1) All big companies inevitably devolve into Dilbert, no matter how cool they seem from the outside
2) Humans are easily fooled by signaling and vanity metrics, exploit this quirk
3) Depends on the team, but in general working at a big company is 10X easier and more relaxing than working at a startup. You’ll probably never go back to working at a small company after realizing this.
4) Buddying up to the right people will dramatically alter your experience in a big company—meritocracy can never exist when human emotions are involved
5) the difficulty of the interview process is just plain bizarre given how simple the daily jobs of 95% of the engineers are
6) you will have the nagging feeling a high school kid could do most of the (non engineering) jobs in the company with a few months of on the job training
7) due to 5 and 6, unless you are a sociopath, you will feel guilty on a daily basis for building generational wealth while an immigrant contractor struggling to get by dishes out your free food
8) you will learn that at most big companies, the innovation is in the past
9) on the bright side, google does have really cool internal tools and perks
10) after leaving, people will grossly overestimate your intelligence and skill level due to the name google being on your resume (see #2)