Your experience depends on your manager
Pros
benefits, food, perks, discounts. Google has done a great job of marketing themselves as a hip place for smart young things to work. The concerts, parties, and general go go go of the company may appeal to young 20 somethings who have no strings attached and like to spend 75 hours per week at work in a flexible schedule of working out, working, eating, getting massages and hardly ever going outside of the Google bubble. Google culture has its own language so you feel like part of a group. People "get you" here because they speak Google-esque just like you. Again, great marketing and appealing to the need for people to belong to a group.
Cons
work- life balance. career advancement, salary raises, bonuses paid out in vested stock that takes 4 years to actually pay out. golden handcuffs I realized I made a mistake of accepting the job on day 1. I lasted just over 2 years. The stock, benefits and golden stock handcuffs were a large part of why I stayed. Things are done under the illusion of each employee having a voice, and everyone being equitable in the growth of the company and in deciding the direction of the company. This is completely untrue. Our entire department tiptoed around the manager, gave her terrible Googlegeist feedback, and yet, as if by magic her salary grew and grew whist we were told that we had "reached the top of our pay scale tier" My salary raise was 5 cents per hour in the year that I left. My performance review did not warrant this kind of slap in the face, but my department simply didn't have the funds to pay me more.
