Throwaway account. Not giving exact dates, genders, company names, or department names. You'll see why. This is 110% "get fired and sued immediately" stuff. You know how your recruiter sets you up for the "chat with a googler" thing where you're free to ask questions to someone inside Google? Mine went totally sideways. The person my recruiter paired me with straight up asked me if my company was still hiring. I laughed (thinking it was a joke) and said yes, and the person starts acting all panicky and immediately starts telling me about google and their inside operations, and why I need to look elsewhere or stay put. They told me how screwed up everything is... promotions have been almost entirely frozen, no bonuses, constant rumors about another massive wave of layoffs, entire departments getting reorganized, the joke named Bard, Google's only real revenue stream (ads) being threatened, and this person has had their role changed a bunch recently, and they want OUT. They asked if they could add me on LinkedIn, and I said yes. They added me ON CAMERA and asked me to accept, and submit a reference for them at my company. I didn't really know what to say. This person has been in Google between 5-10 years, was selected by my recruiter, and is above a senior-level SWE level. Very obviously extremely smart, and I think they're panicking because Google may be a lot worse inside than we're hearing. Current TC: 341k Yrs of Experience: 9
What location?
I think saying Mountain View won't put this person at any risk. This chat was more than a day ago.
Sounds about right 😜
What’s the problem? Would you rather them tell you everything is great when it’s not? I swear people love hearing BS!!
These are supposed to be chats about the job duties and internal culture stuff (perks, fun stuff). This was 0-60 panicking right off the bat. This person might as well have submitted their 2 weeks notice on camera.
Sounds like he focused too much on the internal culture? That person and their feels are definitely apart of google. As I’m reading here on blind. So why hide it?
Crazy story, wow
But where are you hiring?
Yeah that definitely didn’t happen. Nice fan fic tho.
Lol, this is great. I can't speak for this person's area - maybe it is a complete pit. If the role you are applying for is in the same area as them, it's a good signal not to proceed. Otherwise, it's just one person over-extrapolating from their own bad experience to the whole company. I'm not going to comment on our financials in public other than to say that a SWE who lacks good judgement to vent confidential info to job candidates is not the best source of info. But the stuff about bonuses is definitely false for the company as a whole - eg some very sizable grants and bonuses in my team. The layoffs didn't affect some areas at all, and hit others badly. But right now it's hard to find a company that hasn't laid off staff at all / is guaranteed not to do it in the future. If you are in such a company, I would not hop jobs if I were you. If not then the risk is just something you have to deal with for a bit in the tech downturn.
Yeah the disclaimer was that certain groups definitely got bonuses, but the ones that didn't had the most bogus excuses attached to them. I think the people getting laid off even with "exceeds expectations" was an indicator. I think it would be insane if Google just "turned off" bonuses like a lightswitch lol. But you're absolutely right.
Just to give you a second opinion, my team also was granted some pretty nice comp packages for this year (raises, bonus, equity refresh). Obviously this varies team by team and not everyone will be the same. I will say morale at the company right now is kinda weird. Some people are paranoid, some are mad/sad, and some just act like it's business as usual.
It is the same environment in every big tech company now
Lie lie n lie some more
god damn, props to the guy or gal for being honest
Right? I think I'm gonna just stay where I am for now, or pursue Microsoft if I'm willing to take a risk. This was eye opening.
You think it’s better at MS?