
Ask HN: Is Google still a cool place to work? - offer_today
I'm most interested in opinions from xooglers.  From what I see it's still a great company and great place to work.  Some xooglers seem to think it's lost its luster.  I'm trying to collect all opinions; I'm expecting an offer today.
======
alecthomas
I am a xoogler. Google is the best "Big Company" I have ever worked for.
They're well organized for the size, very engineering centric, pay well, good
perks, lots of travel opportunities. The engineering infrastructure and
culture is the best I've seen.

That's the good. The bad is mostly typical big company stuff: you're a cog,
you won't get significant choice on what to work on, you have to "play the
game" to get promoted.

I left two years ago because I wanted to try a startup and it was the right
decision for me. Much more diverse role, touched a lot more technologies, got
exposure to a lot more interesting problems. YMMV

------
googler2
I've been at Google for about 7 years now and i really dislike what it is
today compared to what it was back then. But that said, i still haven't quit
because it's so much better than so many other places. Most people i know who
quit either went to Facebook (either for the pre-ipo options or because it's
apparently easier to launch things there) or to do their own thing. If you
have to have a boss and work in a large organization then despite its many,
many failings (for they are legion), Google is still by far the best option in
software engineering. And the pay and perks are pretty good.

Also, if you are a new grad who like engineering, all of this is pointless
irrelevance. If Google makes you an offer shut up and take it for at least 2
years. Even if the project you get is like stabbing yourself in the eye
repeatedly, just reading the code in the core google libraries and figuring
out why systems are designed the way they are and talking to random people
will up your software engineer game much, much, much more than any other
place. Talent here is not as uniformly spread as it used to be, but when you
find it, the quality of people here will blow your mind. And if you get to
work with them, you will up your game even more.

~~~
akldfgj
7 years now? Hard to beat that:

[https://www.google.com/finance?&chdet=1170450000000&...](https://www.google.com/finance?&chdet=1170450000000&chddm=135550&q=NASDAQ:GOOG)

------
tytso
I work at Google, and I think it's great. Keep in mind that there are many,
many different projects and groups at Google, and so the explicit set of
things that you might work on will vary a lot. However, people can also
transfer between projects after a year or two, so there is also plenty of
opportunities to find cool work that you are passionate about.

As far as the "cog in a big machine" that people have talked about, it all
depends on what you are comparing it against. Speaking as someone who worked
at Big Blue for 8 years, people who are complaining about Google employees
being a "cog in a big machine" have ___no_ __idea what they are talking about.
Compared to working at 10 person startup where you have no idea if the company
will be able to pay your salary six months from now, but where you can have a
huge outsized impact on the product, sure. But if you compare how many users
will get impacted by your work at Google, compared to at a typical startup,
impact is also relative and it all depends on what you are comparing against.

So if you want the adrenaline rush of working at a startup, Google will
definitely not be for you. But if you want to work at a company which will
very likely be around for a very long time, and where you can have a huge
impact, Google is a really good place to be. I'm certainly very happy to be
there.

And the biggest reason why I love working at Google? Nearly everyone I meet at
Google are amazingly smart, and great to work with, both from a social and a
professional point of view. Trust me, this is not necessarily true at many
other companies....

(And as far as "shitty legacy maintenance" is concerned, I work in the same
department as michaelochurch used to work in, and my team --- the production
kernel team --- just recently finished rebasing the Linux kernel which runs in
all of the machines in Google's Data Centers to the 3.3 Linux kernel from
upstream. So for a month or two, I was a very well paid patch monkey. But then
again, it's very careful, exacting work that requires quite a bit more
analysis and deep understanding of the code that you might think --- and any
mistakes could impact users all over the world. Personally, I found it very
satisfying, and at the end of it, we had paid down a lot of technical debt and
it will make future engineering work on the kernel a whole lot easier. And
now, after taking a week in San Diego to attend the Kernel Summit, and the
Linux Plumber's Conference, I'm going to take a week of vacation in Santa Fe,
and then I'll be back to making file system and storage better for Google and
for Linux.)

~~~
whichdan
We need more of these posts and less about "weight management and free lunch."

------
mdwelsh
I work for Google, and I think it's an awesome place to work, but I can see in
my two years there how things have been changing in subtle ways. It's not a
small company anymore, which hasn't changed how "cool" it is, but does mean
that with so many other moving pieces that it's not as lean as a startup,
where someone could - in principle - redo everything from scratch. The
complaints I've heard from Xooglers tend to center around the technical aspect
of working with a much larger codebase and increased ossification, rather than
the company culture.

Still - Google has the spirit of a startup at its core. Engineers run the
place, not execs. I like to say that there is very little "adult supervision"
at Google; nearly all technical decisions are made bottom-up by engineers, and
there is an active element at the center of the company culture to Do Things
The Right Way.

If by "cool place to work" you mean, working with smart people, lots of perks
(free food, massage, on-site doctor, all that), and a culture centered around
doing amazing things, then yes, it's a cool place to work.

------
evmar
(Eight years at Google here.) It's changed a lot over the years and has
certainly disappointed me many times, which any xoogler can also tell you. But
every time I've considered leaving I've been unable to imagine some other work
that gives me the same combination of high freedom and good compensation.

I've also seen the occasional person pull a michaelochurch. I've been lucky in
that my random fun hacks have been seen as valuable work for the company. I
could imagine things not working out under different circumstances (there's a
large wing of the company working on boring Java apps that I don't think I'd
enjoy). With that said, everything has a risk factor to it and the number of
michaelochurches seems pretty low to me.

I think there are some things Google is very good at (giving you powerful
toys) and others it's very bad at (launching products where UX matters, for
example; maybe Marissa's departure will help there), so perhaps it also can
depend on what sort of person you are.

(All the above and most of the other comments are engineer perspectives. Other
non-technical positions, like reviewing ads for bad words, are reportedly much
more variable on the awful spectrum.)

~~~
srik
What is the michaelochurch controversy that keeps getting referred to?

~~~
j_s
<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=michaelochurch>

------
dack
Congrats on the offer! I will be a Xoogler as of about 2pm today, so you could
say my opinion is at least fresh.

Google is an awesome place, and huge opportunities will open up for you if you
do accept the offer. Google is still very highly respected and has a great
internal culture. There is very little bureaucracy and a lot of autonomy
allowed. My life basically completely changed (for the better) after joining
and I'm a way better developer than I was 2 years ago. You can also read Steve
Yegge's recent G+ posts about what he thinks of Google - I would say I am
about 80% as enthusiastic about it as him ;)

The one thing I will say is that the team you're on matters. Google still has
the great "don't be evil" policy which permeates throughout the company, but
the teams are free to organize how they want. If you're into TDD and pairing,
you may find a team that is into that and have a great time, or find a team
who hates it and not. Google is big enough that there are teams doing things
very differently. The good thing is that you CAN change teams, and there is an
internal application that lets you do just that. It's not really that hard.

If you are deciding between Google and the other big SV players like Facebook,
Twitter, etc, then I would just pick the company that seems to fit with your
personality the best.

------
raldi
It's a large enough place to have many microcultures. Geo (Maps, Earth) is
totally different from, say Android. YouTube's culture is nothing like Search
and GMail's. And so on.

So after you join, go meet other teams and get to know the big picture. Then,
you can seek a transfer to wherever you think you'd best fit in.

~~~
outside1234
This is good advice, but be advised that you won't be able to transfer for 18
months.

~~~
sxp
I transferred after ~3 months because my original team wasn't a good fit for
me. One of the topics that is mentioned during orientation is that Google is
designed to be fault tolerant at multiple levels. If a server goes down, the
workload needs to be able to move to a different server. If a Noogler is
placed a team that isn't a good fit for their skillset, they need to be able
to move to a different team. This happened to the person giving the
orientation when he was first hired and it still happens today. Some people
end up quitting because they can't adapt, while others successfully recover
from the error.

~~~
webspiderus
that's weird, because my experience is exactly the opposite! I've spent about
4 months on my team so far, which has very little to do with my background,
and after I realized just how bad the fit was, I started a conversation with
my tech lead, his supervisors, and some HR people about moving to a team that
would be a better fit (which had openings at the time).

3 weeks of conversations later, I was told that the 18 month rule was "fair"
in everyone's opinion, and that if I'm really concerned about working on
projects that are interesting to me, I should just find one to spend my 20%
time on (easier said than done).

------
bartonfink
Congratulations on the offer! I don't currently work there, but from what I've
heard, it's still pretty good. It may no longer measure up to the Google of
yore, but I'd still look very favorably upon Google compared to the average
working conditions for software developers today.

The folks who seem down on it have legitimate gripes (e.g. you're a cog in a
large machine, management is intentionally sparse, hard to get promotions),
but I think it really depends on what you want out of a job. If you want to be
your own boss or expect to remain a big fish in whatever pond you're swimming
in, Google's probably not going to work out for you.

~~~
zobzu
That sounds about right to me. It's very good for what it is (a large
successful IT company where you're going to be a cog in a large machine)

But I don't think it's what many are looking for, or at least, not me.

------
ChuckMcM
So I'm an ex-Google employee and I can tell you that is an earnest, but
ultimately unanswerable question. Google, like any organization, changes over
time so for some it wasn't cool before but now it is, for other it was cool
and now it isn't, and for still others it never was and may never be a cool
place to work. (And of course those for whom it will always be a cool place to
work, looking at you Larry)

Engineering work is generally referred to as "R&D" which is short for
"Research and Development." That is a spectrum where Research results in a
peer-reviewed paper, and Development results in a shipping product. For many
years Google was pretty hard into the R side of the equation for most people,
and hard over into the D side for a smaller group of people. It created a lot
of unhealthy tension where the groups were near each other.

It was a little too much R and too little D for me, I prefer working on
problems that have an impact on the business as opposed to just pure coolness
factor [1]. But a number of people I know are quite happy just working on
science projects.

Also note this is no different than Sun Microsystems for the 10 years I was
there, it went from Workstation company to Enterprise Server company to Web
services company. Very different companies all in the same skin.

So the only thing you can do is interview, accept if they offer a job, and
form your own opinion.

[1] In full disclosure I would have liked to have worked on the Self driving
car since it combines my interest in robotics with programming/engineering but
alas Sebastian turned me down.

------
rachelbythebay
Sigh. How do I answer this with new content?

Let's try this: throw out anything you may have heard about the company prior
to 2012. Don't believe any of the marketing. It's all changed, and I'll let
you figure out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. You need current
assessments of what it's really like. Then you have to determine whether to
believe them.

Finding those assessments should not be particularly difficult, since
something obvious has changed. It used to be that if you worked there and
weren't one of the "blessed PR people", then you didn't talk about it. In
fact, a lot of people wouldn't even mention they worked there. Now it seems
like any post about the company brings out the Astroturfers. They all seem to
be recent hires and so are probably still in the "honeymoon" phase where
everything is sparkly and shiny and nothing could possibly be wrong.

You might also consider that others are quite simply stuck there, and are not
going to jeopardize that relationship. Maybe they have one of the Valley's
infamous sky-high mortgages, or perhaps they have one of those work visas
which amount to legalized slavery keeping them bound to their current master.

Finally, ask yourself this: what are they actually doing as a company, and do
you want to be a party to it? That is, assuming you care about such things.

~~~
jrockway
_Now it seems like any post about the company brings out the Astroturfers.
They all seem to be recent hires and so are probably still in the "honeymoon"
phase where everything is sparkly and shiny and nothing could possibly be
wrong._

Holy strawman, Batman!

 _You might also consider that others are quite simply stuck there, and are
not going to jeopardize that relationship. Maybe they have one of the Valley's
infamous sky-high mortgages, or perhaps they have one of those work visas
which amount to legalized slavery keeping them bound to their current master._

Two thoughts. One, having Google on your resume typically results in an offer
that is greater than what Google pays you, so anyone that has a "sky-high
mortgage" can probably leave Google safely at their leisure. (This is not
specific to Google, of course. Job + 1 always offers you more money than Job +
0, otherwise you would reject their offer.) Secondly, Google lets people on
visas pick the type of visa they want, so there is no need to bind your
employment status to your immigration status. (Also, it's tech: prove you have
even the most minimal ability to click shit in Eclipse, and all the money and
visas you can ever want are yours. If you feel trapped in a tech job, you're
doing something wrong.)

Anyway, it's clear from your comment history that you didn't have a good time
at Google. Everyone is unhappy with their exes: that's why they're exes. But
it's silly to assume that everyone that does like it is mentally defective in
some way or that they're all working at Google enslaved by financial or legal
obligations. I may have only worked at Google for 8 months, but I still like
it as much as I did when I started.

------
rjzzleep
When you get an offer the answer is generally the same:

Go and see for yourself, otherwise you might regret it.

But yes and no, most googlers I met still love it.

Some of them feel that theyre too late, and that had they joined a few years
earlier theyd be in a position where they could actually be more successful
instead of being a workhorse.

yes it's a cool place, but the right place, I don't know.

------
lawdawg
From my xoogler and googler friends, its the best big company you could
possibly work for, and better than 95% of the medium/small companies as well.

Obviously its not a perfect fit for everyone, but for most it is.

------
slantyyz
Not an ex-Googler, but I would ask if "cool" is a metric that you should use
as a decision point for choosing whether or not you are accepting any job.

Here are some things that you might want to ask yourself during the decision
making process:

* Did I meet my future coworkers? Did my gut have any red flags about any of them?

* Did the prospective work I'm applying for interest me?

* Did the work environment / culture of the team I'm going working with appeal to me? Work environments and subcultures can vary wildly by department in large companies, so sometimes the company's overall reputation may not be representative of the sub-environment you're being recruited into.

* If "career path" is important to me, does the company offer that for the position I'm being recruited for?

* Will I learn anything by being there?

* Does the overall structure and the way the company works fit in with what I'm used to? This is highly personal - what fits one person may not fit another.

~~~
offer_today
"Cool" is a deliberately vague metric to get people to talk about what they
like/don't like.

Your other questions are good and I certainly won't neglect them.

------
alexgartrell
A little under two years ago I got offers from both Facebook and Google. The
Google offer was a lot bigger (including in stock, the break even point was a
valuation of 50 bln), but I accepted the Facebook offer instead, because I
knew I'd only get to work on the kind of infrastructure projects I wanted to
work on at Facebook. Bootcamp beats the hell out of preallocation for things
like this.

~~~
sadga
> The Google offer was a lot bigger (including in stock, the break even point
> was a valuation of 50 bln)

That is close to FB's valuation (40bn today) now....

~~~
pja
The break even point for buying the stock options was a $50bn valuation.
Current Google market cap is $225bn. That's a big upside.

The market cap of FB is irrelevant to the valuation of Google stock options.

------
bengoodger
On my team, most of the disagreements that come up are still technical issues.
That's pretty good IMO, considering company size. Yes it has its fair share of
issues, but having worked at some companies several times smaller, this one is
pretty darned good.

------
tcox
(ex-Googler here)

Do it. It's a great experience.

------
flebron
I did an internship last winter, and will likely do one again this winter. It
was a great experience, and I'd consider it an awesome place to work at :)

------
encoderer
I've never worked for Google, but here's some thoughts on your offer. These
may all be obvious to you, but for the benefit of everybody..

0\. You have an opportunity of real power to shape your financial future in
the small window between when an offer is made and when an offer is finalized.
These negotiations commonly take a few days. In those days, your effective
hourly rate for your strategizing and execution of the negotiation is far far
higher than what you earn as a software engineer.

1\. I hope you've taken everybody's boilerplate negotiating advice and not put
yourself in a hard position over money. Did you tell them early in the process
exactly what you're currently making? Or exactly what you want? If so, next
time don't do that. Even if somebody tries to button you down, just finesse it
a bit. "Dollar amount isn't the most important thing, yadda yadda" and ask
them to give you the range they're considering to ensure you two are in the
same ballpark.

2\. Accept this fact: It's OK to earn 10's-of-percent and/or 10's-of-thousands
of dollars more than your previous job. In fact, compared to other professions
with similar skill requrements I think software engineers are underpaid as a
whole and we all should work to fix that.

3\. Never accept any offer on the spot. Remember that companies, even Google
though certainly to a lesser extent, are making best-guesses about how much to
offer somebody. There is a range there. You probably have not maxed it out on
their first letter. Tell them you sleep on all big decisions and you'd call
back tomorrow.

4\. Ask for more of _something_. They have a lot of perks, but it could be
options or base salary. If you cannot get them to budge in those, move on to
other benefits like signing bonus, vaca time (this matters less at Google and
the myriad other tech companies here that have open-ended vacation policies)

5\. It's OK to give back some things (signing bonus for example) in exchange
for a higher base rate, but obviously don't offer that up at first.

6\. Show humanity. You're negotiating with another human. And only one of you
his your own wallet on the table. Suppose for the sake of argument you've been
making $110k as a mid-level engineer at a startup. That is low, but you've
been there for a few years, you've earned a lot more experience. Their offer
is $130k. Show humanity, something like "First, i'm thrilled (almost giggling)
that you've made this offer. And we're allllmost there. Obviously it's a
competitive market and when I look at where I'm at now, and my experience,
well I just don't want to feel like I'm taking a step backwards. I need to do
what's best for my family and my thinking is currently in the $145-150k
range." This has the benefit of being true. We all do have these anxieties.
You just are bringing them into the discussion.

If you ever told them you make exactly $110k then obviously you have to be a
little more careful how you word this plea (and seriously, don't share that
info next time, you don't have to share it). But doing what's best for your
family, and a need to not feel like you're taking a step backwards, are
powerful human emotions that can help you from looking like a craven
opportunist. Even if your family right now is your dog and your girlfriend.

They will probably counter on something. They will NOT revoke the offer
because you had the nerve to ask for more. That maybe happens in less
demanding, less skilled jobs. But you're a professional making 6-figures.
Having a little savvy isn't a bad thing. And if for any crazy reason they did,
then you definitely did not want to work there anyway. Obviously a seed-round
startup has different economic realities, but that's not who you're working
with here.

I could talk for hours about this, and I also think you shoul d read a bit
about basic negotiation strategy. And as always YMMV. But these general
concepts have served me and my family very well.

~~~
flatline3
> _1\. I hope you've taken everybody's boilerplate negotiating advice and not
> put yourself in a hard position over money. Did you tell them exactly what
> you're currently making? Or exactly what you want? If so, next time don't do
> that. Even if somebody tries to button you down, just finesse it a bit.
> "Dollar amount isn't the most important thing, yadda yadda" and ask them to
> give you the range they're considering to ensure you two are in the same
> ballpark._

As both an employer, and someone that has previously been a hiring manager,
this can be counter-productive.

If you think you're underpaid, say so. Don't try to cleverly wiggle your way
out of sharing your salary, because what you're doing is obvious. If you don't
want to give your salary, you can say "I prefer not to say", but we know what
that means, too.

We've offered $30k more than someone's current salary because, by our
assessment, they were grossly underpaid. Their current employer came back with
an even better counter-offer that we couldn't justify or afford, but the
candidate chose us. Their current employer had sunk any goodwill by paying so
far below market rate.

As you noted, in many cases, "only one of you his your own wallet on the
table". Of course, currently, as a self-funded employer, I _do_ have my wallet
on the table too, and I'll tell you as much. We pay market rate, we pay fair,
and we negotiate honestly, but we don't play weasely negotiating games.

The best negotiating strategy is to be _firm_ , honest, straight-forward, and
to have the substance to back what you're asking for. Stand up for what you
want, but don't try to weasel your way into getting it. That'll garner you far
more respect than playing games during negotiation.

~~~
leh0n
How does sharing their previous salary benefit the prospective employee?

~~~
sAasdasfd
If it's a high salary, it benefits. In my experience, the ranges people in our
industry get paid are sufficiently broad that not sharing your salary can
result in serious offers that are, well, not so good.

------
wamatt
Although I'm not an employee, whether someone thinks it's lost lustre or not,
is rather irrelevant. What's probably more important, is whether it's cool
place to work presently and in the future, and how that compares to other
options.

Speaking to many xooglers, I get the impression it's awesome, and would be a
great opportunity in all likelyhood.

------
rjsamson
I've for a few friends who work over there - some of the having gone to Google
only recently - they all love it

------
nyrulez
I joined few months back - it's really a great environment in many ways.
Plenty to learn and grow, variety of projects to make an impact, great
colleagues, culture and amazing perks. I have heard things are difficult
regarding promotions. But definitely an engineering experience to be had.

------
bane
It's probably relative at this point. I have some friends who've switched in
and out of Google, and while it may not have the same sort of luster it had
before, they all seem to agree that it's better than where they used to work,
or where they work now.

------
bensw
Does anyone know what it's like for non-coding jobs? (Analyst Positions)

------
noone_er2
can you please post the way you prepared for technical interview. Just what
you think can help someone who is preparing for it. what kind of questions
they asked ? any thing to watch out for..

~~~
mdwelsh
This is the best book on technical interviews for places like Google:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-
Programming-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-
Questions/dp/098478280X)

~~~
pimentel
Does it just prepare for code interviews, or do you actually learn something
useful with it, besides getting a job?

~~~
Evbn
It is for interviews. You should already know the useful stuff for your job.
The best you can do that is relevant to both fronts is

Work through CLRS algorithms book

Practice explaining technical ideas in spoken conversation.

------
nshankar
I have always preferred micro companies because of the freedom to drive the
chiefdom from your humble developer positions. I remember an article about an
Apple engineer developing first Mac to run on X86 architecture. This is an
example of micro company that Apple has always been and I doubt any company,
including Google, can match it.

~~~
archangel_one
Apple have 60,000 employees now. They are not a micro company any more - why
would they be able to feel like one? Obviously some engineers would have
worked on the original x86 Macs, just as plenty of engineers at Google worked
on the original Android software - that doesn't make it feel like a small
company.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"They are not a micro company any more - why would they be able to feel like
one?"

It can be done, but it takes a lot of work (and by "work" I mean "the pointy-
hairs leaving the engineers the hell alone". That seems to require a huge
effort in some companies.

The old-school name for this is "skunk works".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Skunkworks>

~~~
archangel_one
Noted on the skunkworks thing. I do think in general though that managers do
fairly well at leaving engineers alone at Google; the big company feel seems
to come from engineering inertia a lot - inflexible coding standards,
groupthink on which technologies to use, etc.

Mostly though I was hoping for a little clarification from the parent poster
of why Apple should feel like a small company more than Google does - both
would seem to be great places to work, but I wouldn't expect either to feel
small.

------
joshu
I was there for 18 months or so. Google is absolutely a great place to work. I
remain very fond of them and an organization. Lots of awesome people.

------
jfasi
Where are you located? If you're in NYC, I'm a new hire there now.

~~~
brlewis
Cambridge. I start orientation in MV on Sept 17.

------
michaelochurch
Google's problem is that most of the work is shitty legacy maintenance. If you
can get on one of their machine-learning or research projects and have a good
manager, you'll have a fantastic experience (and I say this as a notorious
Google detractor). Take the offer seriously but negotiate extremely hard on
project allocation because it's really hard to transfer to a good project if
you start in the wrong place, so your first project is the difference between
an awesome Google career and shit. And most people get shit. Good luck!

ETA: Google would be awesome if it adopted the Valve culture where employees
are trusted to allocate their own time, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

~~~
cletus
Do not, under any circumstances, take this guy's advice or in fact listen to
anything he says. Anyone who was an engineer during his brief tenure is well
aware of just how much he self-destructed and how much he's living in a
fantasy world. The only problem here is that to an uninformed observer some of
what he says looks plausible.

As for the OP's problem: a lot depends on your options, your experience, what
you're hoping to achieve, what you'd like to work on, what office this would
be in, etc. There are tons of variables.

Speaking as a current Googler, it is a fantastic place to work but it's not
suited to everyone.

tl;dr it depends.

~~~
michaelochurch
I don't have time to respond to this ad hominem smear. Yes, there was some
blowback related to my attempt to save a failing product. I learned a lesson
and moved on.

I'm not anti-Google. I want the OP to have a great Google experience and to do
that he needs to negotiate hard on project allocation.

~~~
sequoia
As a random HN user with no connection to Google who has seen what happens
when you comment on stories about Google here (it's a shit storm), might I
humbly suggest that you consider not commenting on stories about Google? It
seems to always turn into The Michaelochurch Show when you do. Not saying your
opinions aren't valid, but I think your contributions re: google are
unfortunately not useful because they inevitably spawn arguments about your
character.

Take one for the team and sit out the Google discussions maybe? That way when
you have a contribution about some other topic, people will see you as a
person and not "that crazy ex googler whose credibility is highly suspect." :)

~~~
waterlesscloud
I don't think he should sit out Google discussions. He had the experience he
had. Others have the experiences they have. We're all capable of assessing his
reports for ourselves.

I might add we're also all capable of assessing the responses of Googlers to
his reports for ourselves, and those responses don't always speak well of
Google.

~~~
MaysonL
And we've almost all seen what's happened to Gmail, Google Reader, Google Labs
and 20% time.

~~~
daave
Mayson, can you be more specific? What has happened to them?

Gmail: I can't think of anything negative that's happened to Gmail in recent
times (unless you didn't like the UI redesign - there are certainly mixed
opinions on that), and certainly the performance and uptake of Gmail has only
improved.

Google Reader: Not much new happening, but it's still running. Are you
referring to the changes in the sharing model? Whichever sharing model was
better, surely you can agree that having one unified sharing experience across
Google produces results in a more streamlined product, and at least this was a
step in the right direction.

Google Labs: Was closed down, yes. I still don't understand how this relates
to the parent post. My thoughts on closing down labs: Labs was supposed to be
a way to get ideas out there in the wild before turning them into a fully-
supported core product. This was great for the engineers who had built these
things (they got to see them used), and the early-adopters who tried Labs
products. However, as time goes on and nobody's doing any development work on
a particular thing in Labs anymore, there is still an operational cost to
other engineers at the company who have to keep the thing up and running.
Since it's a 'Google' product, the brand image is at stake, so we can't just
let them wither. So I think it's reasonable to decide to have each labs
product either shut down or integrated into a core (supported) product.
Perhaps it would have been better to chuck all the old labs and start again,
with a published policy that things in labs will either be fully supported or
completely gone 1 year after launch (or something). The removal of labs is a
signal that there's more red tape around launching new products than there
used to be, but I think that's inevitable as a company grows, and more than
some engineer's weekend is on the line if a lunch goes badly.

20% Time: Still as strong as ever, from what I can tell. About half the
engineers I know have a 20% project, and there's nobody who doesn't have one
who wishes they could have one. Most of the time if people don't have a 20%
project it's only because they find their core job interesting and diverting
enough that they don't have a desire to split their time with a side-project.
Despite what some people have claimed on HN, your manager can't deny you from
having a 20% project if you want one.

(I work for Google, but not on any of the products mentioned above, and I
(willfully) don't have a 20% project. These are my opinions and not
necessarily those of my employer.)

~~~
michaelochurch
_Despite what some people have claimed on HN, your manager can't deny you from
having a 20% project if you want one._

Theoretically, managers can't block you from having 20% time, and there's no
official permission process you need to go through to take it, but if your
manager says, "I'll fuck you over in Perf if you do a 20% project", then you
don't have 20%-time.

What I'm told is that, before 2007 or so, Google actively worked to avoid
manager-as-SPOF, and that this is what made Google great. But then they hired
a bunch of executives from mainstream large companies and didn't tell them to
wipe their fucking feet off before coming inside.

~~~
daave
> if your manager says, "I'll fuck you over in Perf if you do a 20% project",
> then you don't have 20%-time.

I find it hard to imagine a manager could get away with saying that, but even
if they did, I think it would be an empty threat. Perf is designed so that the
manager is _not_ a SPOF, your peers' reviews are considered _at least_ as
important as your manager's review. It would be pretty obvious if there was a
big discrepancy between what your manager says and what your peers say, which
would call your manager's review into question. The only way this would be a
problem would be if your peers give you bad reviews too (and if that's the
case, then maybe, just maybe, you need to take a look at yourself).

