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What's It Like to Work at Google?  (View post)

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

Monday, July 5, 2010
13 years ago23,130 views

Hasn't the free lunch been discontinued after the econonic crisis started? Back when they discontinued at least half a dozen of services?

Zome Bady [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

No, free lunches have not been cancelled. Google does not appear to have been hit particularly bad. A fair bit of cost cutting was done, but it focussed on identifying and eliminating inefficient perks, e.g. used by few people but high cost.

Part of this went into identifying which cafes are not very popular, though this usually just lead to the cafe being closed and a differently themed one being reopened in its place.

Dan [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Don't you love when interns pretend they are people? This guy with no experience in the working world who was not good enough to get a full time gig with Google is giving me his opinion? Nobody should care what he thinks, nor should you repost it here.

Ash [PersonRank 1]

13 years ago #

[put at-character here]Dan

Google Interns go through a tougher interview process than most full-time hires in other companies. They are put on real projects, frequently high-visibility ones with real launches and they do sterling work.

I would take a "failed" Google intern over a engineer from almost any other company as they would have gained 3 months (or more) Google experience which in my time there has been more valuable than any university course or other full-time employment.

Oh! And one thing I like about Google is that there's no intern snobbery – they're treated like regular employees while they're there. It's not like being an intern in most industries or other tech companies where they're treated as dirt.

yours,
An ex-Googler

Justin [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

[put at-character here]Dan

your attitude towards others [snip]. I can see, from this small example, how you'd treat anyone you'd think inferior to you. [snip]
[Personal attack removed. -Editor]

That said: I had an intern at Google that developed a full shipping feature for one of the highest visible projects we had: from design to production code.
He left to finish his PhD and we were very happy with his work.

fun [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Nice to see the arrogance of Google start its dependency in Apple's recent rise to be the star of popular culture. Every tech company either goes out of business or looses its market share. IBM, DEC, Sun and MicroSoft all diminished in importance, Google will too.

These engineers will eventually be reminiscing about the "good old days".

Mike [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

I really like it, at least. I won't stay here for the rest of my career by any means, but it's keeping me entertained for now.

One thing people probably don't realize is that many employees are very much concerned by how the company is perceived, and lots of us read stories and comments about Google obsessively. It's always kind of painful to read the negative stuff, especially when peoples views or comments are based on distorted or flatly wrong beliefs, but it's also a much needed form of reality check.

Some people don't do this and I sometimes find their work to be not as great .... the assumption "we are Google thus when we do something it must be inherently awesome" is not valid – unfortunately a few teams forget this then launch turkeys.

One thing that does bother me a bit is that the culture, especially in Mountain View, can be rather startup/hype obsessed. This partly reflects the culture in the whole Valley and isn't unique to Google. But I find business and product decisions based on what everyone is talking about to be too common (and often rather weak). Fortunately there are lots of Google employees outside of Mountain View to balance this out and (again) provide a reality check.

Joe S [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Maybe Google and some of the Googlers should be more concerned about their shareholders and the stock price than they are about the quality of the free fudge in their cafeterias.

While Apple makes billions of dollars off of their entry into the smartphone market, Google who is now the second player in the market with Android makes... next to nothing???? Nice job Google.

Now that Apple has entered into Google's market by selling advertising, are they giving it away for free like Google is doing with their Apple competing products? No, they are charging 4 times as much.

No wonder one stock has been rocketing, and the other tanking.

Google is a great example of when you put too many Computer Science Phds in the same room, nothing of any marketable value gets accomplished. I'm just impressed any deliverable products come out of there these days.

wow [PersonRank 1]

13 years ago #

Man, people are bitter...

MCR [PersonRank 1]

13 years ago #

Hey Joe S if you want to slag off a company and attempt to hype another's stock prices, you may want to [personal attack removed].

Amit [PersonRank 1]

13 years ago #

I think it all depends on what was the experience of one individual, that cannot be generalised. Recently I got interviewed in Google's Hyderabad, India office. My experience was wonderful. Earlier to that I read so many stories where people mentioned that interviewers were arrogant,tough,nuts etc. However for me all the three interviewers were very friendly and cooperative. I didn't feel even a bit of pressure during the entire interview process. Even the HR was so cooperative with me in rescheduling my interview when my health went bad.

Ranita Merkuto [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

Google smells like fish

nick [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

[put at-character here]Amit: I guess people vary.

I interviewed with them at their Bangalore office 3 years back. The employees were arrogant to the limit and pretty close to being nuts.

Chris [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #


Google needs to REALLY work on their retail sales and customer support. They got the programing part down to a fine science, but Apple will kill them on customer service every time.

I use Google Adsense and it is like talking to a binary brick wall when you need help or service. If Apple does half the support job on their new ads that they do with their computers/products, they will slowly overtake Google's bread and butter.

Also, Google needs to work on their online sales. I am tired of reading the fine print on their phone products and finding all sorts of clauses and return policie$ which turn off most buyers.

They need to join the real retail World and step off their cloud!
LOL

IwannaGoogleinsiderview [PersonRank 0]

13 years ago #

One day, perhaps I too can partake of the Google from the inside. Alas, at the moment, I am stuck as a tech support monkey ...

BJ [PersonRank 1]

13 years ago #

Wow, too many computer science PHDs in the same room are a problem? Give my company a room full of engineers any day over a room full of business majors. They actually studied in college 7 days a week, and didn't spend half of it drinking and getting high.

In my opinion, your average investor is nothing better than a lowly gambler and doesn't know the first thing about running a company successfully. Hey investors – try WORKING for a living. On top of that, unless you bought stock during the IPO, you didn't contribute any money to the company, you just leeched off it.

If you knew anything about Google, you'd know that every technical person is required to spend 20% of their time developing software – not just engineers. Having known a few, I can tell you that these people are some of the smartest, hardest working minds in the industry. Some of these products they develop get used internally (saving money on external service contracts) and some turn into "deliverable" user-facing apps.

As for Google's strategy of giving away services like the Android OS for free – in any other industry, it would be illegal and called dumping. In most cases, it results in the paid services folding when they can't compete.

Typical short-sighted investor – can't see the long term strategy at work, cares only about the next quarterly earnings report. I guess Microsoft was foolish to give IE away for free with their OS then, right? They should have charged for it, it would have easily replaced Netscape on it's own. :P

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