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Great for interns, not so great for FTE (it depends)

Software Engineering Intern
Former Employee
Worked at Google for 1 year
October 20, 2025
Durham, North Carolina
3.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Free breakfast, lunch, and snacks.

Culture-inspired lunches with vegan and vegetarian options.

Periodic no-meeting days.

No meeting Mondays or Fridays (depends on your org and team).

Fun environment (but relatively speaking, the worst Google offers, but way better than most traditional companies).

Some relaxed work policies that other companies would harp on.

A lot of AI to help boost productivity.

Great health benefits even for interns (except if you are looking for surgery).

Great overall benefits (mental health, gym reimbursement, tuition payback, etc).

Better Google-product discount for Googlers (compared to previous years).

Massage.

Very diverse group.

Cons

Slowly becoming Amazon.

One of the worst Google offices compared to the others. (Don't get me wrong, it's much better than most offices, but compared to other Google Headquarters, it's a joke).

Breakfast main entree sucks with processed foods and those eggs are cursed, geez.

Being on-call and actually getting paged often for new orgs is rough, especially on holidays, though this is improving.

A lot of AI.

Some orgs are way more stressful than others, but at least you have job security :)

Perks at Work discounts suck; you basically get a 0.5% to 10% discount.

Advice to Management

There's too much push to increase productivity just because 'AI' can assist with it. There's been constant pressure to use all of these AI tools (and there's a ton, with more in progress), and recent deadlines seem to take into account that there should be a substantial productivity increase.

Additional Ratings

Work/Life Balance
3.0
Culture and Values
4.0
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
5.0
Career Opportunities
5.0
Compensation and Benefits
5.0
Senior Management
3.0

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