Google reviews

4.4

87% would recommend to a friend

(48,385 total reviews)
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Sundar Pichai

82% approve of CEO

81% positive business outlook

Google has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 48,385 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
2.0
Jun 16, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You interact with great developers, original thinkers and interesting people all the time. Unlimited munchies are great, three free meals a day (or two in satellite offices) is great, medical benefits, partial subsidy of fitness membership, subsidy for ongoing education (though in reality you are unlikely to have time to use it) are all pluses. Being on the winning team feels good, especially when winning an uphill battle against an entrenched monopolist.

Cons

The days when Google was the coolest place in the world to work are gone. Google is deteriorating at the edges. Many managers at Google got their jobs just by having low employee numbers and are otherwise unqualified. Once entrenched they tend to show little concern for their reports, concerning themselves with "managing up" to their own manager. Google is supposed to have a project matrix where tech leads are peers, not managers, but managers commonly flout this and micromanaging is endemic. Moving between projects is limited by complex procedures and is rarely attempted. In satellite offices the selection of projects to work on is limited and to make matters worse it is discouraged for engineers to work on projects not centered in their own offices. Being friends with your manager is a more effective way to get promoted than showing competence. In fact, showing too much competence or initiative is a good way to earn the ire of your manager. Performance evaluation is supposed to be by peer review but in reality, feedback from peers is ignored and only the manager's rating is taken seriously. Political infighting and character assassination are increasingly the norm at Google. Managers turn a blind eye to it, perhaps because they have found such techniques useful in developing their own careers. Google base compensation is on the low side, and is supposed to be more than made up for by incentive bonuses, but these are largely illusionary because few employees receive the necessary "exceeds expectations" performance evaluation. Managers at Google tend to consider themselves special people, better than engineers. Few will bother to greet or otherwise acknowledge the existence of anybody other than another manager if they pass them in the hall. Except for the weekly TGIF cross-company sessions where the founders candidly answer questions from all employees, management at Google is increasingly secretive about procedures and plans.

4.0
Apr 26, 2016

My experience as a TVC @ Google

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The perks: cafes, gym, perkhub, flexibility on working remotely, beautiful campus and allowing dogs on campus. The knowledge: learning first hand Google's approaches and best practices The experience: having Google's name on your resume, building connections with others and working at one of the best and innovated companies

Cons

You do not get all the perks. For example, team off-sites. It does suck when your colleagues are raving about how they really bonded during the team's off-site, and you can't really relate. Sense of connecting is really important at a work place, and sense you are restricted from having that even if your work excels your peers can't fully scope it because the lack of connection. You don't get all the knowledge. You are blocked from participating in Grow classes that the rest of your team gets. If you want to compete you must go out of your way and pay for classes, that your team members (sometimes) get for free. They are constantly learning and growing with ease and accessibility. While you're juggling to keep up, while being financially stable in this ridiculously economy. You do learn from your colleagues. Well, the nice ones but (yes, even at Google) there are mean and very mean people. Even management is mean. Not everyone at Google is Googley (that's a fact). Especially, once they see your red badge. Once they see red it is like the respect is gone. Some do treat TVCs as though they are slaves whose knowledge is mediocre and opinions don't matter. From my experience thus far, Google consist of 15% genuinely nice, 20% nice, 35% mean, and 30% really mean people. Oh, and the majority of the 15% are TVCs. My experience: You work your butt off and are doing the same work as your full-time teammates for below market pay with very little to sometimes no recognition. Your opinions do not matter. They only bought you on to do the hard slave labor.

4.0
Oct 10, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Awesome people, hands down. Peers and colleagues. Some of the brightest people. Company policies on expenses, perks, family, pets, etc. - all outstanding.

Cons

Salary isn't the best on the market. Google knows it can pay less than it has to, because people want to work for it. Google has departments working on formulas meant to pay you as little as possible. Huge fight to get to the top - everyone is in a race. A culture of overachievers, which means you have to sacrifice personal and social life to move up the ranks. I've seen amazing rates of burnout among marketing. Too much. Also, middle management can be incompetent or too busy racing to the top to care about you. Everything is in formulas, and just doing a great job is not enough. You need to shop yourself and shout about your achievements as loud as you can in order to get promoted. Also, the commute from the city sucks. Oh, and the company's product strategy is a laughing stock. Google jumps on every shiny object. It's one thing to reinvent an industry, but to launch clones is just low. Google+ is shoved down everyone's throat. Google Offers was a Groupon clone. And nobody cares about the user, the company is totally evil. Decisions are made based on $$$, and not the user in mind. Don't be fooled.

Viewing 10 - 12 of 48,385 Reviews

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