Google reviews

Company is getting more bureaucratic. While many engineers are super solid, some managers are only good at suck-up or manage-up, they indulge at meetings to show their influence but unable to really be a model and lead by examples. Some senior engineers are leaving as the freedom to work on innovative project is diminishing. more and more new graduate or junior engineers are hired. While politics are still relative small compare to similar size company, they are certainly growing. managers "promote" lots of tech lead to manage projects regardless whether they are really technically strong. peer-review process is partially broken as manager's feedback is the one that really matters. project transfer process is heavy and become very dis-encouraging.

Since 2018, Google has had tremendous cultural change starting with the women's walkout that October after people found out a senior leader was paid $90M to exit the company after verified sexual harassment allegations. In 2019, Google did away with meaningful TGIF discussions and no longer invests in open dialogue with employees. At the end of that year, the "Thanksgiving Four" were fired for alleged violations of company policies but their managers were similarly surprised that there were violations because they weren't notified until after the fact. Numerous women and people of color have been fired since then, each leading to further layers of mistrust. There are constant reorgs. Strategy pivots come with each leadership change. There is no loyalty anymore and extensive external hiring, leading to no internal development. People are told to act like an owner, but are rewarded for delegation and so often toss problems over the wall. If you try to solve a problem, there is often a central team working on something similar and so, you're told to stop. However, the central team may or may not ever launch what they're working on because the leadership and vision will change and there are many layers of legal approval for anything. Employee concerns are not taken seriously by HR or Employee Relations, and are not investigated meaningfully or in a timely manner. In the name of "confidentiality," victims continue to experience challenging and harmful working conditions. HR is not empowered to be effective though anyway, and the HR tools are non existent, with even talent planning done in Google Sheets v. a centralized sustainable tool. There is no psychological safety, no work life balance, and no recognition for anything other than playing politics.