Google employees reveal what they hated most about the company

For some, the gripes were small as they complained that the free food served at the cafeterias on Google’s Mountain View headquarters was ‘getting worse by the day’.

Current and former Google employees have revealed what they hate the most about working at an office that has become famous for its free perks 

‘Ten years ago we used to get prime ribs, sushi, freshly made rolls, fresh coconuts…Today’s food is totally meh by comparison,’ one former Google employee wrote. 

‘I know, I know, many companies today don’t even offer food, but try to look at it from the Googlers’ perspectives.’ 

‘The company took us in for an amazing deal and then the deal just went down the hill.’ 

Many employees also complained about the headquarter’s location, nothing that the upper-class Mountain View neighborhood was an expensive neighborhood and living anywhere else involved a horrible commute.  

‘In the Bay Area, the cost of living is insane,’ wrote former Google software engineer Adrian Carballo. 

‘If you wrote off of the MTV campus there isn’t even much to do other than working or hanging out with your coworkers. Lame.’ 

‘You do have free food available all the time, and many cafes, gyms, laundry rooms, etc.’ 

‘But over time as you start using all these perks (because it’s just too convenient) you spend more and more of your time at the office.’ 

‘You start making the same choices day in and day out. You hang out more and more with the same people you work with.’ 

A former senior account manager likewise found that all the perks that came with Google eventually began to consume his life.  

‘Basically, you end up spending the majority of your life eating Google food, with Google coworkers, wearing Google gear, sending Google email on Google phones,’ wrote Joe Cannella. 

One former senior account manager revealed that all the perks made him so comfortable that Google began to consume his life, to the point it decided where he ate, hung out, and wore 

‘You eventually start to lose sight of what it’s like to be independent of the big G, and every corner of your life is set up to reinforce the idea that you would be absolutely insane to want to be anywhere else.’ 

Cannella wrote that he realizes others would criticize him as being a ‘poor spoiled Googler’, but he believes that’s the exact mindset the environment is meant to create. 

‘You are given everything you could ever want, but it costs you the only things that actually matter in the end.’ 

For many that was the feeling of actually being challenged by their work, and feeling like they were contributing and making a difference inside their own company. 

‘I often say Google has a great problem: Too many outstanding people,’ wrote one former employee who worked at the tech company for seven years. 

‘I left a great seven-year career…because it just wasn’t that challenging. My growth would have stunted, and I would have been unhappy.’  ‘When I left, my direct reports were outstanding, my boss was outstanding, my peers were outstanding’.

Former staff software engineer John L Miller said the worst part about working at the company was ‘feeling under-utilized’. 

‘As someone with ~25 years of programming, management, and architecture experience, I wasn’t doing anything that a good college hire with ~2 years of experience couldn’t do faster and just as well,’ he wrote. 

‘That’s a depressing situation.’ 

Many Google employees said the company was filled with so many brilliant people that it was impossible to keep them all challenged, leaving many left with menial tasks 

Another former employee said they left Google after three years because they felt the impact they could ever make on the business ‘was minimal’. 

‘Unless you are an amazingly talented engineer who gets to create something new, chances are you’re simply a guy/girl with an oil can greasing the cogs of that machine,’ they wrote.  

Many joked that the hardest part about Google was the interview to get in, leaving the company with hundreds of brilliant people with nothing challenging to do.