Avantages
I think most ppl r proud of working for Google. I was too...at least for the beginning of two months. So, I don't need to repeat the good things about working for Google here. But, remember, all the good things are mostly posted by "software engineers". They are like king of the world in Google versus operation engineers (including me) are like slavers of the king.
Inconvénients
Google, fortunately, is the worst company I have ever worked for. It attracts so many talent people to work for this company, but in fact, the only give software engineers the special treatment. I've seen so many great engineers in operation team were treated like nothing. 1. management sucks My manager is the root cause that every engineer suffers. He is the best politician I have ever seen in my life. Ever since he promoted to be a manager, he started to play all the dirty games among us. He spent $20 mil per year on some equipments which melt down network connectivity so many times every month. He claimed that the equipments would save Google for 10 millions per year, but in fact, we spent a lot more work hours on trying to solve the problems these junks caused. The main problem is, there is no test base for these junks. Aren't we supposed to test all the equipment before we implement or even purchase them? Not these junks... how does it happen? pick ur guess! How about we go the manger above him. Too bad.. the upper manager is his buddy. There is no complain or any bad thing would ever leak out through these 2 layers of managers. They cover everything up very well. In fact, one of the manager's jobs should ensure the fairness. Well... "fairness" is NEVER been seen at this team. 2. politics tricks My manager has this policy: all the engineers under level III can not talk to the engineers above level IV. Well.... before I join google, I thought anyone could talk directly to anyone, even to CEO. But my manager fired a person who asked questions to a level IV. His recently move was - promoted two of his favorites to be managers and directly reported to him. You know what it means? He just promoted himself since there are two managers reporting to him now. That was the exact trick his upper manager did a couple years ago. Now... there are 3 levels of management under one director. How does this director allow this happen?? well.. that's the politics. So, when the new engineer join the team, how many levels above him?? It's IMPOSSIBLE that you get promoted if there is one new layer added. Most likely, you got downgraded every year!! 3. STEALING/CHEATING I've never seen so many cheating cases ever since I graduated from college, but here, at Google. We have two level IV engineers responsible for designing networks with one stealing ideas/credits from the other one's work!! And this cheating is permitted by the upper manager!! How did it happen? well... the managers playing the games. The two (now three) levels managers ensures that none of outside team could work with the talent engineer alone. When they steals, those seniors all lined up and the upper manager would give pressure down to turn in the design and the credits. Whoever on the same side of this level IV engineer would suffer a hard time and have bad reviews from those managers. So, we watched the stealing and cheating happening every day but no one dare to say anything. <to be continued>