Realistic pros and cons as Google SWE

I worked at 3 different companies before coming to Google 7 months ago so I have some perspectives I can offer. Before pros and cons, here are some interesting points 1. Very doc driven Everything has documentations. The bad thing about this is that you will be writing and reading docs whenever working on a project. The good thing is that you will be able to read every system design, every decision and its tradeoffs at that time so you can learn tons by reading them. You also have something to go back to if you forgot decisions/designs you did years ago 2. Gives you tons of time to research I get the vibe that you are not here to make and break stuff. It is more like researching every possible solution and choosing the right one. Sometimes you feel slow because researching for solutions is not easy. So combination with #1, you may have one code change with a lengthy doc in one month but you would be required to be knowledgeable and become an expert in what you researched on. Some people like this because they can deeply learn stuff before implementing but if you are the type of person to evaluate productivity by how many lines of codes you write, you will feel stuck Pros 1. Pay Regardless of what people say, expect 200k new grad 300k L4 400k L5 with yearly refresher of 60k,100k,150k on average. I get paid 340k as an L4 and this may be lower than Dropbox, Pinterest, Roblox, you get free food/50% 401k match/free internet,phonebill,other perks. I would say it is maybe top 20% (not top10% or above) 2. Brand Branding is good as SWEs. Blinders criticize it but expect good impressions from your friends or families if you are into that kind of stuff. I find that it is difficult to find other brands with similar recognition as Google. 3. Work from anywhere for a month You can work from anywhere not just usa but anywhere in the world. I visited New York and Japan and visited their offices just to get lunch during trip. Did it only a couple times and did it to look at different offices. 4. Wlb This one depends on the team but I am in Cloud and work reasonable 9-5. If you are in it just to coast, you can get away with less but if you want to learn and grow, you can spend a lot of time reading stuff. Cons 1. Outdated and isolated tech This one is a bit weird but Google does everything by itself and do not rely on third party code or libaries at all. Also does not even use Git , has internal tools for everything that is different the rest of the world. Learning syntax and tool will not be transferable knowledge. So what I do instead is to learn the underlying tech in the internal tools so I can learn something transferable. 2. Slow decisions and speed On top of the doc and research heavy culture, things are extremely structured that you need approval from code owners to merge things and deploy. Cross team communication is also important to mitigate the slow process 3. Politics I am not L6 or above so I have not encountered too much politics or experienced them first hand but I hear it is extremely important to know how to play politics to get the ball rolling in the direction that you and your team want to move to. In a way, you should actively defend what you think is right and manage expectations around you and your sister teams.