Lost its mojo: lonely, frustrating and disappointing place to work.
Pros
Context: gTech team - Perks, benefits and pay (if those are important to you; they aren't as impactful to most as they think in the long run and create an over-privileged, ungrateful workforce) - Travel and freebies opportunities - Looks good on a CV/outside perception strong - Flexibility in working hours/how you manage your time - Clubs and talks, volunteering opportunities - Stable company
Cons
Context: gTech team - Still too US (Silicon Valley) focused. Incompatible culture with Europe mindsets - Still culturally tailored to 20 something privileged (Ivy league) males e.g. having to share hotel rooms at most events, expecting people to want to relocate, and assuming everyone is the same in terms of motivations and beliefs - BIG ethical problems- see news - Management are very poor: low EQ, lots of turnover/infighting, just care about results not people. Don't like it when people question them even though they say the opposite- lack integrity and many are bullies or just keep their heads down and do nothing. - Many people are managed by people several timezones away leading to poor communications and relations. Fundamental misunderstandings arise because there is an assumption, by the US mainly, that because people speak English they share a culture. - People are very competitive, arrogant, and selfish, don't care about each other as people due to low EQs and being over-privileged or insecure. A person can faint or breakdown in tears in a meeting and everyone will just ignore them. - Low internal mobility if you want to stay in London- it's very competitive and if you enter a bad role/team and have bad projects, it's near impossible to transfer, especially because you need your manager to help. Getting stuck is easy; HR are no help. - Low trust in HR and Employee Relations- so much sexism, ageism and mental health discrimination. Google keeps paying people to keep quiet. HR are near useless (by their own admission) because they have no power. Again, see news. - Company is classic large corp now- ruled by middle managers empire building. Historical culture is not really present anymore, e.g. no 20% projects allowed. - Work is meaningless- little control over strategy, repeating past projects/mistakes, impact of deliverables questionable as they are politically driven more than anything. - Work is still technically driven and people who bring project management experience are not well respected as they are seen as an unnecessary overhead and remind people that Google is now a large company and cannot support old practices such as one to ones with everybody and informal knowledge transfer. - Lots of big company politics and constant problems with delivery because company is still technically driven rather than people/process/organisation driven - Internal systems/tools not fit for purpose unless you are an engineer. Refusal/arrogance-led negative attitudes to using external tools such as JIRA or project management tools. Everyone just uses Google Suite for everything- with some hacky tools built on top sometimes. - Lots of internal snobbery over working for gTech- little respect or knowledge from the rest of Google - Interview system is ridiculously complicated, and has tons of bias, and doesn't recruit the people needed due to the abstract coding questions that people need to answer to prove that they are "technical" even when the job doesn't require coding. You therefore end up with people who want to code in jobs where they aren't required to code which causes a lot of problems.
