Pros
Google encompasses the dot com environment. The culture is very laid back. The perks such as free meals and snacks is nice, bringing my dog into the office is also nice. The work outings are good as well. And you get to work with some cutting-edge technology. There are a lot of bright people in the company that you can learn a lot from. It feels like working a summer job all year long.
Cons
Senior and middle management lack vision on where to steer the group. If engineers are first-class citizens, and sales people are second-class citizens, then the folks in the datacenters are definitely the third class citizens of Google. Very immature and childish personalities. There is pretty much no growth as the career ladders are a joke. While the perks are nice, and the regular benefits are on par with most other large companies, the compensation is again, a joke (almost a slap in the face). Good people leave the group and either move out of operations and into another group within the company, or leave the company altogether as they realize there is no real career to be made there. Hiring smart and talented people and giving them mundane tasks and assignments just makes no sense. There is no real innovation to be created in operations, essentially you are a worker bee to the company.
