Competitive Machine of Silicon Valley
Pros
Google presents an idyllic exterior setting: volleyball courts, free meals, and the athletic intramurals of a college campus. It has attracted many very smart people and offers good salaries. It is a technology focused company, and has produced four world changing products: Google Search, Ads, Maps, and YouTube.
Cons
Google is beset by internal competition -- the atmosphere of constant review pushes people to primp their resumes and do things to look better and make their competition look worse. Unscrupulous, loud people are rewarded, while ineffective people are treated similarly to those that actually do great work. The company is full of managers who don't really know how to manage. Working conditions offer no privacy and detract from concentration: wall-less elbow-to-elbow bull pens. Corporate Management insists on recruiting mostly at headquarters (Mountain View) despite the growing issue of insufficient housing for new hires. Employees live in the substandard housing nearby or yoke themselves for life to pay a mortgage on some place nice. Worst of all, much of management is running out of ideas. Almost every product they've produced was brainstormed fifteen years ago. The dream of the "Star Trek" computer is basically accomplished, and they now have tens of thousands of software engineers to employ doing... what, exactly?
