Google reviews

Amazingly smart people doing amazing mundane work with limited impact and contribution whilst being fattened up to potentially waste away a great career. Highly competitive atmosphere whereby much of the time creativity is sacrificed. Paraphrasing Page, "We don't need people who can think of new and cool ideas. We have that already. What we need is people who can execute on the ideas we already have." Somehow the hiring process, great as it may be, ends up selecting for a disproportionate number of extremely egotistical a**holes. Low empathy Engineers that border on inhuman "android" like beings not too unfamiliar to those found in a Philip Dick novel where it is asked if they dream of electric sheep. Some do, most do not. But they do dream of self driving, all electric, BMW's. Restricted Areas: not all Google employees are treated equally around campus anymore and access is limited based on what you do for the company and what group you work in. The culture is changing (see Restricted Areas): Google has hired roughly 8-10K people per year for the past ~4 years. I can't think of a company that has a better culture to hold on to but, from what I have seen, they are loosing the battle. Most managers and high potential employees look like they just stepped off the set of 90210.

Career opportunities are in Mountain View and New York offices only. The Old School cheery Googlers have been replaced with the MBA sharks looking for a feather in their career cap, so come with your Excel and Powerpoint data in hand if you want to succeed. The customer-service came second only to internal posturing which happens with any desirable place to work. It's unfortunate, but when you answer to shareholders, the almighty dollar is all that matters. Google gives you free lunch and a laptop to keep you on the hook - the job hook. When you mature to having a family and need that work-life balance, Google isn't the place to be.