Pros
It's a very convenient place to work-- not only are the on-site perks helpful, but employees have plenty of opportunities to learn. Unlike many companies, where employee productivity is dependent already having a certain set of skills needed to get the job done, Google encourages (if not expected) employees to spend a majority of their time doing things they don't currently know how to do. In effect, you are getting paid to learn new skills, and due to the "act now, think later" Google mindset, it's generally okay to make mistakes as you learn. World-renowned industry experts regularly lecture at Google, giving the campus an even stronger college-like feel. And in terms of the perks, it's surprisingly nice to not have to think about packing a lunch, to be able to borrow a free car to run an errand, and to wash your stinky gym clothes after working out your frustrations in the weight room.
Cons
The base salary and lack of promotion opportunities really start to wear down employee morale after the first few years. Unfortunately, there's too many glassy-eyed Google cultists/lifers who are willing to overwork themselves for a 35% (or more) paycut on projects that may not actually go anywhere. Despite claiming to seek openness, management keeps a lot of secrets-- especially around performance reviews (all employees are graded and rank-ordered, but employees don't get to know how well they fared). In terms of actual productive work, employees are demoralized by having direction constantly changed. I suppose this is known as "keeping us on our toes." Further, it's tiring to hear every team say that they're acting as their own startup within Google, and that team members are going to be hand-picked to be involved in such a prestigious project. It's not uncommon for entire teams to be uprooted or replaced in one fell swoop. Put together, this leads to an uneasy feeling about one's job stability. One final problem: too many Googlers are young, inexperienced, and short-sighted in their understanding of how much power they actually have in developing public-facing products. They don't understand the implications of their actions, and move too quickly to consider them.
