Google

1. Great office decoration. Very nice to show off to your friends about the working environment.

2. Decent compensation.

3. Great brand value all around the world. You receive immediate respect from strangers once you mention your employer's name, as it's so famous. Also, the Google brand is useful to land your next job.

4. Still relevant development technologies, useful for future software jobs.

Be aware of the Google fairy tale. The reality that I experienced is:

1. The so-called "20% project" is already gone. The first day I joined the team, I was explicitly told there is no such thing called "20% project." I was told to focus on this team's jobs.

2. The legend of "developers come up with ideas and have freedom to execute" does not exist. When I interviewed and was in the orientation, multiple times I was told "Google works bottom-up," "Gmail was a bottom-up idea," and "you have the freedom to use your time to test out your idea." But the reality is: the boss "suggested" a direction that you "may" work on; it was actually an authoritative direction, an order. I once tried to divert a little bit and have my own direction, then that one incident caused a pretty bad half-year review.

3. Management is fake and hypocritical: a) They say you can have your own direction and creativity, but at the end of the day, they judge your performance just like a worker, on how much your "throughput" is. b) They say "Google takes a long time to ramp up," but they actually count your output and rate it from day 1, not considering the ramp-up time. c) They pretend Google has a relaxed culture, but they took notes of exactly what you said and used that months later as bullets against you.

4. Politics, politics: Under the disguise of "Google is bottom-up" and "Developers in Google are autonomous," there is just tons of politics and power struggle going on. Design meetings become a place for power struggle, and speaking/advocating a design requires taking the risk of jumping to the wrong boat.

Google pays great, and it has great brand value. But please, just let the myth go. Don't misguide prospective employees anymore.