Is Google still a cool place to work?

I'm a Xoogler. I joined in late 2016 and quit January 2021. In my opinion, the company didn't change much in absolute terms while I was there. It became more secretive, but overall the experience was similar in 2017 and 2020. It was generally good given the alternatives - no major complaints that don't apply to other software companies. Good work-life balance and good compensation. Many great people under-leveled (but generally no underpaid).

Was it cool? That depends on what you value and who you're trying to impress. I didn't think the work I did was very fulfilling. At Google many problems are already solved, and the ones that remain often seem like small incremental improvements. There's a ton of uninteresting work, just like anywhere else. The difference is that when something is interesting, there are a lot of very qualified Googlers who will flock to it because they're not really needed on what they're doing. So you rarely get opportunities to own something much bigger than you're qualified for. At a smaller company those things can drop in your lap.

A lot of coolness is about perception, and I can definitely say that recruiters think it's cool. When I was at Google I would get a couple of LinkedIn messages each day. The effect still seems to linger.

Present Googler. Been here 7 years. As with all these things, this depends largely on what you are looking for. This comment applies to engineering exclusivelyq. A good number of teams and products at Google are very mature with large teams working on them. This leads to slow growth and obviously less challenging work on one hand. On the other hand, if you would like an easy job with time to focus on personal priorities, it makes this possible. A good number of these teams also consist of engineers who have hit a certain level of growth equilibrium which prevents other junior and newer engineers from growing beyond a certain level. In fact, such engineers are labelled the "rest and vest" engineers.

However, with a company this large, this is not generalizable to absolutely all teams. There are smaller teams building new products and working on interesting and challenging things. In case you are interested in Google, my advice would be to look for the right team and ask a lot of direct questions to understand the team dynamics and the actual day to day work. It might also be worth considering non-Google Alphabet companies as they tend to have newer things to work on.

Current googler here - only for a few years, so I don't have years of comparison. My perception in general is that, as someone else has mentioned, the openness has been dialed back a lot. It used to be standard that basically anyone could read or look at almost anything aside from obviously sensitive information like revenue and earnings. Today, it can be annoying - things are default blocked off to particular product areas, which makes it harder when you work across those areas (e.g. I work on Workspace, which works a lot with Android, and I have to go ask to have documents opened up to me all the time because they're locked down to just Android - and the same thing happens the other direction).

I've also heard that in the past things were a lot more bottom up - teams advocating what they thought they should build up to leadership and getting approval, and while that still happens, there's more top-down than before.

I have very little experience with large companies, so I can't compare Google to FB or Microsoft or any of the other big tech companies. But I will say that what's cool about Google is (depending on your team) you can work on highly impactful and highly visible products, you see a lot of interesting technology, the people are generally extremely smart and capable, and the benefits and quality of life are great. Because it's a big company, things are very slow - planning cycles are long. Stuff that was a six week cycle at a startup are a six month cycle at Google, but I will say that when I was at a startup, I'd often get pulled into a meeting where someone says, "Oh, hey, for X we were building, we realized that it won't work for Y reason, so we have to either push out our timeline for a lot of time, or cut Z critical feature out of the launch". At Google, that's a lot rarer, because the planning up front tends to be comprehensive and carefully designed (it is not unheard of, but it is a lot less likely).

I'm not sure that it's an ideal place for junior folks to learn how to build software, just because Google is so unique and specific in how they do things - I suspect that a lot of people who start their careers at Google and then shift to your typical smaller software company get whiplash (I have no data to back this up, it's just a gut feeling). But for people who already have a grounding in other companies or are further along in their career, I think it's a really interesting place to work at a different scope than is typically available at a smaller company.

- Google is a monoculture. It is just boring. - Promotions are hard and work is boring. - A lot of time is spent on red tape.

- Perks are excellent. While I despise the work that is the only thing keeping me here.

Xoogler, current facebooker. Reach out: tehlike@gmail.com

Edit: Not sure why I got negative votes. Having this discussion on HN is not effective. I am fairly unbiased, but i need to know what kind of person he is, what kind of work he is willing to do, and might also offer career advice.

Not sure about this anymore. You dont seem to get interviews at google anymore if you apply directly via the website. Much like the support policy for their "products," you need to know someone within, be aligned politically from your past with the person and only then get a call. In short, Google has become good at hiring cliques.

I used to work at both Google and Facebook and I still know a lot of people at both those places. My take on working at these large companies is, your experience will be massively different depending on what project you work on and what team you work with. Both companies have both brilliant engineers and mediocre engineers. The % of brilliant is higher than most workplaces, but there’s no guarantee. You have to actively seek out the work and the teammates that you click with.

I've been at Google for 4 years now.

The opportunity for growth, colleagues, support, tooling, pay and perks are far beyond what I've had in other jobs.

There's a bit of a monoculture here though.

For a place that prides on hiring people from all backgrounds for coding roles, it sure does a helluva job asking leetcode all the time.

The bulk of folks with myriad backgrounds would be in higher positions & most likely brought in by acquisitions or recommendations, but not from the typical interview cycle.

At a 100,000+ company it would be impossible to generalize

Did you watch Silicon Valley? What do you think about sitting on the roof with a Slurpee (or a Big Gulp)? Would you rather be building stuff?

Would I try get a job in Google if it was the same salary as my current job and the interview was 'normal'? Yes.

Would I try get a job there if the salary was the same, or even more, than my current job but the interview process is how it is? Nope.

Serious question to current Googlers: what is the diversity and inclusion sitatuon like in your department?

It is understood that Google is a large enterprise, and by no means a business unit represents the entire company culture. But it would be enlightening to hear what individuals views.

Googler here.

It really depends on what you want to do, and where you want to do it.

define "work"

Not a xoogler, but know lots.

You may be happy there if you like breaking things for no apparent reason that used to work.

I was talking with some people from Facebook about whether Facebook was too evil to work at. They said Facebook only wishes it could ever someday be as evil as Google. Nowadays even Microsoft wishes that. Not sure where Apple fits: they have a lock on contempt for users, but do they hate everyone else equally?