Google reviews

4.4

87% would recommend to a friend

(48,436 total reviews)
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Sundar Pichai

83% approve of CEO

81% positive business outlook

Google has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 48,436 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Google employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

48K reviews
3.0
May 6, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The perks, food and transportation being the main ones, but there are lots of things that make it a geek's paradise if you're into that sort of thing - games everywhere, free tickets and shuttles for some movies when they open (Transformers was one), etc. Let's face it, it looks good on your resume. The chance to meet some very bright and interesting people. There are so many opportunities to educate yourself about the world through your employer - everything from tech talks on a variety of technical topics to visits by politicians and public figures. It's cool to be on the inside and learn about new products everyone else will be talking about soon.

Cons

My experience was that of an intern so it may not be typical, but I ended up doing work I had absolutely no interest in and didn't envision getting my degree for without much opportunity to do something different. When interns are recruited they don't have much of a say on what type of work they'd like to do, so if you're stuck with something you don't like and want to work on more interesting things, that's what evenings and weekends are for. If you have a PhD you can do some fascinating things at Google, but if you just have an undergrad degree you might be better off at a smaller company where you will get more opportunities to do different kinds of work that span several job positions at Google.

2.0
May 5, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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.

2.0
May 1, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They have amazing benefits and perks. The culture in some offices is very positive and fun. They allow honor system style time off for sickness as long as it is not abused. They have a large pool of talent and they look great on a resume.

Cons

The top levels of management are arrogant and inattentive. They seem to very self interested and only spout pre rehearsed, scripted answers to important questions. Promotions and reviews are based on your managers mood. The management is so flat that some managers have legions of googlers rolling up into them. This makes it very hard to stand out. The perks are there to put stars in your eyes so you won't see that there is very little opportunity for career advancement of nay note.

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