Google Software Engineer reviews

While the flat structure aids quick development of ideas, many managers are not people persons and are fairly inexperienced (as managers, while they're great software engineers). For newbies this can be frustrating because of the lack of downwards managerial communication. On top of that, the lack of clear policies and rules about things like WFH and OOO while make it easier to have a personal life highlight the disparity between well-connected Googlers (who might be friends with their managers) and the others. Lastly, product/project managers, ubertechs and swengs often fight about silly stuff, leaving innocent bystanders merely confused.

Google is getting big. This means a couple things: It's no longer always a "startup" feel. There's a lot of teams, and a lot of infrastructure, and there's starting to be a bit of bureaucracy here and there (though management has done a pretty good job killing it on sight whenever they see it). Also, because we have a lot of users and are always in the limelight, we have to be really careful about launching things, which often means that launching something requires jumping through more hoops to make sure it's scalable and stable, and that all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, in order to not have a bad press situation or an emergency caused by an overloaded system. This is good for production launches, but can slow down experimentation in the early stages of a product.