Google

• Hard to get fired with easy work and weak, underperforming colleagues to measure up to.
• Free food - not great, but "free."
• Come here to rest and vest.

The average developer at Google is a far cry from being a great engineer, despite all the "prestige." This reflects in an aging tech stack, poor code quality, and overcomplicated designs that are glorified in a self-fulfilling game of showing off how much complexity engineers can come up with. There are surprisingly sketchy practices on some core products. A lot of the engineers with 10+ years of experience here have been at no other company and know little of the outside world or technology progress.

This company is super frugal, to the point of being just plain cheap. This is a far cry from the reputation it has of having extraordinary perks and a fun environment to work at. Offices are very average for today's standards, even compared to much smaller companies. Management dumps "corpspeak" on Googlers every other week and it feels old-school corporate. Open memegen (the company's internal 9gag) any day of the week to see popular posts endlessly complaining about compensation, "corpspeak" from leadership, lack of transparency, and overall self-mocking messages. It's pretty depressing, and nothing ever changes.

Systematic racism, plus extreme, in-your-face diversity consciousness advertising, makes this a painfully hypocritical company to work for.

As an engineer who myself enjoys the guilty pleasure of occasional praise, being surrounded by Googlers' continuous self-praise and elitism is repulsive. Stick around employees a bit after a few drinks, and you'll open up a secret world made up of an openly dirty, racist bunch of humans lusting for more money and status (or it might just be the London office).

Shady HR and recruitment divisions use aggressive, under-the-belt tactics for hiring and retention.

Not applicable as they will not change. There is no incentive for them to in any case.