Actually, I hit the Send button on this before I intended to. I left Microsoft to work for Google in 2005. I stayed 10 months. I was demoralized. I shouldn’t have ever taken that job. I was disenchanted the whole time, and yes, like you, my regret over the poor bargain I’d made affected my performance.

As I was saying. Google actually celebrates its hiring process, as if its ruthless inefficiency and interminable duration were a sure proof of thoroughness, a badge of honor. Perhaps it is thorough. But I would be willing to wager that Microsoft’s hiring process, which takes a fraction of the time, does not result in a lower-skilled workforce or result in a higher rate of attrition. And let me say this: if Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders should organize a rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation.

I was, like you, offered a considerable pay cut to go to work at Google. The relocation package was lame. So were the benefits. (I had worked at Microsoft. Microsoft was self-insured, so there were no co-pays.)

In one TGIF in Kirkland, an employee informed Eric Schmidt that Microsoft’s benefits package was richer. He announced himself genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised me. Schmidt, in the presence of witnesses, promised to bring the benefits to a par. He consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money. They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a billionaire.

I still can’t recall all the moralizing postures without a shudder of disgust.

From: Ben
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 14:43:09 -0700
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 3:43 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Stephen wrote:
> He
> consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a
> year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his
> tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money.
> They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A
> statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a
> billionaire.

I ran into a similar irritation while at Google, actually - during that time when the minikitchens were being stripped heavily. I heard that one of the reasons was cost - I remember figures mentioned like “thousands of dollars per day” - and it just didn’t jive well with me.

I mean, look at the profit numbers. Google’s net income for 2006, when I left, was 3 billion. 22 million a year? Less than 1% of their *profit*. “Thousands of dollars a day”? Even if it’s ten thousand, that’s still well under 1%.

Reduce profit by 2% to make your employees much happier . . . well, I know what I’d choose. In some ways it seemed like Google was getting increasingly pennywise/poundfoolish, and that just seemed like a dubious situation.

(Although, to Google’s credit, they opened up a new cafe that solved many of my food-related issues . . . after I left. Sigh.)

-Ben

From: Ted
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:39:06 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 6:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Sounds familiar (I was at Kirkland too.)
Google took longer than any company I ever worked for to get thru the hiring process (approx 5 months from resume to job start.)

The interview process was very mixed: They had me slated as a Windows Developer for some reason, tho everyone on my interview loop wondered why. I flubbed my first coding pretty bad but after that it was clear that no-one on my interview loop had enough experience or knowledge to level me. On the other hand they figured that out and scheduled a follow on interview with the head of the Kirkland office who asked reasonable and pertinent questions.

Unlike the previous posters, I was happy with my salary and (for some reason I can’t articulate) I kept my own private medical insurance…

Also I was surprised that Google seemed to be proud that they didn’t communicate from one interviewer to the next: at Microsoft it was a good opportunity to find more appropriate interviewers, etc. if a person seemed misslated. Oh well, I thought my interview and hiring process was an anomaly.

From: Laurent
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:10:08 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 9:10 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I also left Google after only 5 months.

As soon as I got inside, I had the feeling of being swallowed by a giant borg

Really, I felt like I didn’t exist, watching people buzzing around with laptops.

I did however meet with Larry and Sergey during a product review meeting, and have only good things to say about these 2 guys.

Regarding compensation, I did have to negotiate quite a bit to get on par with what I earned before.

For options however, I didn’t get much (something like 180 options and 330 gsu).

What was strange with me at Google was: while outside, I had all these big ideas I could do if I ever worked there.

Once inside, you have 18,000 (at the time, Feb 2008) other googlers thinking the same things.

I think it’s a good move for them to have App Engine: they won’t need to hire that many people anymore, or buy small garage-guys because now developers will be able to develop over the Google OS for free for Google

One last thing: Google also thinks inside a box (the browser). I felt this a lot, and was another reason I left. (too constrained)

It’s no surprise that they push to extend what the browser can do. (Gears, Earth plugin)

Cheers.

From: “shuba
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 22:01:06 -0500
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 9:01 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Hi Friends,

Yes, I do agree with Stephen about HR. I totally second the statement that Google’s Hiring process is slack. Agreed, they receive a record number of applications everyday, but still the feeling that the resume is lost in a ‘black hole’ when there is no reply in as long as 6 months, is terribly disappointing. Also, the whole exit process could be bettered and ironed out.

I understand when Eric Schmidt says, one doesn’t work for Google for the money alone. Job with Google is sure an experience. But, yes, bringing the perks on par with other bigwigs will bring down the attrition level to some extent, thou we all do understand that attrition is not a big problem for Google right now.

Keep writing!

Shuba.

From: Shelby
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 10:26:39 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 11:26 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I had an equally ridiculous hiring process - although mine actually seemed normal (by Google standards) until the result. “And let me say this: if Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders should organize a rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation. ” - this couldn’t be more true.

My experience actually in Aug. 2004 when I was interviewing for a sales position in the Seattle office was the typical 13+ interviews, including a day trip to MV where I was told that someone would take me to lunch and instead she took me in a conf. room and interviewed me. So I ended up not eating at all that day until I returned to the airport at 4pm. However, I passed my interviews with flying colors and was surprised 3 weeks later when I still hadn’t heard from my recruiter about the results of the hiring committee meeting. Finally he called to tell me that I was rejected because I was currently working as a Flight Attendant. A job I had started 4 months prior because it was a great opportunity to move into their management group but then the airlines started downsizing management and so I applied for the Google Travel Sales role instead. However, apparently the elitist hiring committee members believed that FA’s are stupid and there was no way they would be able to work at Google. Lucky for me the recruiter agreed it was incredibly sexist and fought with HR to bring me on as a temp. Three months later they resubmitted me to the committee and had me remove my former job - instead I mentioned that I was “traveling” for four months and bingo! I got hired full time. 3+ years later I was promoted twice and named a Google Luminary! Good think Larry is such an excellent judge of character.

I have to say though, that level of bureaucracy remained pretty much the whole time I was at Google. I finally left after a lifestyle change moved me to Austin and they re-nigged on an offer to move me into the Travel Vertical role for which I was promised before the move. It’s a real bummer because I loved my co-workers and there are a ton of great people at Google. But the management has no power to influence change because they are micromanaged by the Execs. I’m very happy at my new company though - making twice as much and enjoying the benefits of a start-up culture again.

From: issara
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 08:50:45 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 9:50 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I was hired to work in Google’s Singapore office. I found out very quickly that Google International is not the same as Google-US. The offered pay was way too low to survive in Singapore, so I left after I got another job offer that I felt was better for me. I really do believe that Google is doing some important work with humanitarian mapping projects and digitizing libraries. But for me, I felt that Google’s popular image did not match its actions in the work place, and that some of the things they did were not very “Googly.”

Issara

From: “Lisa
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:16:20 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:16 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I’m enjoying this group and this thread.

I had a far different hiring experience ? it moved too quickly! I wasn’t actually ready to leave my previous position, but when the Google recruiter called, it would have been silly not to talk to her.

I had one full day of MV in-person interviews, a few phone conversations, and the next thing I know, they’re calling me to present an offer. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have accepted it. I spent all of 11 days working at Google before I returned to my previous (now current company.

I wish I had asked more questions and asked to meet the team I’d be managing (at least some of them!) before I jumped on board, but Google’s reputation as an employer is legendary. At the time, I felt conflicted, but then I’d think “Google wants me, and everyone knows how hard it is to get hired there. I should jump on this opportunity.” I don’t bear any ill will ? I think Google is an amazing company, is doing some revolutionary things, and is full of smart people. And I bought shares in 2004, so I hope they continue to be very successful.

Cheers!

Lisa
From: Pam
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:39:04 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I have been sitting back, surprised at the level of negativity expressed by those on this thread, and wanted to share my very different experience. Sure, Google isn’t perfect, its management isn’t perfect, the HR department isn’t perfect, etc, but by and large they do things better/smarter/friendlier than the vast majority of companies out there.

My hiring process back in 2003 was, like some of yours, somewhat drawn out, and I was made to contract for almost 4 months before being hired, but Google gave me a chance, and I gave Google a chance. And I’m so glad.

Forget about the cool products I worked on over the years that are on the cutting edge of technology and impacting millions of people. We’re mostly talking about work/life balance and job satisfaction. I get such a kick out of thinking about the incredible stuff I got to do while at Google (watch Barack Obama/Al Gore/Hillary Clinton/Colin Powell/Malcolm Gladwell/Jimmy Carter speak, go to a trapeze class, hear John Legend play in Charlie’s cafe, go to a chocolate trufflemaking class, ski on Google’s dime year after year in Tahoe, to name just a few), not to mention enjoy a work environment at Google that was informal, comfortable, safe, and supportive ? so different from the work environments of my friends in other industries or at other companies.

I wonder if post-Google bitterness is correlated to when you joined and/or how long you were at Google. It seems that it is. Maybe it’s the memories of Google in the first few years I was there that make it it seem magical, but I really do treasure the time I spent at Google. I left a few weeks ago, after almost 5 years at the company, because I wanted to pursue a markedly different career path. Sure, I had times when I was frustrated with the way Google was doing things, or when I felt that my particular project, or assignment was lacking, and I definitely had managers that I didn’t enjoy. But all in all ? what a freakin’ amazing experience! ??

And, separately, regarding the compensation issue, it seems to me that Google would do their research and pay market wages high enough to attract the best. If good candidates refuse to take the jobs because the wages aren’t high enough to live on, they’d be forced to raise compensation.

From: “Logan
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:56:47 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:56 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I experienced the same painful hiring process all of you did. The reputation of Google is why I worked there for three and a half years. I took pride in where I worked and the work I was doing. I knew I could get paid more elsewhere but the caliber of people to my left and right was amazing. I learned a lot and have benefited from the time I spent at Google.

When asked by friends and family why I was leaving I came up with an automobile analogy.

One auto has a 5 star crash safety rating, with good gas mileage, low maintenance costs and good performance. Another, has bluetooth for your mobile phone, 10 cup holders, sexy looking instrument panel, premium sound system, DVD player and seat warmer but has poor gas mileage, poor performance, bad safety rating, expensive maintenance, etc.

Some will make a purchasing decision on what really matters; safety, performance, serviceability. Some will make a purchase based on “how many cup holders the car has”. Google is the car with all the sexy features but very little of what really matters. The amenities,extra-curricular(s) and conversastion peice of “working for Google” is what keeps most working at Google.

My $.02

From: Ted
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 16:27:35 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 5:27 pm
Subject: RE: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

My bitterness is almost entirely because of my manager. He was in my orientation group in Mt. View and seemed like a good egg at the time. Just as Google can be a great place for the software engineer to do great work unencumbered, it’s also possible for a manger to be a complete jerk unencumbered. Tho the other members of the group (that didn’t leave sooner) thought that they could put up with anything to work at Google they did notice my manager’s particular irrationality when dealing with me. There were only two days of my six months there that I didn’t dread going to work. My manager made sure that no other manager would talk to me and as soon as the head of the office left town he tried to put me on a PIP. Life is too short to deal with jerks so I felt I had no choice but to leave. I do believe that I could have really enjoyed myself at the home office or with a different manager, etc. but I wasn’t given the choice of what to work on nor who to work for.

-Ted

From: “Greg
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 20:29:18 -0400
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 6:29 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I wonder how much of a difference there is between engineering/non-engineering and MV/non-MV, in addition to the old-timer/non-old-timer split.

I started working at Google a while ago as an engineer when there was only the Mountain View office. (If I recall correctly, the NY sales office opened later that month.) Google certainly seemed like an ideal place to work at the time, and if I wanted to be an engineer, I’d probably still want to work there. But there were certainly issues, even back then, and I believe they’ve mostly gotten worse as the company has grown.

The hiring process:
Google’s hiring process tends to have a lot of false negatives. If I had submitted my resume myself, rather than getting recommended by an employee, I don’t know if I would have gotten in. My GPA was a 3.7, and the cutoff (at least at one point in Google’s history) was 3.8 (I went to a tough school, the 6th 4.0 GPA in its history just graduated this year). I honestly don’t know if this cap is still there (I suspect not) but this is just one way Google arbitrarily cut down on the number of people interviewed.

After I had been working, I found out that I was lucky that one of the members of my team hadn’t interviewed me. My C++ skills weren’t really all that great, since I hadn’t used C++ in a couple of years, and I would have totally failed if he had interviewed me. He told me that he would have been wrong to do so, since I actually ended up replacing him on the team and automating most of what he had been doing by hand, so I hope that my example helped make at least one interviewer a little more reasonable. But the old-timers certainly felt like they had to have tough interviews, and in many cases “tough” equated to things like trivia questions or brain teasers, neither of which are completely relevant to what people were being interviewed for.

The Google lifestyle:
Food at Mountain View in the early days was great. Things got a bit crazy when Charlie was cooking in the same tiny kitchen that he had cooked for 70 people in when there were something like 400 people eating in the cafe, although the food quality didn’t go down nearly as much as I would have expected it to. But this was just one of many examples of overcrowding in the offices that happened over the years at Google. (And honestly, keeping the cooks happy seemed like a good
idea to me…)

But along with the food came the Google lifestyle: if you were staying for dinner, it better be because you were working afterwards. It was frowned upon to leave right after dinner. I think a lot of people spent quite a bit of time either just before or just after dinner hanging out and not really being all that productive, which is nice for the mostly 20-something crowd, but I can sympathize with the people who have families that didn’t fit in. I had my own reasons for not wanting to hang out at work, so I never really got that far into the Google social scene. And my experience was that the people who spent all their time at Google were the ones that ended up on the sexier projects or in charge of things. (Admittedly, some of these people were also workaholics, and I wasn’t willing to give up some of my non-work social activities, but there seemed to be a bit of favoritism going on as well.)

Engineers and everyone else:
Unlike most other engineers, I had a job that required me to talk to people all over the company. I talked to the lawyers, marketing, PR, product managers, executives, engineers… And because I started early enough, I also knew quite a few people in sales. As far as salary went, my offer was 35% higher than my next highest job offer, so I think I lucked out there. That was certainly not the normal situation, though. Over the years I talked to plenty of people about what they thought about Google’s compensation… There’s a huge discrepancy between engineers and non-engineers. Most of the adwords support people I talked to complained a lot about their situation. Not only were they generally overqualified for the jobs (given what the work actually was, but Google has always prided itself on having people with extra education) but they could fairly easily have gotten higher-paying jobs elsewhere. The usual reason for sticking around that I heard was that after a few years at Google, their resume would look a lot better on the job market.

And that’s not counting the people who are contractors. I never understood why all of the recruiters were contractors, given that Google showed no signs of slowing down its hiring. All this meant was that a lot of the recruiters had to spend a lot of time training new recruiters, since they were replaced so frequently. (This, I think, goes at least partway for explaining why the hiring process was occasionally a bit slow.)

Management
My biggest pet peeve was the management, or lack thereof, at Google. I went through many managers in my first few years. I ended up having at least one manager during this time that was an unpopular manager, and because of that, I was told many times over that I shouldn’t bother trying to get a promotion. When I left, I had never been re-slotted. This, in spite of the fact that my technical judgment was espected enough that I occasionally delayed launches until their logging systems were operating correctly. And in spite of the fact that I essentially consulted to other technical groups. I could go on about this for a while, but then I might actually sound like I was bitter.

Remote offices
I worked in Mountain View for 3 years before moving to New York. Around that time, I started traveling a lot: I had college alumni activities in southern California, so I occasionally worked out of Santa Monica, and my brother lived in Seattle, so I worked in Kirkland a few times. The “Google experience” is substantially different outside of Mountain View. And being outside of the Mountain View ulture bubble makes it that much harder to get taken seriously. I honestly have no idea what it’s like to work for Google outside of the US, but even when you’re only 3 time zones away, it’s sometimes hard to get noticed by Mountain View.