7 ms·

Was Google really a beloved employer? I feel like that was vapor marketing hype most real people saw through as bs, you'd pretty much see constant stories of ov

Was Google really a beloved employer? I feel like that was vapor marketing hype most real people saw through as bs, you'd pretty much see constant stories of overwork and toxic teams run by incompetent "project managers" just like every other overvalued Silicon Valley FAANG shop

rootusrootus 4y ago
With enough total comp you can be my Beloved Employer.
dack 4y ago
it was definitely a great place to work in it's heyday 10+ years ago, as I believe most of the FAANG companies were. It was so nice back in the day having companies you knew would be great if you could just get into them. Are there any companies like that these days?
- nradov 4y ago
  If that's what you want then you can always start one. Edit: it's interesting that this comment is being down voted on a site run by a VC firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs found their own companies. If you don't like working for Google or some other big company then start your own any you'll have complete freedom to set your own policies.
- eschneider 4y ago
  There are _definitely_ great companies out there, depending on what makes a place great FOR YOU. Working on great products with smart people? Yeah, there are places out there like that, and not always in the 'obvious' places. Great compensation? Yeah, there are places/industries that still offer that. Getting everything combined with one employer? That's more of a unicorn problem and you might have to compromise on something.
  - nebula8804 4y ago
    Can you name some? It always seems like some sort of open secret until its too late. There was some discussion about Oxide Computers being one of these companies.
    - eschneider 4y ago
      I've been working mostly with embedded/IoT/backendCloud stuff lately, with a focus on embedded/IoT stuff and having spend about a month this year interviewing, the quality of companies and projects out there vary VASTLY. I ended up joining a manufacturing company that's adding some specialized robotics...stuff to their product line. Cool stuff and in a product domain I know a lot about. Great people, too. I heard about these guys because my former boss worked with them all before their start up got acquired by the MfgCo a while back. Definitely not the folks you'd peg for doing quality tech work, but they are. Compensation wasn't the best offer I landed, but it's good enough and I feel like I'm working with adults who know what they're doing and that's worth a lot to me.
- ahsteele 4y ago
  Yes I would say that working in the United States at a Federally Funded Research and Design Center https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/ https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/ are great companies if only you can get into them.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    Also as long as you don't mind below market rates and job security tied to federal budget allocations. Or your paycheck disappearing for an unknown period of time whenever there's divided government.
kneebonian 4y ago
No, that wasn't always the case, it's the same thing that happenned with MS. Back in the late oughts and early 2010's Google was a fantastic place to work based on the reports I've heard, that was considered work nirvana. They were the ones who introduced things like catered lunchs, and a lot of other amenities that many people consider now standard fare in many tech shops. Based on what I heard it was a wonderful time, you got to spend all day working on interesting problems, with super smart people that were at the peak of their field, money was coming in hand over fist, and the people running the show had an understanding of engineering. The problem is that success attracts leeches, you start getting lots of MBA types, PMs, bean counters, etc. Then things went downhill. But it wasn't always this way, it just so happens that once you become successful enough you will attract people that aren't interested in what you do, but in getting a piece of that pie, and those people and that thinking and mindset will ruin any organization. P.S. It's an interesting line to draw between being overworked by a boss that is forcing you to spend 60 hours a week chained to a desk, and loving what you do so much that you are happy to spend 60 hours a week on it, just because you derive that much satisfaction from it.
- candiodari 4y ago
  But now the company has shown that it will use layoffs. So now Google is threatening the livelihoods of it's employees. So most everyone is a leech now. Not because they want to or it's in their character, it's just something that will at least give you some basic safety.
tempsy 4y ago
never heard of Google being a place people were "overworked" at all, not compared to Amazon, at least, or as hyper-competitive as Netflix.
mingus88 4y ago
Before the doubleclick merger, Google was absolutely the ideal place to work as an engineer. I feel that perhaps after 2007 a lot of Google's reputation was still held up by what the culture was like in the years surrounding their IPO. But of course, this is ancient tech history. I haven't entertained a Google recruiter in probably a decade now.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I wasn't there in 2007, didn't get there til 2011, but looking at the facts think 2007/2008 era it seems like a juncture from one Google to the next, for sure. The other, really major, shift -- which happened while I was there -- was Patrick Pichette leaving as CFO and Ruth Porat coming on. And then the subsequent "Alphabetization" which... it was so bungled and mismanaged... and it was clear at that point L&S were clueless about what was actually going on inside the company... that to me was when the company had seriously dramatically shifted in tone and structure. I think that was .. what... 2015? Sundar taking over was just the formalization of that degradation. For me, personally I wish I'd only stayed there for 4-5 years, and left around then. But before remote work there weren't any competitive options in my region, so I got stuck there for 10 years.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    (I was there 2009-2014 and again 2020-present. Worked with several single/double-digit employee number Googlers.) IMHO the "eras" of Google were: 1.) 1998-2001. Origins. Larry was CEO, company was still basically in the garage or the PayPal offices in Palo Alto, everything was an ad-hoc scrappy startup. 2.) 2001-2004. Growth. Eric was CEO. They moved into the Googleplex. Exploring new lines of business (Groups, AdSense, GMail, Maps/Earth), but they were all just explorations, and most of the company remained focused on Search. Key infrastructure like GFS, MapReduce, BigTable, Stubby, Sawzall were invented. 3.) 2004-2008. Conglomeration. Eric was CEO. IPO. Big college-hiring push started in this era (remember the Google Labs Aptitude Test?), as did a push to hire outside managers from other companies. GMail, Maps, Labs, Scholar, Toolbar, Chrome, Android all launched, and Docs/Sheets/Slides/YouTube were acquired. This is when the modern Google product portfolio was built, and much of its current culture and processes solidified. 4.) 2009-2010. Interregnum. Eric was CEO. Financial crisis happened here, which basically shut down growth, and it also faced serious competitive threats from Bing, iPhones, etc. As a result the culture during the interregnum almost harkened back to the 2001-2004 era: there was a refocusing on core search/ads/infrastructure and a generally scrappier mentality. 5.) 2011-2015. Google+ & X. Larry was CEO again, company shifted to make everything about G+. There was an overall futile attempt to address a major competitive threat that turned out not to matter anyway. 6.) 2015-2020. Alphabetization. Sundar was CEO, but Ruth came in as CFO and realistically runs the company. Finance plays a much bigger role - I don't think Google's produced a single successful new product post-2015 (come to think of it, there weren't many new successes post-2009), but revenue has grown through continued optimization and profits have grown through cost-cutting. 7.) 2020+. Post-COVID. Culture was hurt significantly by remote work, it's very hard to realign the company to adapt to outside changes. The irony is that what many Googlers nostalgically think of "Google culture" actually came from the 2004-2008 era, when Eric was CEO and many of the new hires either came from college or outside companies. If you listen to pre-IPO hires, they'll say that very early Google culture was a lot scrappier, a lot less entitled, a lot more opinionated, a lot more willing to take top-down direction from Larry specifically, and a lot more focused on the work itself and how to deliver excellent technical solutions quickly.
aix1 4y ago
Overwork? Toxic teams? Project managers running teams? I've been at Google for a very long time, in quite a few orgs, and none of those things ring any bells. (Some probably exist in some pockets, though the last one sounds particularly implausible. It's just not how Google job ladders and the management structure work.) Now, I have to admit to having not read the article, but the headline does resonate. I've spoken to a lot of current Googlers about this, and their attitude towards the company has definitely changed rather dramatically, almost overnight. People in non-US jurisdictions are feeling this particularly acutely, due to how the layoffs have been playing out for them.
- Shish2k 4y ago
  I’ve been at Meta for a few years and would say similar - I’m pretty sure that at any company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, you are going to get some horror stories - but in general it used to be an amazing place to work (ranked #1 on glassdoor for several years for good reason), but now… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - sawyna 4y ago
    I currently work at Google and my take is that it really depends on the team. If an IC is toxic, the effect of it isn't terrible. If a manager is, the effect spreads and if a manager of managers is toxic, that's a recipe for disaster and so on. I personally am in a situation where nasty politics are being played out just for the sake of getting promoted. It's fine to focus on your promo, but not at the cost of your colleagues or the environment. That being said, the broader google ecosystem and culture holds on a macro level. It really is the people that work there who define and uphold it. A couple of rogue high level folks are enough to destroy it.
- super256 4y ago
  > Overwork? I don't know anyone working at Google, nor anyone who worked at Google in the past (except a single intern). Hell, I don't even live anywhere near a Google campus! But I always assumed that Google wants you to spend your whole day there, from morning until evening. Because big tech is usually implicitly aiming at that. - Serve three major meals a day, + you can bring your dog to your office, which eliminates any reason to go home (especially for those who don't have a house or spouse to take care of). - Shuttle bus, where many employees have like, idk, 40min of free time? Why not just start working on the laptop already? - Food servings are stretched out. Breakfast is till 10AM; dinner is served at 6:30PM, so if you started at 8:30AM, you need to stay another 1.5h to make use of dinner. Why not work in the meantime? And some classical fear stuff which makes you want to work hard and long hours: - Aggressive deadlines - Get the promotion in 2 years or get fired I dunno, I probably wouldn't mind working under these conditions, but I think there are reasons why the average tenure of a Googler is 1.5 years.
pwinnski 4y ago
At Google, developers were the product, not overhead. As such, they were supported lavishly, with meals and massages, at a level not previously seen, at least not in career available to people who weren't fifth-generation Ivy grads. And the pay, total comp is still trumpeted here at HN as among the highest around. Sure, a lot of people saw those perks as being aimed a particular demographic: young people without attachments who were willing to spend nearly 168 hours each week on site. And a lot of us saw the selection of perks as those most likely to attract that demographic. But people who joined Google didn't often leave for reasons related to Google, and I'm not sure there's a better way to describe that than "beloved." Low turnover tells the story.
- cromwellian 4y ago
  Yup. I was at Google for over a decade, I should have left years ago for a startup, I had offers, but I loved what I did, I loved my fellow coworkers, and I was well compensated. There was little reason to leave, and a lot of reasons to stay.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Have you left?
    - cromwellian 4y ago
      Laid off, and from the one division I thought would be less subject to layoffs: AI. (I thought Ads would be well insulated too, but I know a lot of Ads folks who were let go). But I'm not that broken up about it, because I feel like tech is getting exciting again, almost like the 90s, when everyday, some new amazing thing comes out. Last week in AI for example, super exciting. There's a lot of opportunity now to build cool stuff in this emerging ecosystem, it's totally unknown space, and what's going to exist 5 yrs from now is going to be as crazy as all of the companies that now exist because of smartphones, or the invention of the browser. I think Google (and OpenAI) might be the best places for AI research, but I'm not sure Google is the best place for applied-research at the application level. I think the startup ecosystem is going to explore that space way more rapidly, and it'll be fun to play in that space.
cromwellian 4y ago
As someone who worked at Google for 15 yrs, who also worked at Oracle and IBM, I can confidently say that Google was the least toxic, least overworked place I've ever been. That's not to say there aren't management problems, especially around the erratic way they launch new projects and kill others with no real rhyme or reason, but working environment was never one of the complaints. At IBM and Oracle, I'd regularly be in meetings with shouting matches. People were tear down others. There was excessive territorialism. Googley culture, although it changed over time, did promote cooperation and constructive criticism. Post-Mortems emphasized what went wrong and what could be done better, not who went wrong. Other teams were often, if not always, eager to partner or share their work. Work location flexibility, the cafes, all of it was very good. Now, I did perceive a cultural decline, I think it was sometime around the launch of Google Hangouts, I started sensing a more bean-counting approach, I think because the Seattle office brought in a bunch of MS managers in too short a period of time for them to absorb Googley culture. At one point, the initial launch of Hangouts didn't have presence indicators, and when employees brought it up, one response was "You are not the audience". As if presence indicators are something only elite engineers want, and not regular folks. This was totally antithetical to way products like Gmail were built, out of personal desire and need. I didn't work in Cloud, but I suspect Thomas Kurian brought a more Oracle "Sales Engineer" driven approach, and that too can change culture. Might be bad for culture, but good for external customers. One of the issues over the years that I feel an acute sense of now that I'm looking for a job again, is that Google invented a lot of technology early internally, from Borg to Map/Reduce/etc. Eventually, the outside world cloned these, and when they became on-par and standardized, at that point I really think Google should have switched their internal stack to the OSS equivalents. For example, Google still builds products on the internal Borg system, rather than using GCP/Kubernetes/Terraform/etc. If GCP/Kube is missing functionality to run say, Maps or Gmail, then perfect, that indicates a good driver for improving the external facing product. Working on some of Google's tech stack feels like an alien world compared to working on stuff outside. In ML at least, there's synergy, as Tensorflow and JAX are used internally and externally. But in terms of major systems, there needs to be a lot more of this. Blaze was opened as Bazel way too late for example, should have been done years ago.
- dekhn 4y ago
drewg123 4y ago
I was there 2013->2015. It was not viewed as "beloved" in my eyes; more like a benevolent, paternalistic overlord. There were certainly negatives. It was nearly impossible to concentrate at work, due to being in a large open space with many teams, and they would not let me be full-time remote (even as an L6 "staff" SWE), crowded bathrooms, crowded cafes, etc. However, they put a lot of effort into the endless perks, and the feeling of job security. It really felt like they cared about you, and your career development. I was shocked by the layoffs. My old group's PM, who was fantastic (and well connected) was let go in the purge.
- cromwellian 4y ago
  If you remember, there was the great "de-frag" at one point, where they wanted to reduce # of satellite offices, and tried to move everyone into a few big HQ, this resulted in overcrowding, and one aspect of that was "no remote work". (post-pandemic, this sounds bizarre now). The closing of some of the satellite offices resulted in some of the first shocking "layoffs", for example, the Google Atlanta office was shuttered, most of the former couldn't move, and so left for other companies. (technically not a layoff, but if you can't relocate, it's basically the same) :(
  - drewg123 4y ago
    The defrag was a year or two before I joined, as I recall. The remote work policy seemed to go by org. I worked in platforms, and our VP was old-school, adamantly opposed to remote work. He'd proudly walk around the office, surveying his domain. He was rather like a proctor in an exam. Meanwhile, I worked closely with several folks in the kernel team who were allowed to work remotely. One of them was very interested in what we were doing, was a luminary in his field, and wanted to transfer to our group, but worked remotely, and didn't want to give that up. Similarly, I left for Netflix because they allowed remote work in the Open Connect kernel group.
yibg 4y ago
For a while now Google has been seen as the place you go to coast, at least if you're not gunning for promotions.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
linguae 4y ago
(Disclaimer: I was a software engineering intern at Google during the summers of 2013 and 2014.) In the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, Google felt like the dream place to work. Yes, a lot has been said about the perks and the generous pay, but another thing that made Google appealing was its cutting edge projects. I was a huge fan of Google Inbox (sadly long discontinued). As a graduate student researching storage systems and who enjoyed reading the MapReduce, BigTable, and Spanner papers, being able to work on Spanner as an intern was a dream come true. I also loved all of the internal support I received as a developer, from the amazing internal infrastructure to the various internal tutorials. I never felt siloed off from the rest of the company, compared to other employers I've had. It was an amazing place to work and I'd rank it as my second-best work experience (my best being eight months I spent at Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki, Japan where I worked in a storage lab on an SSD cache....that was a downright magical experience), though granted as an intern I was shielded from the performance review process and on-calls, so I can't comment about these things. I would love to work for a team similar to the teams I worked on during my internships at Google, as well as the general feeling of 2013-14 Google. However, I'm under the impression that Google's culture started changing a lot during the Alphabet reorganization and the rise of Sundar Pichai as CEO. I don't know if there's a place in the Valley these days that captures the feel of pre-Alphabet Google; it seems to me that the Valley itself has changed a lot (and for the worse) since roughly 2015, but that's another discussion for another time.
- Yoric 4y ago
  If you find such a place, don't hesitate to spread the word :)
jimjimjim 4y ago
As a viewpoint from outside of the fang(whatever), I've always felt (and heard) that google was the best of the bunch in terms of employee opinion of the organization.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
As a Googler for 10 years, I'd say -- on the whole, yes, well loved. But steadily worsening over that 10 year period. And, no, most people I knew were not overworked. Not at my site, anyways. And certainly not compared to what I saw from people I knew at Apple or Amazon. I had my beefs with the place always, and I was like a square peg round hole there -- BUT ... Not even talking about the pay -- above average -- benefits were amazing. Culture when I started was very engineering driven. Mostly a very respectful professional environment apart from one asshole TL I had to deal with, but I was able to route around him after a few months. Good mix of age ranges and not biased against middle aged or older like many other workplaces in our industry. I didn't like the work / projects I had to do there. I didn't like the promo process. I didn't like the way projects were managed. But I liked the company ethic overall (obviously I always had issues) -- but it degraded every year I was there. But not because of overwork etc but because of bureaucratic dysfunction and ethical lapses.
zaphar 4y ago
I was there roughly about a decade ago. At that time Google was a fantastic place to work. I didn't have toxic teams nor was I asked to overwork. I left the office at 5pm nearly every day. Google at least in the Chicago office deserved it's reputation as the best place to work in tech. I still know people there and talking to them it does seem like there was a dramatic shift over the last 5+ years or so. I don't think it can claim the same culture that it had when I was there.

rootusrootus 4y ago

With enough total comp you can be my Beloved Employer.

dack 4y ago

it was definitely a great place to work in it's heyday 10+ years ago, as I believe most of the FAANG companies were. It was so nice back in the day having companies you knew would be great if you could just get into them. Are there any companies like that these days?

nradov 4y ago
If that's what you want then you can always start one. Edit: it's interesting that this comment is being down voted on a site run by a VC firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs found their own companies. If you don't like working for Google or some other big company then start your own any you'll have complete freedom to set your own policies.
eschneider 4y ago
There are _definitely_ great companies out there, depending on what makes a place great FOR YOU. Working on great products with smart people? Yeah, there are places out there like that, and not always in the 'obvious' places. Great compensation? Yeah, there are places/industries that still offer that. Getting everything combined with one employer? That's more of a unicorn problem and you might have to compromise on something.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  Can you name some? It always seems like some sort of open secret until its too late. There was some discussion about Oxide Computers being one of these companies.
  - eschneider 4y ago
    I've been working mostly with embedded/IoT/backendCloud stuff lately, with a focus on embedded/IoT stuff and having spend about a month this year interviewing, the quality of companies and projects out there vary VASTLY. I ended up joining a manufacturing company that's adding some specialized robotics...stuff to their product line. Cool stuff and in a product domain I know a lot about. Great people, too. I heard about these guys because my former boss worked with them all before their start up got acquired by the MfgCo a while back. Definitely not the folks you'd peg for doing quality tech work, but they are. Compensation wasn't the best offer I landed, but it's good enough and I feel like I'm working with adults who know what they're doing and that's worth a lot to me.
ahsteele 4y ago
Yes I would say that working in the United States at a Federally Funded Research and Design Center https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/ https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/ are great companies if only you can get into them.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Also as long as you don't mind below market rates and job security tied to federal budget allocations. Or your paycheck disappearing for an unknown period of time whenever there's divided government.

kneebonian 4y ago

No, that wasn't always the case, it's the same thing that happenned with MS. Back in the late oughts and early 2010's Google was a fantastic place to work based on the reports I've heard, that was considered work nirvana. They were the ones who introduced things like catered lunchs, and a lot of other amenities that many people consider now standard fare in many tech shops. Based on what I heard it was a wonderful time, you got to spend all day working on interesting problems, with super smart people that were at the peak of their field, money was coming in hand over fist, and the people running the show had an understanding of engineering. The problem is that success attracts leeches, you start getting lots of MBA types, PMs, bean counters, etc. Then things went downhill. But it wasn't always this way, it just so happens that once you become successful enough you will attract people that aren't interested in what you do, but in getting a piece of that pie, and those people and that thinking and mindset will ruin any organization. P.S. It's an interesting line to draw between being overworked by a boss that is forcing you to spend 60 hours a week chained to a desk, and loving what you do so much that you are happy to spend 60 hours a week on it, just because you derive that much satisfaction from it.

candiodari 4y ago
But now the company has shown that it will use layoffs. So now Google is threatening the livelihoods of it's employees. So most everyone is a leech now. Not because they want to or it's in their character, it's just something that will at least give you some basic safety.

tempsy 4y ago

never heard of Google being a place people were "overworked" at all, not compared to Amazon, at least, or as hyper-competitive as Netflix.

mingus88 4y ago

Before the doubleclick merger, Google was absolutely the ideal place to work as an engineer. I feel that perhaps after 2007 a lot of Google's reputation was still held up by what the culture was like in the years surrounding their IPO. But of course, this is ancient tech history. I haven't entertained a Google recruiter in probably a decade now.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I wasn't there in 2007, didn't get there til 2011, but looking at the facts think 2007/2008 era it seems like a juncture from one Google to the next, for sure. The other, really major, shift -- which happened while I was there -- was Patrick Pichette leaving as CFO and Ruth Porat coming on. And then the subsequent "Alphabetization" which... it was so bungled and mismanaged... and it was clear at that point L&S were clueless about what was actually going on inside the company... that to me was when the company had seriously dramatically shifted in tone and structure. I think that was .. what... 2015? Sundar taking over was just the formalization of that degradation. For me, personally I wish I'd only stayed there for 4-5 years, and left around then. But before remote work there weren't any competitive options in my region, so I got stuck there for 10 years.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  (I was there 2009-2014 and again 2020-present. Worked with several single/double-digit employee number Googlers.) IMHO the "eras" of Google were: 1.) 1998-2001. Origins. Larry was CEO, company was still basically in the garage or the PayPal offices in Palo Alto, everything was an ad-hoc scrappy startup. 2.) 2001-2004. Growth. Eric was CEO. They moved into the Googleplex. Exploring new lines of business (Groups, AdSense, GMail, Maps/Earth), but they were all just explorations, and most of the company remained focused on Search. Key infrastructure like GFS, MapReduce, BigTable, Stubby, Sawzall were invented. 3.) 2004-2008. Conglomeration. Eric was CEO. IPO. Big college-hiring push started in this era (remember the Google Labs Aptitude Test?), as did a push to hire outside managers from other companies. GMail, Maps, Labs, Scholar, Toolbar, Chrome, Android all launched, and Docs/Sheets/Slides/YouTube were acquired. This is when the modern Google product portfolio was built, and much of its current culture and processes solidified. 4.) 2009-2010. Interregnum. Eric was CEO. Financial crisis happened here, which basically shut down growth, and it also faced serious competitive threats from Bing, iPhones, etc. As a result the culture during the interregnum almost harkened back to the 2001-2004 era: there was a refocusing on core search/ads/infrastructure and a generally scrappier mentality. 5.) 2011-2015. Google+ & X. Larry was CEO again, company shifted to make everything about G+. There was an overall futile attempt to address a major competitive threat that turned out not to matter anyway. 6.) 2015-2020. Alphabetization. Sundar was CEO, but Ruth came in as CFO and realistically runs the company. Finance plays a much bigger role - I don't think Google's produced a single successful new product post-2015 (come to think of it, there weren't many new successes post-2009), but revenue has grown through continued optimization and profits have grown through cost-cutting. 7.) 2020+. Post-COVID. Culture was hurt significantly by remote work, it's very hard to realign the company to adapt to outside changes. The irony is that what many Googlers nostalgically think of "Google culture" actually came from the 2004-2008 era, when Eric was CEO and many of the new hires either came from college or outside companies. If you listen to pre-IPO hires, they'll say that very early Google culture was a lot scrappier, a lot less entitled, a lot more opinionated, a lot more willing to take top-down direction from Larry specifically, and a lot more focused on the work itself and how to deliver excellent technical solutions quickly.

aix1 4y ago

Overwork? Toxic teams? Project managers running teams? I've been at Google for a very long time, in quite a few orgs, and none of those things ring any bells. (Some probably exist in some pockets, though the last one sounds particularly implausible. It's just not how Google job ladders and the management structure work.) Now, I have to admit to having not read the article, but the headline does resonate. I've spoken to a lot of current Googlers about this, and their attitude towards the company has definitely changed rather dramatically, almost overnight. People in non-US jurisdictions are feeling this particularly acutely, due to how the layoffs have been playing out for them.

Shish2k 4y ago
I’ve been at Meta for a few years and would say similar - I’m pretty sure that at any company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, you are going to get some horror stories - but in general it used to be an amazing place to work (ranked #1 on glassdoor for several years for good reason), but now… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- sawyna 4y ago
  I currently work at Google and my take is that it really depends on the team. If an IC is toxic, the effect of it isn't terrible. If a manager is, the effect spreads and if a manager of managers is toxic, that's a recipe for disaster and so on. I personally am in a situation where nasty politics are being played out just for the sake of getting promoted. It's fine to focus on your promo, but not at the cost of your colleagues or the environment. That being said, the broader google ecosystem and culture holds on a macro level. It really is the people that work there who define and uphold it. A couple of rogue high level folks are enough to destroy it.
super256 4y ago
> Overwork? I don't know anyone working at Google, nor anyone who worked at Google in the past (except a single intern). Hell, I don't even live anywhere near a Google campus! But I always assumed that Google wants you to spend your whole day there, from morning until evening. Because big tech is usually implicitly aiming at that. - Serve three major meals a day, + you can bring your dog to your office, which eliminates any reason to go home (especially for those who don't have a house or spouse to take care of). - Shuttle bus, where many employees have like, idk, 40min of free time? Why not just start working on the laptop already? - Food servings are stretched out. Breakfast is till 10AM; dinner is served at 6:30PM, so if you started at 8:30AM, you need to stay another 1.5h to make use of dinner. Why not work in the meantime? And some classical fear stuff which makes you want to work hard and long hours: - Aggressive deadlines - Get the promotion in 2 years or get fired I dunno, I probably wouldn't mind working under these conditions, but I think there are reasons why the average tenure of a Googler is 1.5 years.

pwinnski 4y ago

At Google, developers were the product, not overhead. As such, they were supported lavishly, with meals and massages, at a level not previously seen, at least not in career available to people who weren't fifth-generation Ivy grads. And the pay, total comp is still trumpeted here at HN as among the highest around. Sure, a lot of people saw those perks as being aimed a particular demographic: young people without attachments who were willing to spend nearly 168 hours each week on site. And a lot of us saw the selection of perks as those most likely to attract that demographic. But people who joined Google didn't often leave for reasons related to Google, and I'm not sure there's a better way to describe that than "beloved." Low turnover tells the story.

cromwellian 4y ago
Yup. I was at Google for over a decade, I should have left years ago for a startup, I had offers, but I loved what I did, I loved my fellow coworkers, and I was well compensated. There was little reason to leave, and a lot of reasons to stay.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Have you left?
  - cromwellian 4y ago
    Laid off, and from the one division I thought would be less subject to layoffs: AI. (I thought Ads would be well insulated too, but I know a lot of Ads folks who were let go). But I'm not that broken up about it, because I feel like tech is getting exciting again, almost like the 90s, when everyday, some new amazing thing comes out. Last week in AI for example, super exciting. There's a lot of opportunity now to build cool stuff in this emerging ecosystem, it's totally unknown space, and what's going to exist 5 yrs from now is going to be as crazy as all of the companies that now exist because of smartphones, or the invention of the browser. I think Google (and OpenAI) might be the best places for AI research, but I'm not sure Google is the best place for applied-research at the application level. I think the startup ecosystem is going to explore that space way more rapidly, and it'll be fun to play in that space.

cromwellian 4y ago

As someone who worked at Google for 15 yrs, who also worked at Oracle and IBM, I can confidently say that Google was the least toxic, least overworked place I've ever been. That's not to say there aren't management problems, especially around the erratic way they launch new projects and kill others with no real rhyme or reason, but working environment was never one of the complaints. At IBM and Oracle, I'd regularly be in meetings with shouting matches. People were tear down others. There was excessive territorialism. Googley culture, although it changed over time, did promote cooperation and constructive criticism. Post-Mortems emphasized what went wrong and what could be done better, not who went wrong. Other teams were often, if not always, eager to partner or share their work. Work location flexibility, the cafes, all of it was very good. Now, I did perceive a cultural decline, I think it was sometime around the launch of Google Hangouts, I started sensing a more bean-counting approach, I think because the Seattle office brought in a bunch of MS managers in too short a period of time for them to absorb Googley culture. At one point, the initial launch of Hangouts didn't have presence indicators, and when employees brought it up, one response was "You are not the audience". As if presence indicators are something only elite engineers want, and not regular folks. This was totally antithetical to way products like Gmail were built, out of personal desire and need. I didn't work in Cloud, but I suspect Thomas Kurian brought a more Oracle "Sales Engineer" driven approach, and that too can change culture. Might be bad for culture, but good for external customers. One of the issues over the years that I feel an acute sense of now that I'm looking for a job again, is that Google invented a lot of technology early internally, from Borg to Map/Reduce/etc. Eventually, the outside world cloned these, and when they became on-par and standardized, at that point I really think Google should have switched their internal stack to the OSS equivalents. For example, Google still builds products on the internal Borg system, rather than using GCP/Kubernetes/Terraform/etc. If GCP/Kube is missing functionality to run say, Maps or Gmail, then perfect, that indicates a good driver for improving the external facing product. Working on some of Google's tech stack feels like an alien world compared to working on stuff outside. In ML at least, there's synergy, as Tensorflow and JAX are used internally and externally. But in terms of major systems, there needs to be a lot more of this. Blaze was opened as Bazel way too late for example, should have been done years ago.

dekhn 4y ago

drewg123 4y ago

I was there 2013->2015. It was not viewed as "beloved" in my eyes; more like a benevolent, paternalistic overlord. There were certainly negatives. It was nearly impossible to concentrate at work, due to being in a large open space with many teams, and they would not let me be full-time remote (even as an L6 "staff" SWE), crowded bathrooms, crowded cafes, etc. However, they put a lot of effort into the endless perks, and the feeling of job security. It really felt like they cared about you, and your career development. I was shocked by the layoffs. My old group's PM, who was fantastic (and well connected) was let go in the purge.

cromwellian 4y ago
If you remember, there was the great "de-frag" at one point, where they wanted to reduce # of satellite offices, and tried to move everyone into a few big HQ, this resulted in overcrowding, and one aspect of that was "no remote work". (post-pandemic, this sounds bizarre now). The closing of some of the satellite offices resulted in some of the first shocking "layoffs", for example, the Google Atlanta office was shuttered, most of the former couldn't move, and so left for other companies. (technically not a layoff, but if you can't relocate, it's basically the same) :(
- drewg123 4y ago
  The defrag was a year or two before I joined, as I recall. The remote work policy seemed to go by org. I worked in platforms, and our VP was old-school, adamantly opposed to remote work. He'd proudly walk around the office, surveying his domain. He was rather like a proctor in an exam. Meanwhile, I worked closely with several folks in the kernel team who were allowed to work remotely. One of them was very interested in what we were doing, was a luminary in his field, and wanted to transfer to our group, but worked remotely, and didn't want to give that up. Similarly, I left for Netflix because they allowed remote work in the Open Connect kernel group.

yibg 4y ago

For a while now Google has been seen as the place you go to coast, at least if you're not gunning for promotions.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

linguae 4y ago

(Disclaimer: I was a software engineering intern at Google during the summers of 2013 and 2014.) In the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, Google felt like the dream place to work. Yes, a lot has been said about the perks and the generous pay, but another thing that made Google appealing was its cutting edge projects. I was a huge fan of Google Inbox (sadly long discontinued). As a graduate student researching storage systems and who enjoyed reading the MapReduce, BigTable, and Spanner papers, being able to work on Spanner as an intern was a dream come true. I also loved all of the internal support I received as a developer, from the amazing internal infrastructure to the various internal tutorials. I never felt siloed off from the rest of the company, compared to other employers I've had. It was an amazing place to work and I'd rank it as my second-best work experience (my best being eight months I spent at Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki, Japan where I worked in a storage lab on an SSD cache....that was a downright magical experience), though granted as an intern I was shielded from the performance review process and on-calls, so I can't comment about these things. I would love to work for a team similar to the teams I worked on during my internships at Google, as well as the general feeling of 2013-14 Google. However, I'm under the impression that Google's culture started changing a lot during the Alphabet reorganization and the rise of Sundar Pichai as CEO. I don't know if there's a place in the Valley these days that captures the feel of pre-Alphabet Google; it seems to me that the Valley itself has changed a lot (and for the worse) since roughly 2015, but that's another discussion for another time.

Yoric 4y ago
If you find such a place, don't hesitate to spread the word :)

jimjimjim 4y ago

As a viewpoint from outside of the fang(whatever), I've always felt (and heard) that google was the best of the bunch in terms of employee opinion of the organization.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

As a Googler for 10 years, I'd say -- on the whole, yes, well loved. But steadily worsening over that 10 year period. And, no, most people I knew were not overworked. Not at my site, anyways. And certainly not compared to what I saw from people I knew at Apple or Amazon. I had my beefs with the place always, and I was like a square peg round hole there -- BUT ... Not even talking about the pay -- above average -- benefits were amazing. Culture when I started was very engineering driven. Mostly a very respectful professional environment apart from one asshole TL I had to deal with, but I was able to route around him after a few months. Good mix of age ranges and not biased against middle aged or older like many other workplaces in our industry. I didn't like the work / projects I had to do there. I didn't like the promo process. I didn't like the way projects were managed. But I liked the company ethic overall (obviously I always had issues) -- but it degraded every year I was there. But not because of overwork etc but because of bureaucratic dysfunction and ethical lapses.

zaphar 4y ago

I was there roughly about a decade ago. At that time Google was a fantastic place to work. I didn't have toxic teams nor was I asked to overwork. I left the office at 5pm nearly every day. Google at least in the Chicago office deserved it's reputation as the best place to work in tech. I still know people there and talking to them it does seem like there was a dramatic shift over the last 5+ years or so. I don't think it can claim the same culture that it had when I was there.