I can tell that this was written by an outsider, because it focuses on the perks and rehashes several cliches that have made their way into the popular media but aren't all that accurate.
Most Googlers will tell you that the best thing about working there is having the ability to work on really hard problems, with really smart coworkers, and lots of resources at your disposal. I remember asking my interviewer whether I could use things like Google's index if I had a cool 20% idea, and he was like "Sure. That's encouraged. Oftentimes I'll just grab 4000 or so machines and run a MapReduce to test out some hypothesis." My phone screener, when I asked him what it was like to work there, said "It's a place where really smart people go to be average," which has turned out to be both true and honestly one of the best things that I've gained from working there.
A lot of the observations in the article fall out of this, but in ways that are less sound-bitey. Google doesn't enforce set working hours - you can get in as late as you want (the latest I've been in is around 4:15 PM, but that was because I had a DMV appointment, the latest from just not waking up was about 2:00), stay as late as you want (my latest was about 1:00 AM, though I worked from home until 6:00 AM last Thursday), duck out during the day if you're meeting a friend or have a date or need to pick a sick kid up from school, or work from home as necessary. You also don't have a set workload: you do as much work as you think is appropriate and then go home.
The thing is - you are surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people. Many of them were used to being top-dog at whatever institution they came from before - hell, many were top dog (we have a lot of ex-startup-founders; there's a good chance that you're working with someone that's founded a company or originated a successful open-source project). And that can be a big adjustment, and the types of folks that Google typically hire usually react to not being on top by working harder. It's up to you to set limits on the amount of time you're willing to spend working, and most new hires at Google are used to being limited by "the amount of work my boss/professor/thesis advisor throws at me", not by the number of hours in the day.
I don't see how smart it is to work 10-12 hour days and for sure you are underpaid. Think a bit , you work 3000 hours a year as opposing to 1800-2000 , which turns your 250K/year salary to 160K and you don't have life. Sure it works for single under 30 kids , but how that would fit in 40+ group with regular family ?
Don't get me wrong I was working in startups (and I was over 40 at the time with regular family) insane times (100+ hr weeks) but just for year stretch ant that barley makes sense because of gold rush to the pushing product out of door.
Otherwise I prefer "work smarter not harder" way and seems google has "if you work hard it will seem smart"
"You also don't have a set workload: you do as much work as you think is appropriate and then go home."
Looking at both sides of this: the common complaint in most traditional companies is being under the thumb of the beancounters, and work being shipped incomplete, or buggy, etc. Or people working insane hours to make things happen.
It's a wish then for many in technology to eliminate this problem. At Google it appears this has happened. However, it seems to have introduced an entirely new problem...with no communication with end users, and no real deadlines, google's user facing software is often lacking obvious features that don't get worked on for ages...and forums full of users complaining without much of an acknowledgement or response from Google. The lack of focus and community interaction on certain Google products is at times bizarre.
It's an interesting note that you're damned if you do or damned if you don't. But it's very interesting to see both sides of this.
The thing is, thanks to the net and open source, I can "surround" myself professionally with very smart people from the comfort of my home office. Of course it's not the same but it's close enough that other concerns dominate. At 25 I would have jumped at the chance to work at a place like Google but at 41 it just doesn't appeal to me.
There are some "really hard problems" that could definitely use the brain power assembled but apparently are never pursued.
Are there effectively (company) political red lines at Google Inc. that preclude pursuit of solution to problems such as distributed, non-centralized, social networking, or, somehow the engineers unconsciously choose to [only] pursue solutions that fit with the corporations business model?
"Oftentimes I'll just grab 4000 or so machines and run a MapReduce to test out some hypothesis"
Fuck the food. Who cares about hammocks. Isn't this most geek's wet dream?
I don't work at Google, but I must say that being surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people is awesome- among other things, I always have something to aspire to, and somewhere to grow.
Sounds brilliant. It definitely makes me wish I could go be among geniuses for a day. Went to Mirman, though; so I know what it means to be dull among geniuses while you're being probed, overworked and experimented-upon. I especially know what it feels like to have your own sense of obligation turned against you in the service of your employer.
Just-under-geniuses -- and this is my observation only, as a guy who didn't make the cut to go to college when I was 12 -- have a desperate desire to prove their ability to whoever's in control. The closer you were to sparkling algebraic brilliance, or getting on Jeopardy at age-eleven, the harder it is. It can wreck your home life and your family.
The desire to prove your intelligence to your surrogate father figure is a sickness.
When you can run any kind of startup you want, and live wherever in the world you want while you're doing it, why's it better to be in an office that lets you come and go, and is filled with geniuses, but still looks and feels somehow like a preschool for kids with Asperger's?
When I was younger, I would have considered the Google environment to be perfect. A utopia for software engineers - especially if you have to be in the suburbs like Mountain View. The size would never have worked for me, but seeing something similar implemented at a startup level would have been my dream.
Now on my fourth startup, I feel it's unhealthy for the employees and the company. Having everyone's life revolve around a corporate culture is stifling. Employees lose perspective and balance. They lose touch with people who are not like them. Monoculture develops; groupthink flourishes.
It is a dangerous thing to be completely dependent on a company for basic necessities or for your friends. It makes it hard to leave everything you knew behind. It makes people defensive when any criticism of the company is raised since it attacks their way of life.
While a comfortable work environment is important, I reject the idea that employees should be encouraged, even passively, to stay at work all the time. I think employees should have a life outside of work involving people who aren't at the company and don't work in tech.
>They lose touch with people who are not like them. Monoculture develops; groupthink flourishes.
This is, I think, Google's biggest weakness. All the people I know at google think that google is a good company that has good intentions; not just that google is a good company to work for, but that google, an advertising company, makes the world a better place.
This leads to things like the google buzz problem. People at google genuinely don't see how the rest of us might assign less than honourable motives to Google's actions.
Every other company I know has a bunch of people (especially technical people) that may disagree with or take a cynical view of the company as a whole, employees that stick around because the work is interesting or the pay is good or what have you.
But that's the thing; everyone I know at google genuinely seems to love google. The two people I know that didn't, well, they quickly left. (Incidentally, both of those people were female. My impression, and I emphasise that I'm an outsider and that my impression may not reflect reality, is that google takes technical women less seriously than other valley tech companies.)
Part of this is that google tends to hire from the top 50%, and the top 50% have more options, and thus they are more likely to switch jobs to find a company they really like.
I believe it's more than that, though; I know plenty of people good enough to be google that have positions they like in companies that they don't like. Go look at any of the local defence contractors, and you will find plenty of people that are up to the google standard, doing interesting work for an end-goal that many of them find repugnant.
Even if I could make it past the interview stage, I would never want to work at Google.
No matter how nice the work environment is it still feels like they are prettying up a cage. They make it feel like you can come and go and blur the line between life and work..but you are still just an employee. You can't build a company on the side while working at Google (without their blessing or cut) and you are still told what to do.
FWIW, this doesn't especially match my experience at Google. (I was an engineer there for four years, ending about a year and a half ago. I doubt things have changed drastically since then.)
Most of the descriptions about the environment and perks are accurate, though the article may somewhat exaggerate the extent to which people participate. However, I never felt pressure to devote my life to the company, and certainly there was no direct connection between hours worked and compensation.
Long term, the biggest personal variables in Google compensation are promotions and stock grants. The biggest determinant of those, in turn (luck and politics aside) is a perception that you're doing important/great work. Burning the midnight oil is not necessarily going to help with that, and it's certainly not the only way to get there.
Maybe the culture is different in other parts of the company. But I don't think it could be that different... there's a deliberate process for bringing people together from different parts of the organization to make decisions on promotions.
Disclaimer: I'm no expert only having worked here for little more than a year (true veterans can speak to Google culture far better than I) but I'll add my perspective.
None of this rings false although there's not really that much substance to the piece and certainly nothing new.
I will add two things:
1. You get as much out of it as you put in; and
2. As an employee you are empowered.
(2) can be a little hard to explain. Basically the rules (apart from a few like keeping confidences and not doing anything criminal) are really guidelines. A lot of effort is made to accommodate outliers. Let's face it, there are some engineers who are quite brilliant but have a lot of, well, idiosyncrasies.
Also if you need to work early, late or need new hardware or whatever you use your discretion because if you ask for something you'll probably get it but the culture of being "Googley" includes not getting or doing things just because you can. Use your judgement.
Oh in New York it's a little different. Commutes can be a lot smaller (I'm a 5 minute walk from work) so there's not as much of an issue with crazy hours because the travel time, being a fixed cost, may jot encourage you to make the most of it, as it were.
Sounds like a great place to work. I got out of web dev for companies in San Francisco around the time I saw a client bill and realized they were charging 5-6x my hourly for my work to clients. Still, what you do for a company like Google would be a lot harder to quantify (or explain to a client), and it's probably a lot more personally gratifying.
I'm probably an asshole to say this, but I'm reasonably sure I could've gotten a job with Google in 2001-2; and at that point I didn't want to work in that kind of office. I went back to LA and drove a taxi for a year and a half, and wrote a novel, to clear my head.
The thing that makes me flinch about it is the competitive nature of the job, even if your job shouldn't have to be competitive. The open offices, the personal time, all of these things make you run faster rather than being allowed to slow down and think. And if you get to thinking about who you're running for...who knows? As insulated as you are from the clients -- which is great -- you also almost never get to see the direct result of your own work. So what emerges is this endless Senior Year of High School, where everyone's waiting to be recommended or get their acceptance letters, while partially slacking off while looking like they're on their best behavior. I'm not sure that's a way I'd be willing to spend my life.
I make about 1/5th what you do, probably, for about the same level of work and commitment to my own startup. But I don't envy your job.
Speaking as a fairly recent Google hire: No, this is not what it's really like to work at Google.
I considered writing more, but really, what else is there to say? Working at Google is not defined by the presence of cafeterias, alcoholism is not a way of life, and overwork is no more prevalent than any other Silicon Valley company I've worked at.
It doesn't seem to me that the father of the 18-month old son is trading the chance to spend time with his offspring for cold hard work, but rather trading it for salsa dancing classes, a couple of pints at the bar with his friends, and whatever else fancies him out of the thousands of distractions on campus.
I've heard all too many stories of people "working" insane hours at Google only to find out that they're merely working normal hours and spending the rest of their time living at Google. And it's great to have the option to do that.
(Disclaimer: I've been working/living at Google for 2.5 months now.)
During my time there I remember on guy who was at the office a lot, at dinner time his family would come to Google and eat dinner with him at Charlie's. Sometimes on weekends they would eat lunch with him too.
Just before I left, Google started trying to enforce the 1 guest a month 'rule' where you had to sign in with both who you were visiting, and whether or not you were going to eat a meal. If you were, your guest badge would say 'guest (meal)'. I guess the idea was that one could algorithmically filter out folks who were abusing the option. The security guys would hassle the folks who didn't have '(meal)' on their guest badges.
I saw a lot of people who were visiting "Larry Page, guest (meal)" and I thought that was pretty funny. I also noticed that this guy who used to spend time with his family at meal times now didn't. I felt badly for him. I could not decide if he had been abusing Google before by abusing his 'guest' privilege or if Google was abusing him now by not allowing him this option for some family time. A little of both I guess.
I've been at Google two years, in the Cambridge office. I work pretty long hours, but part of that is because work is my hobby. I'd be working on the ext4 file system whether Google paid me or not. It's something that I'm passionate about it. Heck, even if I won a lottery and had a $20 million dollar windfall, I'd probably still be working there, because it's incredibly fun working with lots of smart people, and I'm at a place where I can definitely and directly see how my work is making a difference.
So people who talk about it as being a velvet cage have gotten it all wrong. It's a cage, if you want to call it a cage, that I've chosen of my own free will; it's how I've wanted to spend my time even before I joined Google. Google has simply removed obstacles from allowing me to work on my passion as much as I like; in general, I think it's fair to say that Google wants to find people who are smart and passionate at what they do; those for whom their work is a joy, and not just something they do so they can put bread on the table.
As far as promotions are concerned, the criteria at least for software engineers is pretty simple: it's a matter of demonstrating that you are already working at your new level, in terms of technical expertise, scope of your work, and impact to the company. As far as I'm concerned, that's the way it should be at any company where good engineers would want to hang their hat.
I work there. Its been four and a lot years. I don't work in mountain view, though.
working hours: I average 40h a week. Which is what all the studies say is optimal. The key perk here is picking your hours. If I'm feeling hungover, I work less. If I'm on a roll, I work more. If I have to wait at home for half a day to let in my landlord or something, thats fine. As long as work get done, no one cares. no one clock-watches. I do think there is a correlation between working hard and getting promoted, but its not that strong a correlation - my last promotion came at the end of working 40h weeks... I can't imagine people feeling like they have to leave because they aren't putting in stupid hours.
boozing: there is a certain amount of company paid for drink. there is a certain amount of people bringing in booze. However, the line has been drawn about having a drink and then working. And really, on the scale of drinking, google is kinda lame. At tgif I think the most I've managed is a couple of beers.
Another twist on the "smart people" thing: its not about everyone being smart, its about no one being stupid. I don't have to spend tons of my time explaining stuff to people. I don't have any co-workers where it would be faster to do their work for them.
grades etc: I do run into people who name drop uni or test results or whatever, but most of the time, no one cares. I work with people who studied a subject completely different to computers at uni. I work with people who never bothered with uni. I do think there a bits of the company where going to mit over random uni still matters, but I don't work with those bits.
My big dislike is that its a big company - there is lots of existing code and systems, some of which is showing its age, its hard to change company policy on the big issues, you do feel like one in X cogs, and there is a lot of internal bikeshedding.
This sounds very much like how it is to work at DESY and CERN. However, at CERN and even more so at DESY, the general environs are not that pleasant. CERN can be pretty sweet, although many of the buildings don't have aircon and the furniture and computers can be outdated. DESY is worse and just tore up its soccer pitch a couple of years ago to build on top of it.
The canteens at CERN are pretty good, but the canteen at DESY is dire. However, there seems to be the same easy-going, yet intensely competitive dominated-by-young-clever-people vibe at Google as I've seen at these labs. I wonder if they took any inspiration from particle physics labs when they designed their offices?
"""but the canteen at DESY is dire"""
mmmm... restaurant 3? :)
I've been working at CERN and I think is not comparable. Your salary doesn't depend on the hours you spend on the project, AFAIK there are no bonuses. Also some buildings (like 33) close at 7 during weekdays and if you want a coffee, a snack or to take a shower you need to ask for special permision to enter. You're not encouraged to do extra hours(although I did...a lot)
It's strange how this article praises what appears to be a lifestyle that's utterly devoted to and centered a corporation as a good thing. The guy spends his day doing Google things (some work, some merely provided by Google), goes home and sees his family for a couple hours, does a few more Google things, then goes to bed.
Perhaps the guy feels his work is important and derives personal satisfaction from it. That might make him happier in the long run and a better husband and father.
The sentiment I have is that of the 30 year old. When I was 19 and working as a hardware and software designer at a start up, my boss found out that I had come in on a Saturday and worked all day. I thought it was cool and awesome to design hardware, and then write the firmware for it.
He was #5 out of 120 employees with 20+ years of experience. He took me to the side and said, one day, you will have a family. Working on the weekend and long hours should not be something you strive for. He worked 9 to 5, and so did the rest of the team.
I'm 33 now and have a 2 month old. I work 9 to 5 Mon to Friday. No more, no less. His was the best advice ever given by a manager of mine. Only took me 14 years to "get it" :)
Another googler here. I don't see people over working. My boss, who I totally respect as a programmer, leaves at 5pm every day. So did my previous boss. Both have families. Both work hard the entire time they are at Google. Both go home at a reasonable hour.
I'd say the same of pretty much all my teammates. The place is nearly empty by 7pm but none of them were slacking during the day.
I also agree with another googler's post here. Google, more than any other company I've worked with, tries to make sure nothing gets in your way. Need another monitor, hard drive, more ram, higher desk, cable, mouse, keyboard. They just give it to you asap. Need another machine, ask your boss. I've never been denied, machine shows up asap.
Compare this to my previous job where our build server was out of space and it took 6 EFFING MONTHS FOR THEM TO A APPROVE A $100 hard drive! WTF!!!
The perks are nice and also help you get more done in less time so you can go have your life. Not having to drive to a gym = 10-20 minutes of your life back. Being able to see a doctor on campus if you want means 20-40 minutes of your life back. Eating lunch on campus also probably means, on average, 30 mins a day of your life back although you are welcome to take a long lunch. I'd say at least twice a week some of my coworkers and I walk to a different building for lunch for the walk.
Other perks include a gazillion talks. (http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks/videos). That's obviously not the entire list but I've personally not worked at a company before where I could go attend anything other than team meetings.
I've worked far more hours at every previous job. Usually because of bad management. I'm not trying to say Google is perfect but most of the people trying to find issues seem to be grasping at straws and making stuff up.
The experience of people I know at Google seems to vary incredibly based on direct supervisor (like any company) and the specific project you're doing. There are people I know who have gotten stuck on high-revenue but to-them uninteresting teams, couldn't easily shift to other parts of google, so they left.
If you could get the right team (and had a cool direct supervisor, or had enough status to force this), it seems like a pretty awesome place to work. If you want to have a huge impact, working for a company like Google or Facebook, in the right capacity, pretty much guarantees it. Not having to worry if checks will clear, if kitchens will be stocked, etc. is a nice benefit on top of that.
(If I could get the job of "make Android the most secure mobile OS, using some of the stuff from ChromeOS, and utterly crush all other mobile platforms in the Enterprise, I'd be really tempted; or the same thing for an EC2-killer from Google, also built around security.)
Google still and probably will always appeal to me as a team I'd join to solve hard problems. Even if they invent some of those problems themselves. I'm all for seeing your family but I think you can strike a balance. Google can put in a single room several great thinkers and engineers where 100 years from now people will look back and marvel.
It's one thing to say there's no set hours, it's another thing entirely to be in a place where you're surrounded by workaholics and your performance is measured on what you produce -- think about it: if you don't burn yourself at both ends, you'll be on the low end of productivity.
The article suggests (ok, it does more than suggest) that one receives promotions at Google based on how hard one works or how many hours one puts in. Is that really the case? Shouldn't it be based on how effectively you work, i.e. your contribution to the company?
[+] [-] nostrademons|14 years ago|reply
Most Googlers will tell you that the best thing about working there is having the ability to work on really hard problems, with really smart coworkers, and lots of resources at your disposal. I remember asking my interviewer whether I could use things like Google's index if I had a cool 20% idea, and he was like "Sure. That's encouraged. Oftentimes I'll just grab 4000 or so machines and run a MapReduce to test out some hypothesis." My phone screener, when I asked him what it was like to work there, said "It's a place where really smart people go to be average," which has turned out to be both true and honestly one of the best things that I've gained from working there.
A lot of the observations in the article fall out of this, but in ways that are less sound-bitey. Google doesn't enforce set working hours - you can get in as late as you want (the latest I've been in is around 4:15 PM, but that was because I had a DMV appointment, the latest from just not waking up was about 2:00), stay as late as you want (my latest was about 1:00 AM, though I worked from home until 6:00 AM last Thursday), duck out during the day if you're meeting a friend or have a date or need to pick a sick kid up from school, or work from home as necessary. You also don't have a set workload: you do as much work as you think is appropriate and then go home.
The thing is - you are surrounded by incredibly intelligent & fiercely hard-working people. Many of them were used to being top-dog at whatever institution they came from before - hell, many were top dog (we have a lot of ex-startup-founders; there's a good chance that you're working with someone that's founded a company or originated a successful open-source project). And that can be a big adjustment, and the types of folks that Google typically hire usually react to not being on top by working harder. It's up to you to set limits on the amount of time you're willing to spend working, and most new hires at Google are used to being limited by "the amount of work my boss/professor/thesis advisor throws at me", not by the number of hours in the day.
[+] [-] cunac|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|14 years ago|reply
Looking at both sides of this: the common complaint in most traditional companies is being under the thumb of the beancounters, and work being shipped incomplete, or buggy, etc. Or people working insane hours to make things happen.
It's a wish then for many in technology to eliminate this problem. At Google it appears this has happened. However, it seems to have introduced an entirely new problem...with no communication with end users, and no real deadlines, google's user facing software is often lacking obvious features that don't get worked on for ages...and forums full of users complaining without much of an acknowledgement or response from Google. The lack of focus and community interaction on certain Google products is at times bizarre.
It's an interesting note that you're damned if you do or damned if you don't. But it's very interesting to see both sides of this.
[+] [-] gnosis|14 years ago|reply
Good that they're intelligent. Fiercely hard working -- not so good. I don't want to be surrounded by workaholics, no matter how intelligent they are.
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eternalban|14 years ago|reply
Are there effectively (company) political red lines at Google Inc. that preclude pursuit of solution to problems such as distributed, non-centralized, social networking, or, somehow the engineers unconsciously choose to [only] pursue solutions that fit with the corporations business model?
[+] [-] gcp|14 years ago|reply
Your examples are all things that were promised during the hiring process, not your own experience. This raises a red flag for me.
[+] [-] acqq|14 years ago|reply
http://www.dilbert.com/2011-12-19/
[+] [-] dholowiski|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|14 years ago|reply
That really might be OK and might work if you are unmarried, without kids and living alone.
As you grow up to take more responsibilities. It definitely makes more career and financial sense to..
Be best among the average than to be average among the best.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noduerme|14 years ago|reply
Just-under-geniuses -- and this is my observation only, as a guy who didn't make the cut to go to college when I was 12 -- have a desperate desire to prove their ability to whoever's in control. The closer you were to sparkling algebraic brilliance, or getting on Jeopardy at age-eleven, the harder it is. It can wreck your home life and your family.
The desire to prove your intelligence to your surrogate father figure is a sickness.
When you can run any kind of startup you want, and live wherever in the world you want while you're doing it, why's it better to be in an office that lets you come and go, and is filled with geniuses, but still looks and feels somehow like a preschool for kids with Asperger's?
[+] [-] palish|14 years ago|reply
Is there any way you could give your first-reaction answer for "what is the worst thing about working at Google?"
[+] [-] mjwalshe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply
Now on my fourth startup, I feel it's unhealthy for the employees and the company. Having everyone's life revolve around a corporate culture is stifling. Employees lose perspective and balance. They lose touch with people who are not like them. Monoculture develops; groupthink flourishes.
It is a dangerous thing to be completely dependent on a company for basic necessities or for your friends. It makes it hard to leave everything you knew behind. It makes people defensive when any criticism of the company is raised since it attacks their way of life.
While a comfortable work environment is important, I reject the idea that employees should be encouraged, even passively, to stay at work all the time. I think employees should have a life outside of work involving people who aren't at the company and don't work in tech.
[+] [-] lsc|14 years ago|reply
This is, I think, Google's biggest weakness. All the people I know at google think that google is a good company that has good intentions; not just that google is a good company to work for, but that google, an advertising company, makes the world a better place.
This leads to things like the google buzz problem. People at google genuinely don't see how the rest of us might assign less than honourable motives to Google's actions.
Every other company I know has a bunch of people (especially technical people) that may disagree with or take a cynical view of the company as a whole, employees that stick around because the work is interesting or the pay is good or what have you.
But that's the thing; everyone I know at google genuinely seems to love google. The two people I know that didn't, well, they quickly left. (Incidentally, both of those people were female. My impression, and I emphasise that I'm an outsider and that my impression may not reflect reality, is that google takes technical women less seriously than other valley tech companies.)
Part of this is that google tends to hire from the top 50%, and the top 50% have more options, and thus they are more likely to switch jobs to find a company they really like.
I believe it's more than that, though; I know plenty of people good enough to be google that have positions they like in companies that they don't like. Go look at any of the local defence contractors, and you will find plenty of people that are up to the google standard, doing interesting work for an end-goal that many of them find repugnant.
[+] [-] paulhauggis|14 years ago|reply
No matter how nice the work environment is it still feels like they are prettying up a cage. They make it feel like you can come and go and blur the line between life and work..but you are still just an employee. You can't build a company on the side while working at Google (without their blessing or cut) and you are still told what to do.
[+] [-] true_religion|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snewman|14 years ago|reply
Most of the descriptions about the environment and perks are accurate, though the article may somewhat exaggerate the extent to which people participate. However, I never felt pressure to devote my life to the company, and certainly there was no direct connection between hours worked and compensation.
Long term, the biggest personal variables in Google compensation are promotions and stock grants. The biggest determinant of those, in turn (luck and politics aside) is a perception that you're doing important/great work. Burning the midnight oil is not necessarily going to help with that, and it's certainly not the only way to get there.
Maybe the culture is different in other parts of the company. But I don't think it could be that different... there's a deliberate process for bringing people together from different parts of the organization to make decisions on promotions.
[+] [-] cletus|14 years ago|reply
None of this rings false although there's not really that much substance to the piece and certainly nothing new.
I will add two things:
1. You get as much out of it as you put in; and
2. As an employee you are empowered.
(2) can be a little hard to explain. Basically the rules (apart from a few like keeping confidences and not doing anything criminal) are really guidelines. A lot of effort is made to accommodate outliers. Let's face it, there are some engineers who are quite brilliant but have a lot of, well, idiosyncrasies.
Also if you need to work early, late or need new hardware or whatever you use your discretion because if you ask for something you'll probably get it but the culture of being "Googley" includes not getting or doing things just because you can. Use your judgement.
Oh in New York it's a little different. Commutes can be a lot smaller (I'm a 5 minute walk from work) so there's not as much of an issue with crazy hours because the travel time, being a fixed cost, may jot encourage you to make the most of it, as it were.
[+] [-] jayzee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noduerme|14 years ago|reply
I'm probably an asshole to say this, but I'm reasonably sure I could've gotten a job with Google in 2001-2; and at that point I didn't want to work in that kind of office. I went back to LA and drove a taxi for a year and a half, and wrote a novel, to clear my head.
The thing that makes me flinch about it is the competitive nature of the job, even if your job shouldn't have to be competitive. The open offices, the personal time, all of these things make you run faster rather than being allowed to slow down and think. And if you get to thinking about who you're running for...who knows? As insulated as you are from the clients -- which is great -- you also almost never get to see the direct result of your own work. So what emerges is this endless Senior Year of High School, where everyone's waiting to be recommended or get their acceptance letters, while partially slacking off while looking like they're on their best behavior. I'm not sure that's a way I'd be willing to spend my life.
I make about 1/5th what you do, probably, for about the same level of work and commitment to my own startup. But I don't envy your job.
[+] [-] neild|14 years ago|reply
I considered writing more, but really, what else is there to say? Working at Google is not defined by the presence of cafeterias, alcoholism is not a way of life, and overwork is no more prevalent than any other Silicon Valley company I've worked at.
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
It feels like this is an amalgamation half-accurate summaries from other articles cobbled together and puffed out.
[+] [-] raldi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shazow|14 years ago|reply
I've heard all too many stories of people "working" insane hours at Google only to find out that they're merely working normal hours and spending the rest of their time living at Google. And it's great to have the option to do that.
(Disclaimer: I've been working/living at Google for 2.5 months now.)
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
Just before I left, Google started trying to enforce the 1 guest a month 'rule' where you had to sign in with both who you were visiting, and whether or not you were going to eat a meal. If you were, your guest badge would say 'guest (meal)'. I guess the idea was that one could algorithmically filter out folks who were abusing the option. The security guys would hassle the folks who didn't have '(meal)' on their guest badges.
I saw a lot of people who were visiting "Larry Page, guest (meal)" and I thought that was pretty funny. I also noticed that this guy who used to spend time with his family at meal times now didn't. I felt badly for him. I could not decide if he had been abusing Google before by abusing his 'guest' privilege or if Google was abusing him now by not allowing him this option for some family time. A little of both I guess.
[+] [-] tytso|14 years ago|reply
So people who talk about it as being a velvet cage have gotten it all wrong. It's a cage, if you want to call it a cage, that I've chosen of my own free will; it's how I've wanted to spend my time even before I joined Google. Google has simply removed obstacles from allowing me to work on my passion as much as I like; in general, I think it's fair to say that Google wants to find people who are smart and passionate at what they do; those for whom their work is a joy, and not just something they do so they can put bread on the table.
As far as promotions are concerned, the criteria at least for software engineers is pretty simple: it's a matter of demonstrating that you are already working at your new level, in terms of technical expertise, scope of your work, and impact to the company. As far as I'm concerned, that's the way it should be at any company where good engineers would want to hang their hat.
[+] [-] psn|14 years ago|reply
working hours: I average 40h a week. Which is what all the studies say is optimal. The key perk here is picking your hours. If I'm feeling hungover, I work less. If I'm on a roll, I work more. If I have to wait at home for half a day to let in my landlord or something, thats fine. As long as work get done, no one cares. no one clock-watches. I do think there is a correlation between working hard and getting promoted, but its not that strong a correlation - my last promotion came at the end of working 40h weeks... I can't imagine people feeling like they have to leave because they aren't putting in stupid hours.
boozing: there is a certain amount of company paid for drink. there is a certain amount of people bringing in booze. However, the line has been drawn about having a drink and then working. And really, on the scale of drinking, google is kinda lame. At tgif I think the most I've managed is a couple of beers.
Another twist on the "smart people" thing: its not about everyone being smart, its about no one being stupid. I don't have to spend tons of my time explaining stuff to people. I don't have any co-workers where it would be faster to do their work for them.
grades etc: I do run into people who name drop uni or test results or whatever, but most of the time, no one cares. I work with people who studied a subject completely different to computers at uni. I work with people who never bothered with uni. I do think there a bits of the company where going to mit over random uni still matters, but I don't work with those bits.
My big dislike is that its a big company - there is lots of existing code and systems, some of which is showing its age, its hard to change company policy on the big issues, you do feel like one in X cogs, and there is a lot of internal bikeshedding.
[+] [-] nagrom|14 years ago|reply
The canteens at CERN are pretty good, but the canteen at DESY is dire. However, there seems to be the same easy-going, yet intensely competitive dominated-by-young-clever-people vibe at Google as I've seen at these labs. I wonder if they took any inspiration from particle physics labs when they designed their offices?
[+] [-] fasouto|14 years ago|reply
I've been working at CERN and I think is not comparable. Your salary doesn't depend on the hours you spend on the project, AFAIK there are no bonuses. Also some buildings (like 33) close at 7 during weekdays and if you want a coffee, a snack or to take a shower you need to ask for special permision to enter. You're not encouraged to do extra hours(although I did...a lot)
[+] [-] zura|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emmapersky|14 years ago|reply
One is not a valid sample. Other than a single persons perspective, everything else is speculation.
Disclaimer: I work for Google.
[+] [-] slewis|14 years ago|reply
Having worked there I'd say the article is unfairly one-sided. There are plenty of Googlers who maintain a normal work-life balance.
[+] [-] notJim|14 years ago|reply
Surely our lives should involve more than that.
[+] [-] hn_reader|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unfocused|14 years ago|reply
He was #5 out of 120 employees with 20+ years of experience. He took me to the side and said, one day, you will have a family. Working on the weekend and long hours should not be something you strive for. He worked 9 to 5, and so did the rest of the team.
I'm 33 now and have a 2 month old. I work 9 to 5 Mon to Friday. No more, no less. His was the best advice ever given by a manager of mine. Only took me 14 years to "get it" :)
[+] [-] joezydeco|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggman|14 years ago|reply
I'd say the same of pretty much all my teammates. The place is nearly empty by 7pm but none of them were slacking during the day.
I also agree with another googler's post here. Google, more than any other company I've worked with, tries to make sure nothing gets in your way. Need another monitor, hard drive, more ram, higher desk, cable, mouse, keyboard. They just give it to you asap. Need another machine, ask your boss. I've never been denied, machine shows up asap.
Compare this to my previous job where our build server was out of space and it took 6 EFFING MONTHS FOR THEM TO A APPROVE A $100 hard drive! WTF!!!
The perks are nice and also help you get more done in less time so you can go have your life. Not having to drive to a gym = 10-20 minutes of your life back. Being able to see a doctor on campus if you want means 20-40 minutes of your life back. Eating lunch on campus also probably means, on average, 30 mins a day of your life back although you are welcome to take a long lunch. I'd say at least twice a week some of my coworkers and I walk to a different building for lunch for the walk.
Other perks include a gazillion talks. (http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks/videos). That's obviously not the entire list but I've personally not worked at a company before where I could go attend anything other than team meetings.
I've worked far more hours at every previous job. Usually because of bad management. I'm not trying to say Google is perfect but most of the people trying to find issues seem to be grasping at straws and making stuff up.
[+] [-] rdl|14 years ago|reply
If you could get the right team (and had a cool direct supervisor, or had enough status to force this), it seems like a pretty awesome place to work. If you want to have a huge impact, working for a company like Google or Facebook, in the right capacity, pretty much guarantees it. Not having to worry if checks will clear, if kitchens will be stocked, etc. is a nice benefit on top of that.
(If I could get the job of "make Android the most secure mobile OS, using some of the stuff from ChromeOS, and utterly crush all other mobile platforms in the Enterprise, I'd be really tempted; or the same thing for an EC2-killer from Google, also built around security.)
[+] [-] jjm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lrobb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|14 years ago|reply