I have a dozen+ friends who work at Google(Engineering). Most of them are very happy with their jobs. As with any large company,the key to happiness is getting

I have a dozen+ friends who work at Google(Engineering). Most of them are very happy with their jobs. As with any large company,the key to happiness is getting to work with the right team on the right problem. . The other factor here is that the specific projects you want to work on might be concentrated in (say) Mountain View and you want to live in Bangalore (or wherever)in which case (unless you are a superstar) you are out of luck. The best way to get hired (again from what my friends tell me) is to be actively sought after by a specific team for your specific expertise. Else you end up wanting to work on Search Quality and/or self driving cars, and end up fixing bugs in Gmail (nothing wrong with that if that is what you want to do. In any case, having a Googler submit your CV to HR is much better than a blind application/recruiter driven application. The good news is that they are now so large, that most tech people know someone who works for them.