Interesting Product - Just not a good long term career move - Program Manager Waymo Employee Review

2.0
Feb 16, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay, great benefits, great cohorts in area of expertise. Best team I have worked with. Good work on Equity and inclusion, the CEO at the time walked out with the team during the Google women's issues (but could work harder on less noticed marginalized workforce (Hispanic, age, etc).

Cons

Very VERY VERRRRYYYY hard to get career advancement. I think writing a government contract is easier than making it through the promotion process. Waymo has created their own performance appraisal system from Parent Alphabet, but made the process even worse. HR flip flops on direction and functionality of awful 3rd party tool that is still heavily subjective and not objective and still comes down to senior management and their favorites determining your future. The company is also too in love with their shopping mall office. Pre-pandemic desks were reduced to 4 feet wide meanwhile hallways remained 100+ feet wide from the old mall configuration. Company is also pre-IPO, equity units value is essentially made up of valuations at a much lower valur than investors and no liquidity events have happened in a loooong time. If it ever goes public, it should be good, but seems like there is no intent to really go to market and go public. Top management not very charismatic.

Explore other reviews about Waymo

5.0
May 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

This place is technical strong, and AV is on a good track than few years ago.

Cons

Some politics among the org. Top talent is attracted by LLM, and company have to pay higher salary to attract more people come in

4.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good team culture and lots of room for advancement.

Cons

A lot of temp and contract work can be unstable.

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