Pros: Compensation is great. Tools are cutting-edge.

Cons: People are stiff. Promotion is way too hard.

Pros: - Opportunity to work on meaningful products with global impact. - The company really cares about employees being happy, growing, and performing. - You can move around to different teams, roles, and offices relatively easily to find the right fit. - Tons of employee development programs and perks. - Generous compensation based on performance. - Very smart, mostly well-intentioned coworkers. - Amazing developer tooling. I especially liked the internal code review tool; I haven't seen anything as powerful outside. - Google will be around for a long time and continue to be a great place to work and build a career, offering stability depending on your preference.

Cons: - Impact and growth opportunities depend heavily on your team. - When you first join, you are typically assigned to a team, so you might not be working on something you're super excited about. (You can transfer after 18 months.) - Your equity is (probably) not going to 10x. - The tech stack is different than the rest of the industry, though with Google Cloud Platform, they are trying to change that. - The SF to Mountain View commute is soul-sucking. - Not allowed to work on side projects that make money. - Depending on the team, people are not as hungry, young, or motivated as what you might find at startups. - Promotions are determined outside your team. It's the best system I could imagine, but it's also time-consuming and slow.

Pros: Back then, the food and work culture was quite chill.

Cons: Political infighting within leadership and a meaningless product direction.