Despite public perception, they don't care about you at the end of the day
Pros
- A lot of great perks (unlimited sick days, in-office cafeteria, stipends for wellness / travel / etc.) and great compensation. - Some of the most brilliant people I had the pleasure to work with here, specifically my direct team and managers. - The "prestige" of having Google on your resume
Cons
- Many times, I felt like "a cog in the machine", with very little opportunity to make significant impact. - Good luck navigating all of the established workflows and practices at the company; coming from a startup, this was quite difficult, especially when remote. - Google likes to pretend it's different from other companies, but they suffer the same fate: lack of transparency, many reorgs with little to no proper reasoning, having a small group of executives make decisions for the majority of the company to appease shareholders. As part of the mass layoff, I realized we had no say in choosing to leave or not, despite having glowing performance reviews for years. Why should one go the extra mile for Google when they'll drop you at a moment's notice?