Poll: Given the opportunity would you work at Google?

[chuhnk]

It is mid 2011 and Google has just kicked off another attempt in the social scene. They are thriving as a company and there appears to be no end in sight. We have now accrued a wealth of information on google, their hiring process, the internals, the culture and there has also recently been a book written about them outlining some intimate details.

Knowing all these things, do you want to work for Google? Do you work for Google? I would love to hear your stories.

[kragen]

No.

Google has an orientation that is opposed to my agenda.

I joined the internet in 1992. It was a pretty decentralized place, and any person on it could set up an online service accessible to any other person on it; but you pretty much had to write your service in C (less of a security worry at the time) and it was easy to get in trouble by bogging down the DECStation you shared with fifty other people. So it was such a hassle that there were only a few dozen online services, plus a few thousand FTP sites. As an example, there were no public porn sites, although there was lots of porn.

A few years later, when the internet hit mainstream, it was a decentralizing force; server-centric Novell LANs and mainframe-terminal networks gave way to workstation networks, where anybody at the company, or anybody with an ISP account, could set up a web server on their personal workstation with a little trouble.

I started running my own mail and web server when I moved to Ohio in 1997, and I've been running one ever since, first alone and later with half a dozen friends. Until 2001 it was on dialup, which was fine, although obviously there are limits on how much traffic I could cope with.

But this rosy picture is complicated by centralizing forces. Apple wants to relegate websites to second-class status on their popular computers, and exercises viewpoint censorship on what "apps" they allow in their "app store". Google wants you to keep your mail in Gmail instead of on your home computer (with backups, naturally, on your friends' home computers), and they'll delete your account with no recourse if you admit you're only 10. Microsoft won't let you run unsigned device drivers on your own computer any more. Facebook wants to know every web page you visit and log that information permanently for later analysis.

And email from our little mail server automatically gets dropped into the spam box on Gmail these days. Not sure why. Apparently our domain has a "bad reputation", but even finding that out required an inside connection; no way to find out more.

I imagine a different future, where if Alice wants to talk to Bob and Bob wants to talk to Alice, there's no unaccountable intermediary that can interfere with their communication, whether they're speaking text, or video, or 3-D models, or simulation. If Alice's email gets marked as spam, Bob ought to be able to find out why — and fix it!

We're a lot closer to that world today than we were in 1992, and the evidence suggests that it is to that that we owe the collapse of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa; the revelation and destruction of the nascent government-funded slander campaign against Glenn Greenwald and other WikiLeaks supporters; and the public discovery of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights. If we successfully beat back the global menaces of governmental corruption, global warming, overfishing, and terrorism, it will be because we were able to collaborate and organize more effectively around the world by means of this new medium.

Google, of course, wants to solve these problems too. But it has a different, less-democratic approach in mind. While of course the company contains an enormous diversity of opinion internally, their approach publicly has been somewhat paternalistic, and their engineering culture is organized around big centralized solutions; warehouse-scale computing, as the title of Barroso and Hölzle's excellent book puts it.

A rather shocking view of the depth of some Googlers' commitment to centralized computing can be found at http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/05/11/google.skype.wire...

I believe that warehouse-scale client-server computing will, in the end, undermine the kind of democratic freedom of communication that we need to deal with today's global menaces. It's more practical than peer-to-peer computing at the moment, but that pendulum has swung back and forth several times over the decades. (Some of my friends were among the first employees of a hot cloud-computing startup, in 1964, called Tymshare.) The proper response to the current impracticality of decentralized computing is not to sigh and build centralized systems. The proper response is to build the systems to make decentralized computing practical again.

Google is not institutionally opposed to this; they've funded substantial and important work on it. Nevertheless, because of their overall orientation toward centralized solutions, I believe working there would be a further distraction from that goal. Worse, with every advance that companies like Google and Apple make, the higher is the bar that decentralized systems must leap to achieve real adoption.

I'm not making much progress on that. My friends Len Sassaman (who committed suicide yesterday), Bram Cohen, Jacob Appelbaum, and Zooko O'Whielacronx have made substantial contributions. But I don't think I'd make more progress at Google, and I might make negative progress.

[midmagic]

Homomorphic algorithms (currently exploding in research) and caps-based, secure remote storage (like Tahoe-LAFS) are huge steps towards subverting the centralisation and exploitation of personal data, and converting it to individual-centric, remote reliability services that people can be relatively confident are, in fact, safely housed on servers like Amazon's and Google's.

[jasonkester]

I go back and forth on this one. It'd certainly be a fun place to work, and you'd get to play with some cool tech. If I was just starting out, I'd jump at the opportunity.

Nowadays, I see a lot of downsides. First, it's a full-time on site job, which is something I left behind almost 10 years ago, so it'd be tough to go back. Probably more importantly, I doubt they could offer me the kind of salary that would tempt me away from consulting.

At this point, the only reason I could see myself working for a big company again would be if one of my products made it onto their radar and I found myself acqu-hired. Even then, I'd probably look at it as a necessary evil that came with a nice payday. Given all the stories of founders getting absorbed by the Googles of the world, waiting out their obligatory 2 years, then jumping ship, it just doesn't seem like a good fit for somebody with an entrepreneurial mindset.

[msort]

After last year's 10% rise and bonus-structure change, Google's salary is very high now. Counting salary and bonus, not counting equity-grant, Google perhaps pays the highest in the software industry now.

If counting cash + equity, adjusting for risk, only a few companies (FB etc.) now can beat Google in terms of expected income.

So if your only concern is money, you can still try to see how Google could offer.

[jarin]

Even though it seems like it would be pretty cool, I said no for a couple of reasons:

1) I'm not sure I could hack it there. While I consider myself to be a good coder (and people tell me so), I don't consider myself to be a top-notch guru ninja coder. I also don't have a CS degree, and I tend to get a little lost when people start getting into CS theory.

2) I have a (probably irrational) aversion to working at really big companies, I think probably due to my time dealing with insane bureaucracy in the Navy. If there was something at a relatively autonomous smaller group though, I would probably be down with that.

[nostrademons]

1.) Basically everyone who gets hired at Google feels that way at the beginning, right on up to Larry Page. He tells this story occasionally about how when he got into Stanford, he kept walking around for a month or so terrified that he was about to be "found out" and that Stanford would ship him home and rescind his acceptance. And then when Google started becoming popular, he was afraid that it was taking too much time away from his studies, so he tried to sell the whole thing for < $1M.

The two things the interview process is really looking for is a.) How do you react when faced with a challenge? Do you dig in and attack it, or do you flinch and go away? and b.) Do you really want to work at Google? Things like big-O notation and coding skills are important, but if you really want to, you can pick them up on your own.

Incidentally, this is the same criteria YCombinator uses, except that instead of "do you really want to work at Google?" they ask "do you really want to found a startup?" It's a pretty handy mindset to develop in general.

2.) I felt the same way, and then discovered it was nowhere near as bad as I expected. There're a bunch of pretty autonomous small groups working at Google, often on pretty cool things. One trade-off is that the more important your work is to the company, the less autonomy you have, yet the more important your work is to the company, the greater the resources you have at your disposal and the greater the financial and career rewards.

[jedc]

re your 2), I was in the Navy for six years, and now work at Google. There's virtually no comparison at all. Sure there's a bit of what you might call "bureaucracy" at Google, but only enough to keep things from going off the rails, and people actively work to keep that to a minimum. It's nothing, nothing, nothing like the Navy. (I worked at COMUSNAVEUR for ~18 months, so am even familiar with 4-star Admiral staff level bureaucracy.)

I enjoyed my time in the Navy because of my shipmates. I've really enjoyed my time at Google because of the interesting work and absolutely fantastic people I work with.

Just my two cents...

[Mongoose]

I recently graduated with a CS degree and turned down an offer from Google in favor of one from Twitter, mainly on the grounds of it being a smaller company (for now). Google is still at the top of my list of BigCo's that I'd consider joining, as they have an incredible range of solid projects. However, my desire for a greater opportunity of individual contribution would prevent me from working there for the time being.

EDIT: Not to mention that Twitter (and many other software companies) is crawling with ex-Googlers, so the caliber of engineer coworkers will be roughly equal.

[mkramlich]

Hell no. I can make just as much money -- likely more money -- working for somebody else, or myself, and get more control, more responsibility, less legacy systems/culture, less treatment like a drone/kiddie, and I could give a shit whether my code serves billions of people or a mere hundred -- I just want to do good work, be unfettered, be happy, and be rewarded as much as the market is willing for my skills. It's an engineer's market right now, I can more easily be a VP or CEO or CTO of a funded startup than I can be a mere Software Engineer at the Goog. And I can work for home or at a location of my own choosing, and set my own hours. So why bother settling for less?

[MattLaroche]

After more than 5 years as an engineer, I left Google on April first. I was surrounded by intelligent, friendly, and honest coworkers. Across the company, good, reusable, well-documented, well-designed code was normal. People also go out of their way to help, answer questions, and put an end to BS.

I'd consider returning.

[william42]

Out of curiosity, why did you leave?

[fourspace]

I worked there for 5 years in cluster management / datacenter operations, from 2005 - 2010. While I had a blast, I'm now working for myself (consulting + startups) and could not be happier.

Google is the right place for certain kinds of people; I don't think entrepreneurs are one of them.

[GrooveStomp]

As always, this is a complicated question - more complicated than probably intended.

Google certainly isn't seen as the "hip", "cool" place to be anymore. Google+ seems shiny and new, but as a whole, Google has this aura of being a place where creative, active developers get sucked into a black hole, and you never hear or see anything from them again.

I would love the chance to work with great people and to make a killer income there, but to work at Google I'd have to move to a different country, or move completely across the country I already live in. Both of those options are simply unacceptable right now - even if I was willing to jump willy-nilly, I have a significant other who has real ties to where we are right now.

I also seriously doubt that I'd get to work on something that interesting at a company so large.

That said, if Google offered me a large salary and the opportunity to work on my side projects full time - Hell yeah. You'd have to make a really good argument why anyone shouldn't take advantage of that! :)

[skarayan]

Not sure if this is true, but I heard that Google takes ownership of any IT projects that you work on your spare time. If this is true, then I certainly wouldn't want to work for them.

Is this true?

[tejaswiy]

Joel's answer on this. Am pretty sure I can't do better: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...

[rxin]

It is not true. Google is actually fairly open about this. For projects that fall into the grey area, there is a committee of engineers and lawyers that you can submit your (personal) projects to, and they can give you a clear answer that the IP is owned by you. From anecdotes I've heard, the committee is very friendly to employees.

[rachelbythebay]

True. Unless you're one of the chosen few.

Also, it's not a simple open-and-shut "yep, we own it" response. It takes ages, while you lose whatever enthusiasm you might have had going in to the idea.

[1010011010]

In my experience, all computer/technology corporations do that. But Google lets you open-source your personal stuff with essentially no friction.

edit: added "in my experience".

[nkassis]

Why not? They have plenty of different areas they are in that would allow for most people to find a niche I think.

If it wasn't for the stuff I'm doing right now, which I find extremely fun, I would apply.

My only concern would be the issue of being in a huge company where it might be hard to make an significant impact. But all the people I know who are at Google currently seem to work on very cool stuff.

[moonlighter]

No, Google is a behemoth now, too large, too many processes, too much red-tape. I guess it's inevitable that such things start to exist in large companies due to neccessity; it's just that I don't want to deal with that.

[petercooper]

I've been working for myself for 13 years and love it, but I'd work at Google for a while to add some amazing people to my network, get to have some killer discussions with people at the top of their game (and perhaps build stuff with them) and because it'd look good on my bio (exactly the sort of reason they wouldn't hire me, I suspect). But unless I invented a major new protocol or programming language, I doubt they'd pay me enough to maintain my current lifestyle anyway, given most of their campuses are in notoriously expensive locales.

Ultimately, I think there are probably more exciting possibilities getting into the skunkworks or R&D departments of companies like LivingSocial, Groupon, Twitter, or any position at a smaller, progressive company like GitHub. They might not be jobs for life but you're going to be doing exciting work, learning new stuff, and meeting some interesting folks for sure.

[orenmazor]

before I visited SF and the googleplex, I would've said no, I can have way more fun and do way more interesting things on my own.

but after spending a weekend there, I've changed my mind. I'd definitely work there for a period. There are so many intelligent people there that it'd be foolish to not go through the experience, given the option.

Edit for context: I live in the east in canada, so part of my awesome experience is definitely the environment, as well as the people.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

You're assuming I know those things; I simply don't care about Google enough to.

There should be a option for "Maybe, if I knew what I would be working on."

[proxwell]

I had the opportunity about two years ago. I was on the Google campus for an event for the open source CMS that work on. The HR folks were very friendly and I enjoyed the time that I spent with them. At Google I'd have had some of the brightest coworkers anywhere, and that was pretty tempting. In my time at the GooglePlex I also got to experience the ample perks of working there. I realized that these were probably the best benefits I could get if I chose to work for another company.

Still, it took me less than a split second to decide. As a founder and a location-independent entrepreneur the loss of freedom and self-determination were unthinkable. With my current setup, I can jump a flight to anywhere I want, for as long as I want without having to ask permission from anyone. Likewise, my income and share of the profits I produce are determined by me alone. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

I'm actually tremendously thankful for the opportunity that I had at Google because, as potentially the world's best place to be an employee, they helped crystalize for me the realization that I am in exactly the right place.

[kylemaxwell]

I wouldn't, primarily because I don't care to relocate. Family reasons keep me in Dallas.

[cryptoz]

It appears Google has a Dallas office: http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...

[albertzeyer]

I'm still studying right now, so if the question means 'right now', I would of course answer 'No' because I want to finish my studies first.

If the question means 'right after I finished my current degree', I also would say 'No' because I planned to start a PhD.

If the questions means 'after I have finished all studies', I'm not sure yet. If whatever I am doing at that time is less interesting than working for Google and I'm not bound somehow to my current location, I probably would say 'Yes'.

So maybe there should be another option like 'Not now but maybe at some later time'.

[Keyframe]

Yes - vast resources, computational, logistical and brains to talk to, learn from and share. No - I'd probably end up working on something rather mundane. So, no.

[SoftwareMaven]

As I understand things today, no, I wouldn't. I want to build products that people absolutely adore, which invariably involves a strong product management focus and a strong customer service focus.

I don't believe Google has either of those. Instead, Google has a lot of amazing features and technologies, but few outstanding products.