Google Tops 100 Best Places To Work

inetsee writes "Fortune Magazine's annual '100 Best Companies to Work For' list is out, and Google topped the list in their debut appearance. Some highlights of the benefits of working for Google that caught my eye were the free gourmet meals and the massages. The chance to spend 20% of your time working on your own personal projects also sounds very appealing. Of course, with resumes rolling in at the rate of thousands a day, the competition is fierce."

Comments

Re:What about the 100 worst places?

[Oddscurity]

Because whoever'd publish such a list would get hit with a defamation suit within the hour?

Very small often == very good.

[b0s0z0ku]

Find a good small company (~20 people) where you fit in well. You'll have much more flexibility since the Top isn't all that high in a small company. Or even start your own. Many of the companies worth considering aren't even on the radar yet.

-b.

Re:Very small often == very good.

[metlin]

Or find a small group within a company where you fit well, and you will feel much the same.

Companies are not all the same on the inside, and some groups are better than the others within a company.

I work in the R&D division of a telecom services company - and our group is very small but is great to work with. For the most part, we are encouraged to think up cool things with technology that we think are worth exploring and are given the opportunity to work with them.

Alternatively, you could start your own company and work with a company that you already know (i.e. consultant and consultancy services etc).

Not every group in a big "good" company is necessarily good, and not all departments in a "not-so-good" are necessarily not-so-good.

You need to feel comfortable with the group and the people you work for, else there is no point, no matter how amazing a company maybe rated.

Google...

[b0s0z0ku]

20% of time working on personal projects

Fine, but if you're working in a smaller, less demanding company, you might have that time free, so you can work on the projects without the company knowing about it. Far better to market an idea independently than under the auspices of a large employer. At least you have the opportunity for profits far beyond a salary that way.

gourmet meals, massages

Just give me a decent salary, TYVM. If I want a massage, I can go to a masseur after hours. If I'm working in a city, I can pretty much order whatever I want to (and can afford) for lunch.

-b.

Re:Google...

[bcrowell]

In addition to the parent post's points, I'd add four more reasons why I wouldn't want to work there:

1. It's a huge organization, where you're a cog in the wheel.
2. Part of the point of the interview process is for the interviewee to judge whether the potential employers seem nice, and know what they're doing. If the interview process involves lots of monkey business with no objectively proven reliability, then that's a big minus for me. For me, the monkey business category includes handwriting tests, polygraph tests, contrived interview situations ("there's a snake in the trash can! just kidding!"), as well as Google's puzzles and goofy computer personality tests. (A homebrewed test is not a valid way to identify smart people. My mother works in the testing industry doing statistical modeling, and she considers even the professionally constructed IQ tests to be pretty poor.)
3. Heinous traffic in Silicon Valley.
4. Insane housing prices in Silicon Valley.

This will probably not last

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked at a technology company that had an on-demand gourmet chef, free massages, a concierge, free snacks and pop and very similar perks. Once somebody realized this was wasting a bunch of money and that people would work there even if there wasn't a gourmet chef, they dropped the perks all together. Alot of people then got angry about this and left and then things returned to normal. It is still one of the best places to work. Google has alot of money and they haven't had a chance to be taught a lesson in frugality. Once shareholders start demanding the impossible and they can not meet these demands with their profits from advertising only, you better believe that gourmet chef's job will be the first to go!

Re:Best place, despite worst pay

[Kalriath]

If you actually looked at Google's entry in the main index, you'd see that the reason they aren't on the pay table is because they refused to disclose that info. Don't believe me? Look here

Small companies is where its at

[jorghis]

Bear in mind that EA was also rated highly on this list for a while. This list is more about who can impress the editors with the best story about why their place is awesome to work at. What it really means is that Googles HR people are doing a great job of selling the company. Dont get me wrong, Google is a great place for a software engineer to work at, but this list doesnt mean diddly.

This list leaves most of the smaller companies off of it too. Maybe they should consider the title "100 best places to work if you want to work for a huge multinational." I am not knocking them for doing that, after all, how could they consider every small business in America? Just observing that there are some really great small companies out there. Also worth considering is that smaller companies will usually compensate you a lot better because they have fewer qualified applicants than the Googles and Microsofts of the world.

20% of how many hours per week?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The chance to spend 20% of your time working on your own personal projects also sounds very appealing.

I've known a few people that have worked there and some that do now. From what I understand, at least most of the time, you get to spend 20% of the 50-70 hours of your work week there on your side project. Yeah, the official work week is only 40 hours, and you're technically supposed to be able to spend 8 hours of that on your own thing... but managers being managers (even at Google), they still schedule the work like you're spending all 40 hours a week (and maybe a little more) on your real project and are displeased if you don't deliver.

Good ol' supply and demand

[Opportunist]

Do you notice something? Google is amongst the top places when it comes to benefits, and they're also one of the top players when it comes to productivity. Could it be that satisfied workers are productive workers? Even if they put 20% of their time into private projects?

Simply because a dissatisfied worker will put 20% of his time into the company and slack off the rest. Why bother working harder than necessary for the slave wage you get? Why bother spending half a thought on what you're doing? Do you get more money if you do something beneficial for your corp? Or will it be swallowed away by one of the managers as "their bright idea" anyway?

So Google is in the fortunate situation to hand pick their employees. The kind that is more productive in 20% of their time than a good deal of people in 150% (i.e. with 50 percent overtime). The kind of people that don't NEED a job, but the kind that can choose wherever they want to work.

So what's left for the rest? Exactly. The sludge. The kind of worker that tries to spend the hours between 9-5 with as little effort as possible and drops his keyboard the moment the clock strikes 5. Or, more likely, he'll drop his coffee mug.

That's what you get for minimum wage and zero benefits. Supply and demand, price and quality.

Google is productive because they're automated

[Animats]

Do you notice something? Google is amongst the top places when it comes to benefits, and they're also one of the top players when it comes to productivity. Could it be that satisfied workers are productive workers? Even if they put 20% of their time into private projects?

That's more the nature of the business. They don't make anything physical, and they provide very little customer service.

All of Google's businesses other than search generate little if any revenue. Really, stuff like Google's office systems exist to push back against Microsoft, not because running a word processor in the browser is a good idea.

Re:What about the 100 worst places?

[Kalriath]

Hmm. Paypal isn't in that list. They've broken my account such that I can't use my existing account, can't sign up for a new one, can't get responses out of their technical support. They're the worst I've ever dealt with - Sony Online comes in second for me. They complete lost an order of mine and disappeared the payment. Right. And this matters how exactly to how good of an employer they are?

Re:Check out Google's wrongdoing!

[orasio]

"Google is an outsourcer of US jobs to other countries, at a time when many US tech workers are unemployed. "

That is great, "US jobs".
Google takes money from all over the world, but somehow, the jobs are sacred and belong to the US.
Please stop staring at your bellybutton, and look around.