Google reviews

They spoil us. I'm glad I worked elsewhere between college and Google, otherwise I might not realize how great of a place this is to work. I'm on-call for several services for about 48 hours each month, though the pager is relatively calm. Google admittedly makes mistakes in hiring, often turning away good candidates if there's any doubt; as a result, many smart people are bitter about Google because they get turned down--but I encourage them to try again in a year or so. And if you wear Google-branded apparel in public, sometimes weirdos stop you and ask lots of bizarre questions about what it's like to work there.

Google is fighting the 'law of large companies', and is doing pretty well but there's a certain inevitability afoot too: Over the four years I've been there, I've noticed scaling back of perks (and also at times a sickening culture of employee entitlement), a steady rise of red tape to run a scalable service in the production environment, a certain amount of stiff corporate speak and a uptightness over branding, image, and in some cases (though definitely not all) an aversion to risk taking has to some extent dampened my enthusiasm a little bit. Still an amazing place to be though.