Getting into Google used to confer a bit of a halo on an engineer and was basically a sign that they “made it”. However I feel like there’s been a slow and steady change in sentiment and now Google no longer has the cachet it once held. I know it’s a long-running joke that everyone thinks the hiring bar dropped only *after* they were hired, but I do think that this is objectively true of Google especially during the past 3 years. Not only are some very mediocre people getting in, the huge bloat at Google (even post-layoffs) really weakens the signal from getting hired since you’re just one of 30k or so engineers. I think Google is heading in the direction of becoming a dinosaur like Cisco or IBM especially under Sundar’s weak leadership. [Before anyone accuses me of sour grapes, I had an offer from them when I was a new grad but I turned them down.] TC: 475k
Don’t know, but I do know you’re a dork.
Its no Jane Street, OpenAI, or Abnb
Why is AirBnB in the same sentence as the other two
Lmao airbnb. Only new grads and dumbasses pick abnb over google
All prestige belongs to Amazon
And just came out of FMLA!
It will eventually go the way of IBM and Oracle, that’s just how it goes with large mature organizations. Nothing bad, just the circle of life.
Sure, but my thesis is that it’s slouching towards the Cisco tier at a precipitous rate. Blowing their gargantuan lead in transformer tech and being caught flat footed in the AI race is inexcusable for a supposedly top tier company.
You rejected Google all those years back, you make 475K. Still Google haunts you, and hence this post. This conclusively proves that Google is still prestigious. I am sure you meet people who say wtf is Two Sigma. Proof 2: Even for the great non-typical people of Blind, the poll is stil favoring Google
Have never regretted it for a single day. Just curious as an outsider why the company is deteriorating so rapidly.
Oh come on. You are doubtful for sure, doubt leads to curiosity. Deep within you are still wondering…
Genuinely curious what defines prestige and why you’d care in the first place. That you are working in a “prestigious” company doesn’t mean you’re a respectable person. Don’t let the company define you.
do you know what forum you’re on rn
New grads care from top schools care about prestige, esp indian - they are from a 'prestigious university' therefore they need a 'prestigious job'. After a few years, TC and work-life satisfaction becomes way more important.
I feel prestige attitudes also vary significantly between YoE cohorts / folks with different experiences. I feel like the general consensus among very good experienced engineers ive worked with across different companies is beyond hyper competitive companies (i.e: very high pay) company prestige is an average generalists' narrative. Great people focus on opportunities by scope / project (followed by high pay for them being top tier in their area). Google is so massive they hire thousands of warm body engineers to work on non-critical systems with relatively low impact - doesnt feel prestigous to me. Work in Google Brain as research engineer on SotA LLMs - much more prestige-y. Another example: is Stripe prestigious? If you work on some random data platform team as a mid level, eh not really? Are you an industry leading expert on Ruby tools and the tech lead / principal eng on their Ruby compiler team? Feels more prestige-y (even if ruby kek)
^ Spot on. It's about scope/impact/area of responsibility.
This is great summary, especially for experienced folks.
Still prestigious as a recognizable top brand known for a high bar and top talent. Non-tech folk (particularly in non-tech hubs) often have a perception of “geniuses work at Google.” You may not think the bar is high enough for the prestige these days, but that doesn’t matter—what matters is what recruiters think when they see it on your resume; for that the FAANG companies are pretty hard to beat and Google’s spot probably stands out the most, though I’d personally probably give the crown to Netflix as I’ve never been able to land even an interview. The engineering work is largely not anything special, few products are very special (search, gmail, YouTube, android) while most flop or get killed, and the biggest problem is that you work in a “tech island” and so if you’re not actively adventuring into other things in your spare time, your skills quickly become dated for the industry. e.g. your borg config skills don’t go very far in spinning up Kubernetes clusters on AWS in your next role at a seed stage startup. At least gRPC is an exceptional case.
Did you use to work there? Why’d you go to Hopper?
I used to work there. I didn’t go from G -> Hopper, there were some steps in between. I’m considering going back—Hopper recently laid off 30% of the company (myself included)
It's still prestigious for most recruiters and HMs. The interviews at G haven't gotten any easier the past 3 years. The selectivity is still high and interviews are still more difficult than most other places. It's more of the economic climate and bureaucracy that's affected most of the fortune 100 companies and faang prestige but that's industry wide. The companies in this recession with positive upward prestige are your unicorn LLM startups and 1 million TC quant dev hiring hedge funds
I found the hedge fund interviews to be easier. And the high TC is more of a recent thing, may or may not last. But the long hours have been constant from what I hear.
Depends on the hedge fund, you can’t lump them all together. Places like Millennium have highly variable interviews but Citadel or newer places like Aquatic have way harder interviews than FAANG.
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Google is still prestigious, just not the top tier. You can still count on Oracle for dinosaur list before Google