Inside Your Workplace
Reviews for Google Inc. - Los Angeles,CA
Google - Not Always as Nice as It Seems - "The Other Side of Evil"
[ For Google Inc. ] Posted March 8th, 2008 by jazzcat [Staffing] in
Work Culture:
Positives were: laid back cultural feel, lots of social events, great FREE food/snacks (in Mtn View office), culture of work hard/play hard, generally nice, friendly people (in HR and other departments), huge egos among the engineers were a downside.
Position Title:
Staffing
Salary Benefits:
Salary and benefits meet industry standards. Rock stars are rewarded handsomely. Stock allocations have dwindled substantially since the IPO and are not the goldmine they once were.
Job Security:
Job Security used to be much better than what it is now. Recruiting contracts have been shortened from 1 yr to 9 months and far fewer conversions to FTE are happening. For most existing Googlers firings are rare unless you're blatantly underperforming, but future layoffs couldon the horizon as Google's stock continues to tank.
Career Growth:
Google has a thin layer and few levels of management so it is very difficult to have a career path of upward mobility there. This is even more magnified in remote offices. It is better suited for an engineer who wants to be an individual contributor and team player.
Manager:
Had a moody, emotionally unstable and volatile manager who was unprofessional and the king of office politics.
Overall Comments:
Google is a great place if you want to benefit from all the perks and the great company culture. If gaining 15-30 lbs from all the free food/snacks is your goal this is place to be. Of course if you work in Mtn View you can work off the calories at the company gym. Workwise, if you're an engineer or product manager it will probably be rewarding and you'll learn a lot. There can be significant frustrations with the bureacracy/process that exists at Google, but at least you get a sense of organization and not controlled chaos. A lot of the engineers are very high maintenance and have huge egos sometimes to the point of being arrogant and condescending. It is difficult to hire people there because the standards for prospective engineers are exceedingly high. This is why so many Googlers feel excessively proud to be "in the club," have a lot of loyalty and rarely leave (there is very low turnover). What I discovered is that the standard for recruiters who get hired as FTEs or converted from contractor to FTE is low. Many of the recruiters don't have college degrees or have degrees from unimpressive, less prestigious, lower-tiered schools. It is almost as though Staffing Management feels threatened by recruiters with brains who actually produce and don't engage in "rectal smooching". The "B" players in management tend to hire "C" players. For the most part people at Google are pretty cool, but like every company there are some very rotten apples. Just hope that one of these apples doesn't end up being your boss.