Google

I very much enjoyed my time at Google.
It was a great privilege to be on a team there, but since I was a contractor, I did find it difficult to find work sometimes (especially during the COVID 19 crisis).

Indeed, I would highly recommend working at Google if you get an opportunity — when I had work, it was an amazing experience that helped me grow my intelligence and career.

Google is and always has been an amazing company. They’re always investing in “big bets” and always coming out with cool products! I was there (the first time around) in 2004. I don’t know how they do it, but as much as they have grown, they’re still able to embrace and maintain the “Googley” culture regardless of their size.

My only negative comment is in parts of the company, instead of promoting people from within to fill senior management roles, there’s been a tendency to hire externally. This isn’t a way to motivate and reward the individuals who have been at Google for many years and have made many contributions, people who are high-performers who deserve an opportunity for being considered for these roles.

I joined Google back in 2006 through an acquisition and stayed at Google for over 6 years. I enjoyed my entire time at Google and not only was I immersed in the culture but I was also working at a remote office and the best of both worlds! The corporate marketing team was very supportive and encouraged me to change teams and try new product teams. During the time I was there, I had a female Director who had recently moved into her position and had positive relationships with the leadership team. Overall, I had a positive experience working at Google and only left because I wanted to get back into startups and they moved my position to CA (I wasn’t willing to move).

I very much enjoyed my time at Google and considered it a privilege to be on a team there. However, I was a contractor, and it was very difficult to transition to a full-time position.

I’ve been at Google in Europe for almost 3 years, in tech. The culture promotes inclusion and rejects any kind of discrimination, a topic that is considered very seriously here. People are encouraged to grow, to learn and many initiatives outside of work are supported.
My co-workers in other roles such as sales people or marketing might not exactly feel the same way. The engineering culture is amazing, whoever you are and whatever you look like.

Wonderful workplace that truly was supportive of my goals, safety, mental health, and space.

I’m a developer by trade turned into a headhunter and builder of companies. Google is one of the best companies I’ve partnered with. Always on the bleeding edge of technology. People thrive on curiosity and have deep passion for building meaningful products that truly impact our experience.

Google is a huge company and your experience will vary considerably depending on what group you’re in – and just because the group is great when you hire in doesn’t mean it will continue to be good when leadership changes. Due to Google’s peculiar hiring process, it’s also likely that you won’t even officially interview with the people you will be working with, so it can be very difficult to get a feel for what your group will be like.

Equal pay is a goal at Google but salary transparency is discouraged, so it’s difficult to see how effective that is given gender-correlated but not gender-based differences, such as time off and schedule flexibility for family care, can influence salary. Minus two stars for the serious pay and benefits discrepancies between temporary and full-time workers.

If you’re not a software engineer, career advancement is pretty shaky. The entire promotion system is designed around software engineers – if you can’t measure your productivity in lines of codes written, you may have a very hard time getting promoted. Collaboration across teams is also much more difficult for non-software folks.

I know both men and women on part-time schedules but I’ve had my dedication and work ethic questioned due to my part-time status and family responsibilities, whereas I don’t hear that being a problem for men who flex their schedules to make time for family. One person in particular expressed his disapproval of my lifestyle (that is, my choice to make time for anything besides work and commuting) and was a big part of the reason I chose to leave that group.

In a different group there was a bad apple hired into a leadership position who routinely made derogatory remarks about women, including his wife, in front of everyone. I heard numerous complaints and I know HR was involved but a year later he’s still in the leadership position. I left so I don’t know whether his behavior has improved.

Like anywhere, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the experience, and when that person is in your chain of command, life will be miserable no matter how great your project and coworkers and free breakfast are. Make sure you really know your team before you make a move – and don’t believe the temp agency for a minute when they say it’s temp to hire. It’s not and you will get screwed.

I went in the on site interview assuming I was not going to get the job because I had priorrities i.e. Family first. In the interview the ladies that interviewed me responded to my concern about work life balance bt saying that Google was very family oriented etc. So I believed them. I was hired on as a temporary. I worked 7-3 so I can pick up my son. I could not take advantage of their shuttles because of my work hours nor most of their ‘benefits.” Théier shuttles ran only in the mornings and early evenings. There were times I brought my son (8 year old)in because he had a half day but he was quiet and kept to himself on his game boy. They were not happy about it and said kids are not welcome. In the end they let me and others go because they over hired.

I’ve been a front-end engineer and manager at Google for 10+ years. Like any company, the experience can vary greatly depending on your specific team and manager within Google. The vast majority of managers I’ve had have been extremely supportive career-wise and personally. I’ve taken two maternity leaves and was even promoted while I was on leave the second time. Most importantly to me, I have a flexible schedule which allows me to put my family first. I love working at Google and I can’t imagine leaving.

A few miscellaneous observations to explain my ratings:

I worked at Google for 4 years as an engineer in the NY office starting in 2008.
I believe even beginning with the Interview process Google is still very biased to the male engineer’s life, lifestyle and viewpoint. Putting a person on the spot and asking them to write code on a whiteboard or solve problems without having time to think weeds out a class of people who would be great engineers. Women who have already had to pass through many roadblocks to get a PhD in CS or another computational subject have been deformed by the system to that point, and I don’t think Google is sensitive or self aware enough to deal with this.

I understand that the success of Google is built around science, algorithms, code, software; but this then creates a corresponding culture in the same image. This leads them to thinking they can solve HR problems using algorithms rather than humans. As an analytical person but also an intuitive person, I can understand both the appeal of science as well as a more human approach, and Google is too heavily weighted towards a culture that is machine-like rather than human.

I had a boss who did not want me to try to go up for promotion but I had to insist I try, and when I did, I was promoted. (Promotion is by an independent committee). I don’t believe I had the support there to create a career path for me that would make me successful. After I left I took on a very senior (executive) leadership position elsewhere at a major corporation and I would never have found a path resembling that at Google, as there was not an obvious way for me to express my management abilities and no one really there to notice them.

Oftentimes people are managers there because they are extremely technically proficient and senior but not because they are good with people, mentorship, or group dynamics. So this creates a culture where it is difficult to express emotions, intuition or ideas in a way that is the true expression of oneself.

I learned a lot from a scientific/CS perspective while I was there.
But I didn’t see good management or communication and so I didn’t learn much in that regard.

I didn’t have kids so this wasn’t a factor for me.

I worked on the comms side which was predominantly women, so my experience may be slightly different than the norm. But I found everyone to be incredibly supportive and kind. The work can be intense for sure, but challenging. If you set clear boundaries, I think people generally respect them. I can’t comment on equal pay since I don’t have insight into what my male counterparts in comms were making.

This is how it was when I was there–2001-2008. It may have improved since then.

Alice Zimmermann

I worked on the business side of Google (GBO). Very diverse management here, a lot of women in management roles. Most people I see here are older than people on the engineering side, tend to have families, and have great work-life balances (the buildings start to empty out by 5pm), but there are definitely exceptions in some teams who have much heavier workloads. The culture is political and hierarchical at times, but no gender bias as far as I can see.

I worked at Google as a software engineer for a few years, left for family-related reasons, and returned this year to join a different team. Both times I have been fortunate to work in groups that were directed by women and had/have a lot of women engineers throughout the team. I did actively seek to join teams that appeared to have a high percentage of parents (and mothers) since I am one myself. My current team has so many women engineers we often outnumber the men in meetings. It’s kind of cool.

I know Google has been in the news lately as far as equal pay is concerned. I can only speak for myself, but as a mother I have always looked for flexibility and manageable responsibilities, which I have prioritized over promotions and pay. I feel that Google pays me very well and I would even take a pay cut if it meant more vacation days (school vacation schedules are nuts!). If a lot of mothers have this attitude, Google’s average salaries for women might reflect that. My personal feeling is that Google has been great about accommodating what I want from my career and I am quite happy there.

Culturally, it is just a very interesting and exciting place to work. The infrastructure is amazing, and people are very engaged in their work and the world around them. I have met a one or two jerks over the years but many, many nice, energetic people (of all ages!).

Google puts a lot of effort into maintaining a consistently transparent, friendly work environment across its many offices and despite its large size. That’s definitely not something that I’ve seen when working at other comparably sized companies, and it’s easy to overlook how amazing it is that you can visit offices in New York, Canada, Australia, etc. and all your co-workers are equally easy to talk to, interesting, thoughtful, and supportive. As for my immediate team, I love how they feel like my family and I also feel strongly supported in my career development.

There’s a few slight culture differences between offices, my personal (admittedly biased) advice is to pick any office other than Mountain View. I work at a relatively smaller office meaning it has a stronger sense of community, people generally know each other, and we feel that the site leadership has our backs. Larger offices like Mountain View may be more exciting since there’s more people and thus activities happening all the time, but as a result I’ve heard it can be harder to develop meaningful personal connections and a sense of significance.

Wonderfully open atmosphere.. it’s easy to find support and opportunities for collaboration. While probably not all teams are great, there’s an easy transfer policy so it’s possible to get out of a bad situation into a better one. Lots and lots of diversity efforts, and Google is constantly measuring and experimenting to try to improve. I can honestly say, after much experience, that this is probably the best company in the valley for women in tech.

Negatives: still figuring out management after some historic bias against the trade.. there’s too many teams led by those who don’t care about management or have too many directs, so certainly some are without support. On the career development front, hiring and promotion in general seems pretty unbiased (centralized committees and processes), but feels hard to crack for some… there are certainly great people who don’t get enough recognition.

Worked at Google as a software engineer for a bit over a year – it did very sadly not pan out for me as a great workplace.

1) They are very good about making sure *salaries* are equal. However, about half of your compensation is stock, so be *sure* to negotiate! Once you’re at that stage, they want you, and I was able to get my stock compensation tripled without any hassle; bringing my compensation from 145k to 190k. That makes a huge difference, and I took a lot of issue with the fact that when they showed salary comparisons by gender, that wasn’t included.

2) Some work from home, but certainly not acceptable to long-term WFH. Still had a significant issue with maternity leave holding back advancement.

3) Fun to work there, and pays great, but certainly I was assumed to be HR/marketing instead of an engineer many times working there because I was a woman who wore skirts. Has a weird overreaction that dressing casually is ‘always ok’, but if you’re a woman engineer who dresses nicely, you’re assumed to be non-technical, which was disappointing to me.

I have been a software engineer at Google Australia for a bit over 3 years. The pay is good and the culture supportive and friendly. Perks are fantastic. Promotion does require that you put your hand up and say you should be promoted which is not something that comes naturally to me. A good mentor was required to push me through my first promotion. The process seems fairly fair apart from that though.

I haven’t had kids myself but have seem many team members take time off for family with no impact or judgement for doing so. There are programs in place to help ramp back up after taking months off, and the leave offered is very good.

I have been at Google for 7 years. The perks are as good as they say. The culture is one of transparency and it does feel like a start up in many ways. The people are all A players and I am proud to be among them. The challenge at Google is that they hire very motivated, driven people, yet the organization is pretty flat. What does that mean? Little opportunity for advancement once you get to the higher levels. Directors and above rarely leave, which means it is very hard to advance. From a female perspective, the organization does care about diversity, but focuses more on the bringing in diverse candidates at the lower levels. There is still work to be done to promote good women. The females that are in leadership positions are amazing. We just need more of them.

I’m a software engineer and have been at Google for 3.5 years.
The pay is competitive to salaries offered at similar level in the big tech companies in the area.

I’ve been promoted twice, both times with full support and encouragements from my managers. The promo process is not perfect, but it’s not unfair. You have to self promote though, so without my manager’s encouragement I wouldn’t try so early.

My team is amazing – inclusive, diverse, friendly, very supportive. I love going to work. I feel safe being myself and can speak my mind freely.

I don’t have kids but Google offers generous (for the US standards) paternity and maternity leave and provides support for new parents after they come back to work.

I started at Google a little over a year ago, and have not found it to be particularly supportive. I’ve been told both that I do not ask enough questions and that I ask too few questions, which is really upsetting. The perks are awesome, but not really worth it to me on the whole.

It is true though, that while my experience has not been good. I know many people who are very happy. Perhaps it is just my team, but I find it particularly uncollaborative.

Google is a place where you can grow into a strong seasoned engineer. It seems to be committed to improving the lives of women in the company (and in tech as a whole).

I am a software engineer and have only been at Google for 10 months. I didn’t think there was anything really special about the work culture at Google until after talking to other friends about their experiences as a female engineer in the Bay Area.

Some examples:
– I work on a team of about 20 engineers, over half of whom are female, including our team lead.
– There is an annual mandatory Google-wide survey that asks employees how they feel about the culture, their team, their manager, and their work. One question about feeling respected during meetings garnered 95% instead of 100% affirmative answers, so my manager signed our whole team up for training workshops on working well with different personality types and respecting each other’s opinions. Can you imagine – 95% is indication of requiring training?!
– There are more women’s groups at Google than I can count.
– Google celebrates International Women’s Day, Women’s Month, and the entire company is sent regular emails about diversity and inclusion efforts.
– There is a well-defined career ladder and strict promotion system that tries to minimize bias as much as possible.
– Unconscious bias training is mandatory for every new Googler.
– We recently got Google-branded t-shirts that read “I work with badass women”.

The stories I hear from my friends about being spoken over or ignored at meetings, being looked past for significant projects, or being immersed in bro culture sound like horror stories. My manager is constantly encouraging me to take on bigger projects and self-promote. Google is a big place so maybe not every team is as passionate about diversity as mine, but I feel very grateful for the seemingly infinite amount of resources that Google provides in all aspects of employees’ lives.

I’ve been at Google 2 years as a software engineer. I think the base salary is not as competitive as unicorn startup or even Linkedin, but with good performance the company is generous toward refreshing pay and stock.

About career advancement, I saw several examples of women’s career advancement slowing down after having kids. I’ve seen this inside and outside of Google, but I think the company is trying to be supportive and trying to promote factoring in the complexity of the work rather than the amount of hours ones can put in.

If I were to decide again, I would pick Google again.

I’ve been at Google for 1 year, and it’s been great. The general company culture is great, and my immediate coworkers are very nice, empathetic, and supportive.