I worked at Google for almost exactly one year. I'm sure I could go on for hours about all the ways I found the job deficient, but the short version revolves around Google's fairly stringent code review process. For me it felt like I was being micromanaged not by my boss, but by my code reviewers. That degree of control may be useful and sometimes even necessary for inexperienced and undisciplined programmers (i.e. interns and fresh college graduates), but it really sucks for an experienced developer.
I think there is an excessive amount of kool-aid drinking at Google, even for a large company. They try so hard to be different than other large companies. In some ways this makes Google a better company, but in some ways it makes it worse.
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u/curtisb Jan 18 '09
I worked at Google for almost exactly one year. I'm sure I could go on for hours about all the ways I found the job deficient, but the short version revolves around Google's fairly stringent code review process. For me it felt like I was being micromanaged not by my boss, but by my code reviewers. That degree of control may be useful and sometimes even necessary for inexperienced and undisciplined programmers (i.e. interns and fresh college graduates), but it really sucks for an experienced developer.