Pros
The caliber of the talent (largely, and particularly on the tech side) is good and people are often well intentioned, if not underresourced.
Cons
Since 2018, Google has had tremendous cultural change starting with the women's walkout that October after people found out a senior leader was paid $90M to exit the company after verified sexual harassment allegations. In 2019, Google did away with meaningful TGIF discussions and no longer invests in open dialogue with employees. At the end of that year, the "Thanksgiving Four" were fired for alleged violations of company policies but their managers were similarly surprised that there were violations because they weren't notified until after the fact. Numerous women and people of color have been fired since then, each leading to further layers of mistrust. There are constant reorgs. Strategy pivots come with each leadership change. There is no loyalty anymore and extensive external hiring, leading to no internal development. People are told to act like an owner, but are rewarded for delegation and so often toss problems over the wall. If you try to solve a problem, there is often a central team working on something similar and so, you're told to stop. However, the central team may or may not ever launch what they're working on because the leadership and vision will change and there are many layers of legal approval for anything. Employee concerns are not taken seriously by HR or Employee Relations, and are not investigated meaningfully or in a timely manner. In the name of "confidentiality," victims continue to experience challenging and harmful working conditions. HR is not empowered to be effective though anyway, and the HR tools are non existent, with even talent planning done in Google Sheets v. a centralized sustainable tool. There is no psychological safety, no work life balance, and no recognition for anything other than playing politics.
