Google reviews

Yet, for all the pros, I was relatively unproductive and dissatisfied.  One of the positive aspects of being a contractor is you can usually isolate yourself from office politics. But, one of the things I learnt about being a contractor at Google was that office politics takes up a big part of your day. From the perspective of a contractor at Google, a lot of contractors seem to spend a lot of their time trying to outdo, sabotage and stab fellow contractors in the back, in the hope of wining the coveted prize of becoming a full time Goggler. This seems to run counter intuitively to the Google culture. It seems you need to do a lot of “ungoogliness" to get anywhere - sometimes to even complete your work. The contractors who get ahead at Google these days, at least outside of Core Engineering, are those who are the best politicians. I left when I realised that these were skills that I didn't particularly want to develop, they just detracted me from the real work. Saying that, I feel proud that I was given the opportunity to work there. Maybe my expectations were too high.

The "brilliant people creating innovative things" represents the engineering culture more than anything. In People ops, theres Google is full of corporate politics, as well as a changing culture. Google recruiting is now full of people who push buttons. People that have been then longer than 5 years still struggle to get a promotion or move into a new role. They shuffle the same leaders to different roles, making no room for growth. Moved recruiting like 5 miles away from main campus.