
Ask HN: What do you think of Google (as a company)? - baccheion
That is, how do you perceive the company, its work environment, its employees, and its future prospects?
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johan_larson
There are pluses and minuses to working for Google. On the plus side, they pay
well, your colleagues will be uncommonly capable, and you'll get a chance to
work on a vast scale. It's cool.

On the minus side, the company is very, very strict, particularly around its
codebase. For each language, there is an extensive set of coding guidelines
(actually rules) covering even minute issues like spacing. And it's actually
enforced. If you're looking for a high-trust environment, or just some elbow
room to do things your way, stay the heck away.

The company is also very bureaucratic, particularly around hiring and
promotion. Promotions are done by independent boards, based on extensive
documentation (the "perf packet") provided by the candidate and his
manager/lead. At this point, these packets are hefty enough to beat a man to
death with. To submit code, you'll also need to get certified for
"readability" in each language you will be working in, a process that takes
months.

Finally, I'd say Google has a bit of false consciousness around what sort of
culture they actually have. They want to think of themselves as a free, loose
sort of place where people are empowered to look for problems and go fix them.
That's why they still have 20% time, for example. In truth, what you'll be
rewarded for is doing what your boss wants, to his satisfaction; everything
else is at best marginal. And you know, I think the employees know that, since
20% time is taken by less than 5% of the engineering staff. A culture of "do
what your boss tells you" isn't bad of course; what it is, is ordinary.

So, some big pluses, oh yeah, but some big minuses too.

~~~
ojbrien
I'm sure you're right about not having quite as much elbow room at google
compared to other companies - but saying that I'm not sure strictly enforcing
a style guide is great example a developers freedom being quashed.

Anywhere you're working on a codebase that you want to be maintainable having
a style guide that is strictly enforced seems like a no brainer. Keeping in my
mind google could have any number of developers working on a codebase

~~~
johan_larson
I don't object to having a style guide. I object to the extent of it. Some
rules of good practice make sense. But having a really extensive style guide
shifts code review away from what it should be focusing on -- correctness,
clarity, efficiency -- towards punctilious enforcement of minutiae.

Here's Google's Java style guide, if you want to have a look yourself:
[https://google.github.io/styleguide/javaguide.html](https://google.github.io/styleguide/javaguide.html)

~~~
kele
When the codebase is so big and you're hiring so many engineers it might be
actually a good idea to have such an extensive style guide.

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stephenr
They're one of the worlds biggest (my share market value, and mind share)
companies, and almost the entirety of their revenue is generated by collecting
huge amounts of personal information about people all over the web, and using
that data to sell adverts, all over the web.

Yes, a percentage of their revenues have been spent on things that help people
without inflicting more harm (e.g. _some_ of their software contributions to
the world, some services they run "for free" which the industry uses for
security purposes).

That doesn't mean their other actions should be ignored or accepted as OK.

Edit:

Based on the other comment maybe this is about considering working for Google?

I wouldn't work for Google for all the money in the world. I've had a high
paying contract position doing work I didn't really enjoy that much, on
projects that made questionable choices (I don't mean tech choices).

The saying "you can't buy happiness" is fucking true. If you are doing
something you hate, all the money in the world won't make you enjoy it.

~~~
mike_hearn
Is your issue just that you hate all advertising?

If so, shouldn't you take your ire out on the web itself rather than Google,
as Google is hardly unique in using advertising to sustain itself. Many
websites do.

And what is the alternative? Everyone pays for everything, thus providing
bank-authenticated billing data to every company? At least with ad supported
services you can use them anonymously, if you want to. Besides, Google has
their Contributor product that (in some cases) lets you pay to not see
adverts. So it's not like they aren't trying to find a good balance.

Is your issue that you dislike targeted ads specifically?

If so, doesn't the fact that you can opt out of ad targeting and/or edit your
own profile change anything? Surely you can see that many people would prefer
to see relevant ads rather than ads intended for the wrong gender, age group,
regional populations etc?

It's unfortunate that you feel so strongly about something as mundane as
online advertising. Google is not the military or the CIA, where the actions
of the employees can result in people getting randomly drone striked. It's
just a software company.

I say these things because I used to work for Google and the people there are
usually very happy. It seems a shame to rule out a company that's always tried
so hard to find the right moral balances in things on grounds as flimsy as
"advertising sucks".

~~~
stephenr
> Is your issue just that you hate all advertising?

If I'm looking at a site about fish ponds, or gardening, I would absolutely be
OK with seeing adverts about where to buy a pond liner, or a contractor who
builds fish ponds.

I would even be OK with that ad being somewhat location specific based on my
IP address.

The above situation would have literally _helped_ me in a real word situation
in the last month. But, because of the way the vast majority of web
advertising works, there was no opportunity, because I have to block ad
networks because:

I am not ok with seeing ads about "rent a cheap server today" because there's
an email from a hosting company in a google apps mailbox, or because I got an
email from a client asking about where to host something.

That is objectively fucking creepy.

> If so, doesn't the fact that you can opt out of ad targeting and/or edit
> your own profile change anything?

This is like the argument that I can go to
[http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/](http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/)
and choose to "opt out" of aggressive web tracking. The problem is, it works
on a cookie basis, meaning I have to lower my privacy settings for the whole
thing to even work, and then _hope_ that some other bad actor doesn't take
advantage of that, and that the NAI members even do what they say.

Creating a google profile (and being signed into it on every device i use) so
I can tell them not to track me when I view sites they don't own/run is
fucking ridiculous.

> It seems a shame to rule out a company that's always tried so hard to find
> the right moral balances in things on grounds as flimsy as "advertising
> sucks".

I never said advertising sucks. I said Google are a creepy mega corporation
collecting every bit of information they can.

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argonaut
I know many people at the company and have visited several times. My
perception: massive, massive company, with a stellar engineering-talent brand,
and raw technology that is across the board superior to all competitors.

They are mostly likely the technological leader in databases, search
technology, operating systems, distributed computing, cloud computing, machine
learning, and self-driving cars. I say technological leader, because while
they are still pretty decent at it, product design and marketing is _not_
their strength - which explains why IMO Apple beats them in mobile (yeah,
yeah, please don't argue with me on this, this is just an opinion) and Amazon
beats them with cloud computing.

Great perks, high pay (especially since the stock is doing so well). Contrary
to the HN popular opinion, I have never heard anything negative about work
life balance at Google, although I'm sure lots of companies are better at this
than Google - I think the stereotype comes from Google's earlier days and the
fact that workaholic types tend to be attracted to companies like Google.

The major negatives relate to the fact that Google is massive and somewhat
elitist about credentials. Because it is so huge, it is unlikely you will get
to work on any of these cool technologies (or any exact team you want to work
on, for that matter) when you're just starting out at Google, unless you have
some sort of "in" into Google, are from a top school, did an internship at
Google already, or otherwise have some sort of significant leg up over
everyone else. But regardless you'll be exposed to lots of engineering best
practices. A related problem is that because many of the infrastructure/tools
are internal (not to mention light years ahead of the competition), a lot of
skills you learn won't be transferable to the startup world, for example.

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gdfbvbvc
This article pretty much sums it up: [https://medium.com/insurge-
intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...](https://medium.com/insurge-
intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e#.8pmgy7nzn)

I wouldnt work there even if I was smart enough to do so, for moral reasons.

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plinkplonk
I have a dozen+ friends who work at Google(Engineering). Most of them are
_very_ happy with their jobs.

As with any large company,the key to happiness is getting to work with the
right team on the right problem. . The other factor here is that the specific
projects you want to work on might be concentrated in (say) Mountain View and
you want to live in Bangalore (or wherever)in which case (unless you are a
superstar) you are out of luck.

The best way to get hired (again from what my friends tell me) is to be
actively sought after by a specific team for your specific expertise. Else you
end up wanting to work on Search Quality and/or self driving cars, and end up
fixing bugs in Gmail (nothing wrong with that if that is what you want to do.

In any case, having a Googler submit your CV to HR is much better than a blind
application/recruiter driven application. The good news is that they are now
so large, that most tech people know someone who works for them.

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mrmondo
They know too much about everyone, I don't trust them, they are quick to drop
software / platforms they develop. Their products are generally appear to be
ugly to me. Their search result quality is good.

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twunde
I worked for Google as a contractor for a small team a few years ago. What's
most impressive looking back is that everyone I worked with was genuinely nice
and smart including the cooks and janitors. I would be willing to hire
literally everyone I worked with, no exceptions. Overall, Google treats its
employees really well and receives good work from them. Working at Google
exposes you to best practices. Overall, Google will continue to do well for
the foreseeable future as they control ~90% of the online advertising market.

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iDemonix
Great company, would love to work there but I lack the knowledge and
motivation - my current company have worn me down too much.

Obviously they harvest + use personal information on a global scale, but for
the amazing free products they put out that enhance my life (I ride my
motorbike a lot and get lost, I live in Google Maps), that's a fair trade.

They do make some dumb decisions (i.e. the whole YouTube + Google+ thing) but
what company doesn't.

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eecks
As a software dev I perceive Google to a place where people live to work for
instead of working to live.

As a normal person, I see Google as a company looking to collect all of my
personal info.

EDIT:

To add:

They really pissed me off joining all their services under one account
(YouTube really).

Their search is getting worse but it is still the best out there. I use
DuckDuckGo normally but often have to go back to Google search.

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alexnewman
Great company. Too arrogant. It may require a kick in the pants to become what
it wants to become. Something more human altering than websearch. As far as
one trick ponies go. It's not too bad. I wish they hadn't given up on space.

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WorldMaker
On the personal side, these days I find myself rather skeptical about Google's
aims and interests and have worked to slowly divest myself from using their
services (that remain [1]), several of which I do worry that I rely on but are
on one sort of life support or another. Even as someone that has paid in the
past for Google Apps services, I've never really felt like a customer of
Google, per that adage that we aren't Google's customers, but its products (to
advertisers).

As for the culture and work environments, here's my very tiny slice of
exposure, for what it may be worth:

Interviewed twice last year for decreasingly technical positions. Impression I
received was that I was not the hyperfocused autism-spectrum specialist insect
they were looking for technically, and I definitely understand why they might
feel that way. I preface with that so that you may take what follows with the
appropriate grains of salt.

Across two trips out to the Bay Area the majority of interviews were still
held remotely over video conferencing, which was frustrating because I could
have done Hangouts just as easily from home. This seemed to underline a sort
of contradictory stance on remote work in the company to me. (I don't know how
much of that was due to the nature of the specific groups I interviewed with,
but certainly sounded somewhat par for the course given discussions with
recruiters there.) I suppose it wasn't entirely a waste of time as I did get
to see some impressions of the culture in the buildings themselves.

I did not like Mountain View, but largely because I'm spoiled by where I live
now and don't like driving and suburban sprawl all that much. The parts of the
Google campus I saw seemed nice and happy places to be, but still seemed to be
mostly a drive from anywhere interesting before/after work and even parts of
themselves.

The Google office in San Francisco proper was great and in an interesting part
of downtown. It was also apparently woefully undersized, largely due to
Google's contradictory unwillingness for bulk remote work from home but
allowance for "work from another office" and the number of employees that
wanted to live/work closer to SF downtown than commute out to Mountain View.

Most of the employees I encountered seemed like good, smart people. I wish I
would have had more actual face-to-face interactions. I had one technical
interviewer I thought was not very good at social interaction, and I felt that
unduly soured the already stressful and ugly reality of a non-face-to-face
"whiteboard technical interview" performed via Google Docs and conference
screen.

I realize that a lot of that comes out seeming particularly negative and sour,
and I'm probably an edge case in more than one way in my experiences. That
said, hopefully my anecdotes here are helpful to someone else.

[1] I was a heavy Reader user and its shutdown did a lot to lose favor from
me.

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TurboHaskal
Most of what I know from the company comes from watching the movie The
Internship. It seems to be packed full of eunuchs.

They seem to pay and treat their employees well though.

