Google

My story is a little different than most others because I was a temp worker for Google, testing search results for a year. I enjoyed the work a great deal; there were always new interesting things to test, and I got to see things like Maps and Timelines long before they were released to the public and help make them better.

The pay was reasonable - $15/hour working from home - and there were good bonuses after a certain number of hours had been completed, or occasionally given for working on specific projects.

There were two major downsides to doing temp work from home for Google. One was the astonishing lack of communication. This shifted a little while I was working there; they began developing a sort of report card system so that we could see how our rating work scored compared to previous months and how we were doing overall. But while I was there, that system only worked for a small fraction of the projects I was working on, so it wasn't particularly helpful.

More to the point, there was no positive feedback given to anyone at all, and communication between employees seemed to be discouraged - two classic characteristics of a dysfunctional work environment. Occasionally, if a rating was very far off of what they were looking for, usually due to a typo or misclick, they would send it back with a warning saying so, but that represented the sum total of feedback given. Personally, I found it very difficult to work with no input about whether they wished I were going faster, whether I was going faster than my peers, whether I was doing a great job, or - most of all - any input about how to improve in general. Sure, it's a year-long temp job, but one which can potentially be repeated after another year has passed. And besides, who doesn't want to receive positive feedback and learn how to improve and receive more? I guess more importantly, who doesn't want to know what the expectations for their work are?

The one saving grace for me was that I found a forum for people working from home where some other folks who were doing temp work for Google could get together and chat a little - without breaking any confidentiality agreements - about what we struggled with, how much we were able to do in a day, and what we thought the expectations for us were, based on all of our experiences.

The other major downside was that the temp agency they used, WorkForceLogic, was just TERRIBLE - specifically at handling payroll, which is a terrible thing to be terrible at. There were many times that I didn't get paid, got a bonus deducted from my check instead of added to it, etcetera. And it was always a different mistake from all the ones they had made before, and it always took them a while to figure out what had gone wrong, track down whoever needed to fix it, and wait for them to get back from lunch or an appointment or come back to work the next day or...

And they were no better at communication, really. I had hoped that once this assignment was up I would be able to get more assignments through WFL, but no matter how many phone calls I made, nobody could ever figure out who I should be talking to or find anyone who would return calls.

From what I have heard, communication and job satisfaction are a growing problem everywhere in Google. As with any large corporation, this has the largest effect at the bottom of the totem pole.

I'd recommend getting an expert in organizational development to go through the whole company and listen to their feedback.