Pros
- In Switzerland, the money is good. - Contrary to earlier reviews, work/life balance has actually been fixed and is fine now. - Likewise, middle management has been fixed and is generally pretty good now. - You will work with a lot of really, really smart people and you will learn so, so much. - People in engineering get a lot of freedom to work on their own side-projects, travel, publish, work on opensource, and so on. - Everyone MEANS well pretty much all the time. It is rare for people to be underhanded or obviously self-serving.
Cons
- Most people are super smart, but many of them lack even basic social skills and they WILL drive you up the wall. - Google is a really good large company, but it is a large company. Creeping bureaucracy and attempts at making everything more corporate are a daily theme and, if left unchecked, will eventually destroy the culture. - People retention measured in decades has its downsides. Because Google has been so successful, the old-timers see little reason to adopt engineering practices of the 21st century, and Google is slowly but surely slipping further and further behind the industry in tools and programming practices. - GOD DAMNED OPEN OFFICE PLANS. The scourge of tech companies. Google is one of the worst offenders.
