Google reviews

Google is the most toxic place that I have ever worked. Everyone is obsessed with levels. Yet, levels are largely determined by personal connections and stereotypes. I found out after I started that some employees had spent years researching the hiring system to game it. My coworkers were all significantly less qualified than my peers at prior jobs. My recruiter did not understand anything on my resume and pointed out that it was very different than all the resumes that she saw from entry level men. She assumed that meant that I was less qualified than them and never considered that I was far more qualified. She kept saying things that were horrifically sexist. She attempted to route me towards a non-technical position even after I had passed the interview and gotten approval from the hiring committee. The hiring processes are set up such that the recruiters determine someone's level and the interviewers and hiring committee cannot fix a mistake no matter how glaring. This results in some employees being underleveled. Most experienced women are underleveled by at least one level, but some are underleveled by multiple levels. Other employees are overleveled. This results in an entirely toxic culture. The underleveled employees are wondering what's wrong with them that their entire careers suddenly evaporated. The overleveled employees are extremely insecure and resort to bullying the underleveled employees (mostly women and people of color) because they know that they're less qualified than the underleveled employees. Even the managers who recognize what's happening are unable to fix the problems because HR is more concerned with covering up the problem. As a result, underleveled employees are being given work far below their competence level (because HR won't allow them to get higher level work) and told that they have to prove themselves again.su

Prior to Google, I have had a long and proud engineering career. Passed the notorious Google interview and got the offer at T6 like a breeze. Was hired to rescue a big broken software component, without any a-priori awareness. (was never told so, before and after joining). Was promised to have 6 months of learning (like all Nooglers do, regardless of level), but by 9 months, despite tons of good work already went in with measurable improvements, was already criticized by the manager, f2f, word exactly: "do you feel it a shame that xxx is still broken?". Manager was a nerdy, self-eccentric, and ruthless "genius". Here is his favorite behaveour: in private conversations he says: " you are the TL, you should have a vision, should be the role model, and should lead the team". In the public, however, he does everything he can to knock you down as a TL! He would refute the comments you post on junior team member's code view, for very insignificant reasons. He would criticize & question your own code change in all the ways he can, making it stay in review for 2-months, without any significant functional changes (Yes it was working from day 1). Yet, he comes back to criticize hard your code velociy, citing the 2-month code review as a critical evidence! He assigns some one from a remote location to work on this component, without even notifying you! You see old teammates who worked on this component for many years leaving the group. Finally, you see your manager himself also leaving the company.