Great company, but poor low-level management and hiring process.
Pros
Great salary and benefits. Wide range of products to work on. Name recognition conveys huge status. Great people and culture.
Cons
Google has an enormous number of divisions, and I can only speak to the one I ended up in - YMMV. My work area was a warehouse with open ceilings, concrete floors, and metal desks arranged in groups of six people in a workspace. The interview process was generic, so that once you are approved, you go into a pool of candidates from which managers pick new hires. I only had a half-hour phone interview with my future boss before I had to decide whether to take the position. My boss never allowed me to work with anyone on a project to get me up to speed, despite numerous requests for help. He assigned me the task of writing the specs for a major modification which included several groups not in my area - a task I would not expect of anyone with less than two years experience in the division, yet he assigned it to a person with less than four months experience. HR won't let you change groups until you have completed a year in your first position, so no allowance for bad fits is made.
