I live in SF so the commute can take between 1.5 hours to 1.75 hours each way on the shuttle - sometimes 2 hours each way on a busy day or rainy day. That means being on the bus for 3-4 hours PER DAY. It's a wired bus though which means you can work on the way to Mountain View. But it can feel brutal. Your first year or two are really important in terms of your career at Google and they affect how you're viewed, and your ability to be promoted. You should always ask to work on high profile projects. If you don't get them, don't expect to get high ratings or get promoted. Always volunteer for cross functional group work for maximum exposure, and then work hard at those things. You'll likely work on something that no one will explain to you and it will take you at least a year to be comfortable doing what you're working on, even if you're super quick at learning. No one has time to train you or teach you what you're doing - which is kind of hard. After two or three years, people you started out with at Google start to get promoted. If you're not one of them, you'll wonder why and how it happened, and that process is somewhat political and not always clear. It's a big company now. And super political. So don't be naive. Expect some people to be catty, some people to be territorial, and be prepared to be mentally tough. Don't let people see your vulnerableness. It's a Darwinistic culture with a huge dose of 30-something idealism on top which can fool you into thinking that people are easygoing - they're not. They're driven. If you're not driven, you're not going to fit in. When you start at Google, it seems like peer reviews are super important - they are, but they are the sprinkles on the fro yo. The important thing is that your direct manager knows your work, likes your work and likes you, and then you can get promoted. If your boss doesn't like you, all the positive peer reviews in the world won't help you. Make sure you know what your boss wants, and give it to them. You will have weekly one on ones, and make sure you are addressing your performance at each one, asking if they have questions, how you can improve, can you work on cross functional projects, etc. It's really hard to find work life balance at Google. The workload is huge. I hardly have time to work out. The commute is brutal. My family sometimes needs more from me and I can't give it. I'm still trying to find the balance. I think I need more down time than most people so I have a hard time being structured every day to fit all the things I want into my day, so a lot of things slip, like working out.

Cons

* It can be extremely frustrating to deal with leadership with zero vision for the company. * You are just a cog if you are not on an exciting project. * Huge variance in team cultures that can greatly impact your experience. * There are a lot of people and it's hair tearingly frustrating to figure out how to coordinate between them.

Cons

Intense Competition: The high bar for talent at Google means that you'll face intense competition both during the hiring process and while working there. This can lead to a stressful and fast-paced environment. Bureaucracy: As with any large corporation, there can be bureaucratic processes that slow down decision-making and hinder innovation. Navigating these processes can be frustrating at times. High Expectations: Google expects its employees to perform at a consistently high level. The pressure to meet these expectations can be challenging, and the work can be demanding.

Cons

Decline in quality of in-office perks (due to recession) Mandatory in-office 3 days a week policy Old products, limited opportunities for meaningful impact Although its relatively stable, its position in the future is threatened by emerging competitors like TikTok and OpenAI Most of the resources are being funneled away from certain teams and into LLMs Not very diverse, although this is a critique of the whole industry, and Google is admittedly better than other companies and a least offers identity-based employee resource groups

Cons

- Very hierarchical in both structure and style. Decisions from minor code style choices to team processes to larger policies are usually made by some group at a high level and uniformly applied to all, and enforced. - Constant reorgs mean swapping managers every 6 months or so - Incentivizes competition between engineers, which blunts collaboration - Very established ways of doing things that are in many ways frozen in time because of all the heavyweight internal tooling that would be too expensive to change "at google scale", as people love to say. Most teams use waterfall methodology. Long-winded, formal detailed design documents are typically prepared by one person and then handed off to the implementers. - Tends to favor overly complex code and documentation - The monorepo makes developing for/with open source libraries a nightmare - Takes a long time to get comfortable/efficient with the Google engineering ecosystem and its ways of doing things. - Cumbersome promotion process that makes getting promoted quickly after joining very difficult - Teams tend to be very meeting-adverse, which makes it difficult to feel connected with distributed teams - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion efforts are talked up all the time, but in reality, this is probably the least inclusive company I have ever worked for. - Shady ethics around the company's "mission" that everyone seems to turn a blind eye to

Cons

Getting more and more bureacratic over years Small impact and slow growth trajectory (in most teams) Second-tier salary compare to other tech companies