Google Senior Staff Software Engineer/Manager reviews

Getting a chance to work on the world's largest distributed system. Obviously the company is very focused on employee satisfaction. It's a total geek paradise, with everyone trying to out geek each other.

Google's management allows, or rather, encourages engineers to take as much ownership as they like of projects. Product managers are there to work with engineers to direct the product, as their job is to know the customers and the marketplace and come up with a good direction for products. Because a lot of what the marketplace wants is illogical, engineers often argue with product management, and such behavior is part of what makes engineering a great place to be. You can actually have a significant impact on product direction. Additionally, Google is very fair about how promotions work. The engineers who impress their colleagues get promoted. Those who don't impress their colleagues don't get promoted. Thus, most good engineers will get promoted. I've heard lots of people complain about this process, but usually I hear this from engineers who aren't that impressive. It could be that the explanation for *why* they aren't getting promoted isn't transparent enough...but I don't know. In almost all situations, you are in control of your own destiny at Google. You set your own goals. You set your own timeline to achieve those goals. Management is there to guide you in setting these goals, but it is your duty to set good goals and strive to achieve them. This is also very empowering, and avoids the micromanagement that occurs at other companies. Then there's the obvious, which everyone else has already mentioned, like the *great* food, the massages, the really understanding/flexible management when it comes to personal issues, the good benefit package, etc.