Google reviews

It can be tiring working in a massive organisation, constantly checking in with other product areas, trying to get alignment. Sometimes it's easier to stick your head in the sand and get stuff done. Working in a remote office is frustrating as projects are constantly shifted back to HQ or deprioritised every 1-2 years, and almost all the senior people are in Mountain View so your impact is less visible unless you travel a lot. It's hard not being in control of your own destiny. If you are ambitious, you should move to Mountain View. I have been with the company for a long time and the culture is changing, it used to be full of very intelligent people who are all nice and try to do what is right, but now the nice part is going away. The culture is slowly eroding. I have been in a team with a bad fit and it's hard to move (there is less sideways mobility in remote offices) and the company as a whole has lots more politics.

A lot of lip-service to work-life balance, but in practice the way performance is gauged (along with short-staffed teams) causes people to put in long hours and be available even late at night. People leave/switch teams after just 1 year of tenure, teams and management are still stuck on their way to do things from before Google acquired them. This causes unhealthy practices (which are supposedly absent from larger Google) like stack-ranking to still be used. The compensation is not that good, considering that they'll try to hire you at a lower level compared to your prior experience. Some of the perks are also weakened or made useless: attending external conferences can be expensed only for 1/3rd of the cost of the ticket, or 2/3rd of cost of the ticket only if approved by the manager (which in my experience is never granted, unlike what happens with Google's competitors), otherwise you'll also have to use your days off to be able to attend the conference (putting some severe disincentives for you to attend). It's sad to realise that Google does so little for their Engineers' professional development.