I joined few months back - it's really a great environment in many ways. Plenty to learn and grow, variety of projects to make an impact, great colleagues, culture and amazing perks. I have heard things are difficult regarding promotions. But definitely an engineering experience to be had.
Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
11–20 of 129 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#12I did an internship last winter, and will likely do one again this winter. It was a great experience, and I'd consider it an awesome place to work at :)
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#13I have always preferred micro companies because of the freedom to drive the chiefdom from your humble developer positions. I remember an article about an Apple engineer developing first Mac to run on X86 architecture. This is an example of micro company that Apple has always been and I doubt any company, including Google, can match it.
Apple have 60,000 employees now. They are not a micro company any more - why would they be able to feel like one? Obviously some engineers would have worked on the original x86 Macs, just as plenty of engineers at Google worked on the original Android software - that doesn't make it feel like a small company.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#14I work for Google, and I think it's an awesome place to work, but I can see in my two years there how things have been changing in subtle ways. It's not a small company anymore, which hasn't changed how "cool" it is, but does mean that with so many other moving pieces that it's not as lean as a startup, where someone could - in principle - redo everything from scratch. The complaints I've heard from Xooglers tend to center around the technical aspect of working with a much larger codebase and increased ossification, rather than the company culture.
Still - Google has the spirit of a startup at its core. Engineers run the place, not execs. I like to say that there is very little "adult supervision" at Google; nearly all technical decisions are made bottom-up by engineers, and there is an active element at the center of the company culture to Do Things The Right Way.
If by "cool place to work" you mean, working with smart people, lots of perks (free food, massage, on-site doctor, all that), and a culture centered around doing amazing things, then yes, it's a cool place to work.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#15can you please post the way you prepared for technical interview. Just what you think can help someone who is preparing for it. what kind of questions they asked ? any thing to watch out for..
This is the best book on technical interviews for places like Google: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...
Does it just prepare for code interviews, or do you actually learn something useful with it, besides getting a job?
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#16I am a xoogler. Google is the best "Big Company" I have ever worked for. They're well organized for the size, very engineering centric, pay well, good perks, lots of travel opportunities. The engineering infrastructure and culture is the best I've seen.
That's the good. The bad is mostly typical big company stuff: you're a cog, you won't get significant choice on what to work on, you have to "play the game" to get promoted.
I left two years ago because I wanted to try a startup and it was the right decision for me. Much more diverse role, touched a lot more technologies, got exposure to a lot more interesting problems. YMMV
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#17It's a large enough place to have many microcultures. Geo (Maps, Earth) is totally different from, say Android. YouTube's culture is nothing like Search and GMail's. And so on.
So after you join, go meet other teams and get to know the big picture. Then, you can seek a transfer to wherever you think you'd best fit in.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#18Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so your first project is the difference between an awesome Google career and shit. And most people get shit. Good luck!
ETA: Google would be awesome if it adopted the Valve culture where employees are trusted to allocate their own time, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#19Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if you start in the wrong place, so yo…
Well, I was there for six months over the course of two internships in two different offices, and nearly everybody I met was excited about their project. I know you had a bad experience, but I think this is a little bit of projection. I would be extremely reluctant to, based on such a short time at the company, decide that most of the thousands of engineers are working on shit projects.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work?
#20On my team, most of the disagreements that come up are still technical issues. That's pretty good IMO, considering company size. Yes it has its fair share of issues, but having worked at some companies several times smaller, this one is pretty darned good.