Pros
Technically, you work at Google. In practice, that means you get free lunch and you can take the Google bus. Pretty much everything else that people like so much about working for Google is off-limits - some of it by Tony's design, some of it because Nest campus is far from Main Campus. When I first started there, I couldn't understand why so many people were quitting, but it quickly became clear: this was not Google.
Cons
People would ask me if the stories in the press were true; in fact, they understated the extent of the problems at Nest. The core team Tony assembled was a bunch of C players from Apple (with an inexplicable preference for EPMs) who were blocked in their careers by a lack of talent or serious personality flaws, but getting acquired by Google convinced him and his underlings that they were wildly successful. Tony would then put the aforementioned people in roles way over their heads, where they would completely flounder (aka push them to "achieve more than they could have imagined") and treat their teams like dirt, and he wouldn't do anything about it, other than making clear that they disappointed him. Tony also frequently made clear his contempt for Google - be it their perks, work ethic, product quality, intelligence - somehow fully unaware that virtually all of his employees were there because they wanted to work at Google. (A lack of self-awareness is endemic at Nest.) Google, all the while patting itself on the back for how quickly it can respond to problems, sat on its hands for two years and watched Tony 1) spend billions of dollars; 2) not produce anything of consequence; 3) push many hundreds of people to quit their jobs. While the first two are part of some executive power struggle, #3 is something Google needed to fix, especially when they are so arrogantly promoting their "commitment to people." They didn't seem to care about all of the people who were getting bullied and yelled at inside Nest. They did, however, block Nest people off from interesting technology and prevent them from transferring to jobs at Google proper. Getting rid of Tony is nothing short of an improvement, but the terrible culture he created is so ingrained inside Nest that the place can never be fixed. There are simply too many jerks there who spent 100% of their time sucking up and 0% of their time doing work.
