I'm most interested in opinions from xooglers. From what I see it's still a great company and great place to work. Some xooglers seem to think it's lost its luster. I'm trying to collect all opinions.
Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
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Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#2Did you watch Silicon Valley? What do you think about sitting on the roof with a Slurpee (or a Big Gulp)? Would you rather be building stuff?
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#3define "work"
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#4Not sure about this anymore. You dont seem to get interviews at google anymore if you apply directly via the website. Much like the support policy for their "products," you need to know someone within, be aligned politically from your past with the person and only then get a call. In short, Google has become good at hiring cliques.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#5I've been at Google for 4 years now.
The opportunity for growth, colleagues, support, tooling, pay and perks are far beyond what I've had in other jobs.
There's a bit of a monoculture here though.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#6At a 100,000+ company it would be impossible to generalize
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#7Not a xoogler, but know lots.
You may be happy there if you like breaking things for no apparent reason that used to work.
I was talking with some people from Facebook about whether Facebook was too evil to work at. They said Facebook only wishes it could ever someday be as evil as Google. Nowadays even Microsoft wishes that. Not sure where Apple fits: they have a lock on contempt for users, but do they hate everyone else equally?
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#8Xoogler, current facebooker.
Reach out: tehlike@gmail.com
Edit: Not sure why I got negative votes. Having this discussion on HN is not effective. I am fairly unbiased, but i need to know what kind of person he is, what kind of work he is willing to do, and might also offer career advice.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#9I'm a Xoogler. I joined in late 2016 and quit January 2021. In my opinion, the company didn't change much in absolute terms while I was there. It became more secretive, but overall the experience was similar in 2017 and 2020. It was generally good given the alternatives - no major complaints that don't apply to other software companies. Good work-life balance and good compensation. Many great people under-leveled (but generally no underpaid).
Was it cool? That depends on what you value and who you're trying to impress. I didn't think the work I did was very fulfilling. At Google many problems are already solved, and the ones that remain often seem like small incremental improvements. There's a ton of uninteresting work, just like anywhere else. The difference is that when something is interesting, there are a lot of very qualified Googlers who will flock to it because they're not really needed on what they're doing. So you rarely get opportunities to own something much bigger than you're qualified for. At a smaller company those things can drop in your lap.
A lot of coolness is about perception, and I can definitely say that recruiters think it's cool. When I was at Google I would get a couple of LinkedIn messages each day. The effect still seems to linger.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#10Present Googler. Been here 7 years. As with all these things, this depends largely on what you are looking for. This comment applies to engineering exclusivelyq. A good number of teams and products at Google are very mature with large teams working on them. This leads to slow growth and obviously less challenging work on one hand. On the other hand, if you would like an easy job with time to focus on personal priorities, it makes this possible. A good number of these teams also consist of engineers who have hit a certain level of growth equilibrium which prevents other junior and newer engineers from growing beyond a certain level. In fact, such engineers are labelled the "rest and vest" engineers.
However, with a company this large, this is not generalizable to absolutely all teams. There are smaller teams building new products and working on interesting and challenging things. In case you are interested in Google, my advice would be to look for the right team and ask a lot of direct questions to understand the team dynamics and the actual day to day work. It might also be worth considering non-Google Alphabet companies as they tend to have newer things to work on.