Pros: Wonderful location at Mountain View, very vibrant tech vibes.

Cons: Too big, sometimes hard to make an impact.

Pros: Excellent perks, smart coworkers. Good pay. A great place to gain experience and grow if you take advantage of it. Access to lots of cool design docs.

Cons: A particularly memorable part of my 6-year stay at Google was the 3 years at Daydream, the former VR department. Leadership cancelled every single project I worked on, except the least promising one, which they kept because they didn’t want to back out on a collaboration with a partner company and hurt Google’s image. They went on to sell about 5000 units and then cancel the project. Too user-oriented for innovation. As ChatGPT showed us, unless it's search, ads, or software infrastructure, the only innovation Google does will be despite its leadership, not because of it.

Pros: Great work-life balance. Lots of teams to choose from if you are in the Bay Area.

Cons: Typical cons of a company this size: things move slow, too much red tape, and management vision is not clear.