Pros
- Incredibly collaborative and positive environment - Lots of interesting engineering problems to tackle - Opportunities to collaborate closely with research - Substantial freedom to gravitate towards the problems that interest you more - No micromanagement - Fairly light bureaucracy - docs and presentations are very important but fairly informal - Not subject to "commercial" deadlines - you can typically work until something is ready, within reason - Hard work (and perhaps also overwork) is rewarded but there is a lot of respect of work-life balance; the company's behaviour and understanding during the pandemic has been nothing short than stellar so far
Cons
- Having lots of smart and effective coworkers can sometimes take an emotional toll if you are prone to self-doubt - Losing a bit of the startuppy vibes from a few years ago, although perhaps inevitable after years of huge growth - Dealing with internal Google infra is super-interesting but at times frustrating (as it's designed with complicated billion-users use cases in mind, not really supporting run-and-forget research stuff)