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A good place to work if you want to learn a lot and lead a normal life

Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Google for less than 1 year
May 1, 2009
Kirkland, Washington
4.0
No CEO Opinion
Pros

Great benefits, working at a company everyone respects and says "wow" to, and getting to help build the products that are really changing the world.

The hours are reasonable, you are treated as a human being and respected as an engineer, and the on-site breakfast, lunch, and dinner are unmatched anywhere.

Luckily, Google makes its billions using only a small fraction of its total workforce, leaving lots of capital available to dedicate resources to other projects that aren't purely motivated by short-term profits, but rather those that help build press for the organization and are theoretically interesting and innovative at the same time.

Tech talks about a whole range of topics, not strictly required for you to carry out your job responsibilities but just for your general education, are a huge plus.

Google employs some of the most innovative thinkers and builders of our time.

Cons

Very large organization.

Seemed to provide fewer job advancement opportunities than I was looking for.

Little project ownership (feature ownership perhaps, but typically the project involves many, many people).

In my case, the project had three different managers who worked out of two different offices, leading to lots of confusion.

Advice to Management

Communicate and coordinate with the other managers to make sure you are presenting a unified vision of the company.

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