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Just checking if this is still an accurate description of the culture at Google today? > Google is the opposite: it's like a giant grad-school. Half the progra
by hn8305823 3y ago
Just checking if this is still an accurate description of the culture at Google today?
> Google is the opposite: it's like a giant grad-school. Half the programmers have PhD's, and everyone treats the place like a giant research playground. While the company is hush-hush to the outside world, it's 100% open on the inside. Everyone knows what everyone is doing, everyone is working on pet projects. Every once in a while, a manager skims over the bubbling activity, looking for products to "reap" from the creative harvest. The programmers completely drive the company, it's really amazing. I kept waiting for people to walk up to me and ask me if I had declared my major yet. They not only encourage personal experimentation and innovation, they demand it. Every programmer is required to spend 20% of their time working on random personal projects. If you get overloaded by a crisis, then that 20% personal time accrues anyway. Nearly every Google technology you know (maps, earth, gmail) started out as somebody's 20% project, I think.
- thesandlord 3y agoI left Google in 2020. It is not like this anymore. I heard its gotten even worse.
- cornstalks 3y agoI've been at Google since 2015 and it is nothing like that. I've never met another Googler that actually has a 20% project (though there are many internal tools that are widely used that are stated as being unsupported as they are only 20% projects).
- summerlight 3y agoI don't think so, though the team culture might differ orgs to orgs. Engineers still have a relatively strong voice compared to other companies though.
- bigmanwalter 3y agoNot at all. The MBAs have taken over at this point and expectations are far too aggressive for anything like 20% time to exist. The rule of thumb is that they give so much work that even if we only complete 80% of it, that should be considered "meeting expectations". I've heard people refer to 20% projects now as "120% projects".
- hex4def6 3y agoI was in Google / Nest in ~2018 or so. I knew 20% projects existed, but I'd heard they were considered a good way to not get promoted. I knew a few people that had a 20% project they were working on, but it was the exception, not the norm.
- glimshe 3y agoGoogle is just another big software company with solid pay and benefits. There is nothing quirky, unique or special about it otherwise. My Googler buddies describe their work as pedestrian and while Engineers still retain more power than the average company, this is counterbalanced by upper management incompetence which destroys/misaligns most good initiatives leading to a lot of work being done with limited results.