Google used to be a great place to work. There was a clear vision, great products, and a sense of fun in the workplace. Unfortunately, the ex-consulting management class as completely destroyed any semblance of what made this a great place to work. I watched it all happen during my 6 years at the company, from 2019-2025. Here are just a few examples:
Return-to-Office
Rather than embrace this once in a generation opportunity to reimagine work, leadership chose to double-down on meaningless office attendance tracking. Googlers are expected to commute to an office and fight for meeting room space to take video calls with colleagues across the world.
Location strategy:
Googlers in many functions are being pushes to move to lower cost locations (think Texas and Georgia) for the privilege of being paid less.
Career Growth:
Opportunities for promotion have all but evaporated. if you do want a promotion, or even a new role, expect to be asked to move to a lower cost location (see above).
Leadership
Management doesn't care about you or the product. Only about the stock price. They will tell you platitudes about coming together, about listening to feedback on surveys, about needing to do better, and then will continue to make decisions that make life worse and worse for you. Performance ratings are a moving target and everything the company does makes it seem like they're trying to make it easier to fire you or pay you less.
Product
Other than shouting "AI!" at every opportunity, there is no creativity left. Our products have been degraded by years of shortsighted, tight-fisted, avaricious decisions. It's a shame. We used to have the best products.
Bureaucracy
Despite all the layoffs (a topic for another day) the company is still as bureaucratic and frustrating as ever. There are teams upon teams that exist to justify their own existence, and getting things done is a struggle.
Overall there's a general sense of cowardice among the leaders of this company. There are no visionaries. Nobody wants to do anything. It's all performative leadership where directors talk about doing big things, and then nothing ever is accomplished because nobody will stick their neck out.
Google is resting on its laurels, and landing a job there isn't what it used to be.
