The Google Culture

Though Google has grown a lot since it opened in 1998, we still maintain a
small company feel. At lunchtime, almost everyone eats in the office café,
sitting at whatever table has an opening and enjoying conversations with
Googlers from different teams. Our commitment to innovation depends on
everyone being comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. Every employee is a
hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. Because we believe
that each Googler is an equally important part of our success, no one
hesitates to pose questions directly to Larry or Sergey in our weekly all-
hands ("TGIF") meetings – or spike a volleyball across the net at a corporate
officer.

We are aggressively inclusive in our hiring, and we favor ability over

experience. We have offices around the world and dozens of languages are
spoken by Google staffers, from Turkish to Telugu. The result is a team that
reflects the global audience Google serves. When not at work, Googlers
pursue interests from cross-country cycling to wine tasting, from flying to
frisbee.

As we continue to grow, we are always looking for those who share a

commitment to creating search perfection and having a great time doing it.

About our offices

Our corporate headquarters, fondly nicknamed the Googleplex, is located in

Mountain View, California. Today it's one of our many offices around the
globe. While our offices are not identical, they tend to share some essential
elements. Here are a few things you might see in a Google workspace:

• Local expressions of each location, from a mural in Buenos Aires to

ski gondolas in Zurich, showcasing each office's region and
personality.
• Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava
lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls.
• Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms – and very few solo
offices.
• Laptops everywhere – standard issue for mobile coding, email on the
go and note-taking.
• Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos,
ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes.
 • Grassroots employee groups for all interests, like meditation, film,
wine tasting and salsa dancing.
• Healthy lunches and dinners for all staff at a variety of cafés.
• Break rooms packed with a variety of snacks and drinks to keep
Googlers going.

Google Diversity and Inclusion

• Diversity Home
• Diversity is our Business
• Student Support
• K-12 Outreach
• Best Place to Work
• Community

Diversity is our Business

Everybody’s searching for something different. Just as the very

idea of Google depends on diversity, so does delivering the best
possible products. Our success hinges on our ability to understand
the needs of all 597 million of our users. That’s why we work hard to
attract and hire talented individuals of every possible perspective,
from all over the world. No matter how you slice it, diversity is our
DNA.

Featured Projects and Groups

The 40 Language Initiative

Google is a global company with international users accounting for

more than half of our total user base. In order to meet the needs of
our ever-growing user population, we need a broad diversity of
perspectives and voices in the creation of our products. English-
speaking users comprise only 30% of the total Internet population.
For Google to be competitive internationally, our products need to
speak all the languages our users speak. With that in mind, we
started the 40 Languages Initiative in May 2007, with the aim of
getting Google products into 40 languages, mapping to roughly 70
countries. This initiative will enable more than 99.3% of the Internet
population to use Google's products.

"Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to Google's way of doing

things. We strive to be a local company in every country in which we
operate, and we understand that our users have different cultures,
languages, and traditions. It drives the projects we work on, the
people we hire, and the goals we set ourselves. We go to great
lengths to create products that are useful to our users wherever they
are, and we've found that this commitment to diversity and to our
users has been key to our success."

- Nikesh Arora, President, EMEA Operations

The Guguelitos

According to the most recent eMarketer report, "Hispanics Online,"

there are currently 23 million Hispanics online, which is about 52% of
the US Hispanic population. By 2012, more than 29 million will be
online, increasing Internet penetration to 58.6%. To target this
massive and growing market with AdSense and AdWords, our
employees in Online Sales and Operations launched an organized
group to coordinate separate efforts throughout the organization.

Read entire feature

Google Grants

Google Grants is a unique in-kind donation program awarding free

AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. The program
empowers organizations who share our philosophy of community
service to spread their public service messages and reach global
audiences online. To date, recipients have included non-profits who
help the world in areas such as science and technology, education,
global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.

Accessibility Solutions at Google

Information access is at the core of Google’s mission – to make the
world’s information universally accessible and useful. That’s why in
addition to crawling, indexing and ranking billions of websites,
images, videos and other content, we also work to make that content
available in all languages and in accessible formats. We want to
make information available to everyone, and that includes people with
physical and mental disabilities. We’ve found that providing
alternative access modes like keyboard shortcuts, captions, high-
contrast views and text-to-speech technology helps everyone, not just
people with disabilities.

Google.org

Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to

address the global challenges of our age. It is an integral part of
Google Inc., and works closely with a broad range of "Googlers" on
projects that make the most of Google's strengths in technology and
information; examples of this approach include Google Flu Trends,
RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and Google PowerMeter.

Business Overview

As with its technology, Google has chosen to ignore conventional wisdom in

designing its business. The company started with seed money from angel
investors and brought together two competing venture capital firms to fund
its first equity round. While the dotcom boom exploded around it and
competitors spent millions on marketing campaigns to "build brand," Google
focused instead on quietly building a better search engine.

The word quickly spread from one satisfied user to another. With superior
search technology and a high volume of traffic at its Google.com site,
Google's managers identified two initial opportunities for generating
revenue: search services and advertising.

Google grows and business blooms

Over time, these two business lines evolved into complementary networks.
Google AdWords advertisers create ads to drive qualified traffic to their sites
and generate leads. Google publishing partners deliver those ads targeted to
relevant search results powered by Google AdSense. With AdSense, the
publisher shares in the revenue generated when readers click on the ads.
For sites wishing to have more control over their intranet or site searches,
Google developed the Google Search Appliance, a scalable and secure
appliance that delivers accurate search results across any number of
documents.

Google continues to think about ways in which technology can improve

upon existing ways of doing business. New areas are explored, ideas
prototyped and budding services nurtured to make them more useful to
advertisers and publishers. However, no matter how distant Google's
business model grows from its origins, the root remains providing useful and
relevant information to those who are the most important part of the
ecosystem – the millions of individuals around the world who rely on
Google search to provide the answers they are seeking.

Google AdWords for Advertisers

Google designed AdWords for advertisers who want to reach a qualified

audience as efficiently as possible. Advertisers select their own target
keywords and only pay when customers click on their ads. It's easy to create
ad text and manage online advertising accounts with no large upfront
payment required. All that's needed is five minutes and a credit card. The
ads appear across Google's growing roster of partners, including thousands
of sites from America Online to the Washington Post, and are targeted to
relevant search and content pages.

Google's experienced sales and service team optimize campaigns for our
larger advertisers. Our staff of AdWords experts work with advertisers to
select the appropriate keywords and generate the matching creative, then
carefully monitor the campaign to improve its performance over time by
winnowing keywords and rewriting copy based on what is most effective.
There's no limit to the number of keywords that an advertiser can select and
each keyword can be matched with a different creative execution. Recent
advertisers include Amazon, Cisco Systems and Staples.

Google provides all of its advertisers with a full complement of reporting

services to enable fine tuning of campaigns and real-time intelligence about
which components are performing best. Advertisers can further increase
efficiencies by targeting their campaigns to specific geographies or
languages.

Google AdSense and Web Site Services

Google believes relevant advertising can be as useful as search results or
other forms of content. And that advertising can enhance the experience for
visitors to a publisher's website, while helping publishers recover some of
their investment in creating content of value. Google AdSense™ combines
Google Search technology with our base of keyword advertisers to deliver
ads that precisely target search results or the content on a site's pages, no
matter how specialized the subject matter. Advertisers, publishers, and
information seekers all profit as a result.

Signing up for AdSense is easy -- it only takes a few minutes to apply. And
our sales team helps customize the program for sites receiving more than 20
million page views a month.

• AdSense serves relevant ads on content pages search result and

content pages as well as dormant domain pages.Google Search
Services enable publishers to provide Google web search on their own
pages – results that can be used to generate revenue with the AdSense
for Search program The Google Search Appliance, a scalable and
secure device that provides Google quality search across an individual
website or intranet.
• Google Wireless Services deliver Google search results via PDAs,
wireless phones and other mobile devices powered by many of the
world's leading wireless service providers

Our Philosophy

Ten things we know to be true

"The perfect search engine," says co-founder Larry Page, "would understand
exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." When Google
began, you would have been pleasantly surprised to enter a search query and
immediately find the right answer. Google became successful precisely
because we were better and faster at finding the right answer than other
search engines at the time.

But technology has come a long way since then, and the face of the web has
changed. Recognizing that search is a problem that will never be solved, we
continue to push the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate
and easy-to-use service that anyone seeking information can access, whether
they're at a desk in Boston or on a phone in Bangkok. We've also taken the
lessons we've learned from search to tackle even more challenges.
As we keep looking towards the future, these core principles guide our
actions.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience
possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to
the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will
ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our
homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement
in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly
marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when
we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well
you don't have to consider how they might have been designed differently.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

We do search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused

exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how
we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems,
we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous
improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and
seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving
search helps us apply what we've learned to new products, like Gmail and
Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously
unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-
expanding information in their lives.

3. Fast is better than slow.

We know your time is valuable, so when you're seeking an answer on the

web you want it right away – and we aim to please. We may be the only
people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our
homepage as quickly as possible. By shaving excess bits and bytes from our
pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, we've
broken our own speed records many times over, so that the average response
time on a search result is a fraction of a second. We keep speed in mind with
each new product we release, whether it's a mobile application or Google
Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for the modern web. And we
continue to work on making it all go even faster.
4. Democracy on the web works.

Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting

links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value.
We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals
and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm,
which analyzes which sites have been "voted" to be the best sources of
information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this
approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information
and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open
source software development, where innovation takes place through the
collective effort of many programmers.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information

wherever they are, whenever they need it. We're pioneering new
technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people
all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking
email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several
different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we're hoping
to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free,
open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the
Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who
have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up
revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering

search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed
on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of
advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of
thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver
ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we're ultimately serving all
our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding
principles for our advertising programs and practices:

• We don't allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they

are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can
provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what
 you wish to find – so it's possible that certain searches won't lead to
any ads at all.
• We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We
don't accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to
see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads that are
relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough
rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or
large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
• Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored
Link," so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results.
We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search
results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our
objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that
trust.

7. There's always more information out there.

Once we'd indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other
search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was
not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new
databases into search, such as adding a phone number and address lookup
and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like
adding the ability to search news archives, patents, academic journals,
billions of images and millions of books. And our researchers continue
looking into ways to bring all the world's information to people seeking
answers.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Our company was founded in California, but our mission is to facilitate

access to information for the entire world, and in every language. To that
end, we have offices in dozens of countries, maintain more than 150 Internet
domains, and serve more than half of our results to people living outside the
United States. We offer Google's search interface in more than 110
languages, offer people the ability to restrict results to content written in
their own language, and aim to provide the rest of our applications and
products in as many languages as possible. Using our translation tools,
people can discover content written on the other side of the world in
languages they don't speak. With these tools and the help of volunteer
translators, we have been able to greatly improve both the variety and
quality of services we can offer in even the most far-flung corners of the
globe.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Our founders built Google around the idea that work should be challenging,
and the challenge should be fun. We believe that great, creative things are
more likely to happen with the right company culture – and that doesn't just
mean lava lamps and rubber balls. There is an emphasis on team
achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to our
overall success. We put great stock in our employees – energetic, passionate
people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and
life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a café line,
at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice
with dizzying speed – and they may be the launch pad for a new project
destined for worldwide use.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set

ourselves goals we know we can't reach yet, because we know that by
stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through
innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve
upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw
that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how
it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell
checker.

Even if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, finding an answer
on the web is our problem, not yours. We try to anticipate needs not yet
articulated by our global audience, and meet them with products and
services that set new standards. When we launched Gmail, it had more
storage space than any email service available. In retrospect offering that
seems obvious – but that's because now we have new standards for email
storage. Those are the kinds of changes we seek to make, and we're always
looking for new places where we can make a difference. Ultimately, our
constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force
behind everything we do.
Google User Experience

Our aspirations

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful,
fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful,
trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten
principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is
"Googley" – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.

The Google User Experience team works to discover people's actual needs,
including needs they can't always articulate. Armed with that information,
Google can create products that solve real-world problems and spark the
creativity of all kinds of people. Improving people's lives, not just easing
step-by-step tasks, is our goal.

Above all, a well-designed Google product is useful in daily life. It doesn't

try to impress users with its whizbang technology or visual style – though it
might have both. It doesn't strong-arm people to use features they don't want
– but it does provide a natural growth path for those who are interested. It
doesn't intrude on people's lives – but it does open doors for users who want
to explore the world's information, work more quickly and creatively, and
share ideas with their friends or the world.

2. Every millisecond counts.

Nothing is more valuable than people's time. Google pages load quickly,
thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential
features and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Unnecessary
clicks, typing, steps, and other actions are eliminated. Google products ask
for information only once and include smart defaults. Tasks are streamlined.

Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google

doesn't sacrifice without good reason.

3. Simplicity is powerful.
Simplicity fuels many elements of good design, including ease of use, speed,
visual appeal, and accessibility. But simplicity starts with the design of a
product's fundamental functions. Google doesn't set out to create feature-rich
products; our best designs include only the features that people need to
accomplish their goals. Ideally, even products that require large feature sets
and complex visual designs appear to be simple as well as powerful.

Google teams think twice before sacrificing simplicity in pursuit of a less

important feature. Our hope is to evolve products in new directions instead
of just adding more features.

4. Engage beginners and attract experts.

Designing for many people doesn't mean designing for the lowest common
denominator. The best Google designs appear quite simple on the surface
but include powerful features that are easily accessible to those users who
want them. Our intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience
while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw
others to the product.

A well-designed Google product lets new users jump in, offers help when
necessary, and ensures that users can make simple and intuitive use of the
product's most valuable features. Progressive disclosure of advanced
features encourages people to expand their usage of the product. Whenever
appropriate, Google offers smart features that entice people with complex
online lives – for instance, people who share data across several devices and
computers, work online and off, and crave storage space.

5. Dare to innovate.

Design consistency builds a trusted foundation for Google products, makes

users comfortable, and speeds their work. But it is the element of
imagination that transforms designs from ho-hum to delightful.

Google encourages innovative, risk-taking designs whenever they serve the

needs of users. Our teams encourage new ideas to come out and play.
Instead of just matching the features of existing products, Google wants to
change the game.
6. Design for the world.

The World Wide Web has opened all the resources of the Internet to people
everywhere. For example, many users are exploring Google products while
strolling with a mobile device, not sitting at a desk with a personal
computer. Our goal is to design products that are contextually relevant and
available through the medium and methods that make sense to users. Google
supports slower connections and older browsers when possible, and Google
allows people to choose how they view information (screen size, font size)
and how they enter information (smart query parsing). The User Experience
team researches the fundamental differences in user experiences throughout
the world and works to design the right products for each audience, device,
and culture. Simple translation, or "graceful degradation" of a feature set,
isn't sufficient to meet people's needs.

Google is also committed to improving the accessibility of its products. Our

desire for simple and inclusive products, and Google's mission to make the
world's information universally accessible, demand products that support
assistive technologies and provide a useful and enjoyable experience for
everyone, including those with physical and cognitive limitations.

7. Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.

Those Google products that make money strive to do so in a way that is

helpful to users. To reach that lofty goal, designers work with product teams
to ensure that business considerations integrate seamlessly with the goals of
users. Teams work to make sure ads are relevant, useful, and clearly
identifiable as ads. Google also takes care to protect the interests of
advertisers and others who depend on Google for their livelihood.

Google never tries to increase revenue from a product if it would mean

reducing the number of Google users in the future. If a profitable design
doesn't please users, it's time to go back to the drawing board. Not every
product has to make money, and none should be bad for business.

8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.

If people looked at a Google product and said "Wow, that's beautiful!" the
User Experience team would cheer. A positive first impression makes users
comfortable, assures them that the product is reliable and professional, and
encourages people to make the product their own.

A minimalist aesthetic makes sense for most Google products because a

clean, clutter-free design loads quickly and doesn't distract users from their
goals. Visually appealing images, color, and fonts are balanced against the
needs for speed, scannable text, and easy navigation. Still, "simple elegance"
is not the best fit for every product. Audience and cultural context matter. A
Google product's visual design should please its users and improve usability
for them.

9. Be worthy of people's trust.

Good design can go a long way to earn the trust of the people who use
Google products. Establishing Google's reliability starts with the basics – for
example, making sure the interface is efficient and professional, actions are
easily reversed, ads are clearly identified, terminology is consistent, and
users are never unhappily surprised. In addition, Google products open
themselves to the world by including links to competitors and encouraging
user contributions such as community maps or iGoogle gadgets.

A greater challenge is to make sure that Google demonstrates respect for

users' right to control their own data. Google is transparent about how it uses
information and how that information is shared with others (if at all), so that
users can make informed choices. Our products warn users about such
dangers as insecure connections, actions that may make users vulnerable to
spam, or the possibility that data shared outside Google may be stored
elsewhere. The larger Google becomes, the more essential it is to live up to
our "Don't be evil" motto.

10. Add a human touch.

Google includes a wide range of personalities, and our designs have

personality, too. Text and design elements are friendly, quirky, and smart –
and not boring, close-minded, or arrogant. Google text talks directly to
people and offers the same practical, informal assistance that anyone would
offer to a neighbor who asked a question. And Google doesn't let fun or
personality interfere with other elements of a design, especially when
people's livelihood, or their ability to find vital information, is at stake.

Google doesn't know everything, and no design is perfect. Our products ask
for feedback, and Google acts on that feedback. When practicing these
design principles, the Google User Experience team seeks the best possible
balance in the time available for each product. Then the cycle of iteration,
innovation, and improvement continues.

Quick Profile

Mission

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it

universally accessible and useful.

Quick Facts

Founded: 1998
Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Incorporation: September 4, 1998
Initial public offering (NASDAQ): August 19, 2004
Headquarters: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
Offices: Locations of our offices around the world.
Management: Our executives and board of directors.
Investor Relations: Financial and corporate governance information.

ebsco

Section: comment
EDITORIAL COMMENT
We've all been there: hired someone you thought was
perfect, who made all the right noises at interview, and who
even passed the various tests you set them. And then even
before they've made it through their first week, you realise
you've made a huge mistake. They don't get on easily with
their new colleagues; their work ethos isn't quite compatible
with your own; they don't fit the culture. Whether it's due to
pressures of time or circumstance, you've hired the wrong
person.
Speak to any recruitment expert, and they'll tell you that 'fit'
is the hardest concept to define, and the toughest thing to
get right. But getting it wrong can be so costly to the
business. The question is: how much time are you and your
line managers prepared to invest in finding people who fit?

If you work in a sector with a high turnover of staff, then

sometimes you may just have to plump for the next
available bum on seat. But if your organisation is inundated
with hundreds of applications per vacancy — as is the case
for internet search engine giant Google — then recruitment
becomes a much more absorbing process.

Google UK's HR director Liane Hornsey raised a few

eyebrows during her presentation at the HR Directors
Business Summit in Wales last week (page 6) when she said
that she went through 14 interviews to secure her job, and
that managers typically spend 30% of their time recruiting.
Time-consuming that may be, but Hornsey said the payoff
came in the organisation's retention rates: staff turnover
stands at just 3%.

Google's approach is in stark contrast to the news stories

we have run in recent weeks about employers wishing they
had the right to sack people they didn't like without fear of
ending up in tribunal.

I'm not suggesting that all senior managers should 'do a

Google' when it comes to recruiting. But if we spent more
time getting our recruitment right, we might never need to
fire a bad hire again.

'How much time are you and your line managers prepared to
invest in finding people who fit?'

PHOTO (COLOR)

~~~~~~~~

By Karen Dempsey, Editor

Benefits
“Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the
world. We are focused on providing an environment where hard-working people are
rewarded for their contributions to Google and for making the world a better place.”

In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to online services, Google puts
employees first when it comes to daily life in its offices. We strive to be innovative and unique in
all services we provide both to customers and employees, including our benefits and perks
offerings. Google works to improve life for every Googler by providing an award-winning array of
benefits and perks that enable you to get on with the things you love to do – both in and out of the
office.

Health and Wellness*

Medical Insurance

The Group Mediclaim Program provides competitive, pre-defined insurance coverage to Google
India employees and their dependents for expenses related to hospitalization due to illness,
disease or injury.

On-site Nurse

At our Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon offices we have an on-site nurse to take care of our
employees.

Wellness Programs

Google provides a variety of health and financial wellness programs throughout the year.

EAP – Employee Assistance Program

Services for employees and their dependents include free short-term counseling, legal
consultations, financial counseling, and more.

Life and AD&D Insurance

Automatic coverage at 4 times annual base salary or 10 lakhs whichever is greater.

Short Term & Long Term Disability

4 times annual Base Salary + Target bonus is payable depending upon the nature of the injury
and the degree of incapacity.
Business Travel Accident Insurance

Automatic coverage at 2 times annual salary.

Retirement and savings*

Gratuity

Gratuity is payable on completion of a minimum period of 4.8 years at a stretch with Google. The
amount of Gratuity is calculated as per the last average salary drawn and the number of years
served in Google.

Time Away from Work*

Vacation

20 days vacation leave in a year.

Sick Leave

12 paid sick leaves taken as appropriate.

Holidays

We have 12 holidays that include mandatory holidays and festival holidays as defined by the
government.

Maternity Benefits

Up to 12 weeks off at approximately 100% pay, eligible for an additional 8 weeks if employed at
Google for more than 1 year.

Parental Leave (for non-primary caregivers)

Up to 4 weeks off at approximately 100% take-home pay

Benefits and Perks … beyond the basics*

Tuition Reimbursement

We'll help you pursue further education that's relevant to what you do. You must receive grades
of "B" or better. Tuition reimbursement is up to Rs. 150,000 per calendar year or per course as
applicable.

Employee Referral Program

Good people know other good people. Some of our best employees have been hired through
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“Google is organised around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of
exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many
creative, principled, and hard-working stars.”

Larry Page, Google Co-founder

Stanford University

n 2008 Google HR set up a private Google Group to ask former employees why they
left the company. We’ve been forwarded what appears to be authentic posts to the
thread by a number of ex-Googlers, which we reprint below minus identifying
information other than their first names.

The thread shows a brutal honesty about what it’s like to work at Google, at least
from the point of view of employees who were unhappy enough to resign. Top
amongst the complaints is low pay relative to what they could earn elsewhere, and
disappearing fringe benefits seemed to elevate the concern. Other popular gripes –
too much bureaucracy, poor management, poor mentoring, and a hiring process that
took months.

A few of the posts are more positive, and frankly there isn’t a whole lot here that you
don’t see in other big companies.

One message stands out though in most of the posts – employees thought they were
entering the promised land when they joined Google, and most of them were
disappointed. Some of them wondered if it meant they were somehow lacking. One
person sums it all up nicely:

Those of us who failed to thrive at Google are faced with some pretty serious
questions about ourselves. Just seeing that other people ran into the same issues is
a huge relief. Google is supposed to be some kind of Nirvana, so if you can’t be
happy there how will you ever be happy? It’s supposed to be the ultimate font of
technical resources, so if you can’t be productive there how will you ever be
productive?

The full thread is below.

From: Stephen
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 13:25:07 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 2:25 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Actually, I hit the Send button on this before I intended to.

I left Microsoft to work for Google in 2005. I stayed 10 months. I
was demoralized. I shouldn’t have ever taken that job. I was
disenchanted the whole time, and yes, like you, my regret over the
poor bargain I’d made affected my performance.
As I was saying. Google actually celebrates its hiring process, as if
its ruthless inefficiency and interminable duration were a sure proof
of thoroughness, a badge of honor. Perhaps it is thorough. But I
would be willing to wager that Microsoft’s hiring process, which takes
a fraction of the time, does not result in a lower-skilled workforce
or result in a higher rate of attrition. And let me say this: if
Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders should organize a
rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that
level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation.

I was, like you, offered a considerable pay cut to go to work at

Google. The relocation package was lame. So were the benefits. (I
had worked at Microsoft. Microsoft was self-insured, so there were no
co-pays.)

In one TGIF in Kirkland, an employee informed Eric Schmidt that

Microsoft’s benefits package was richer. He announced himself
genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised me. Schmidt, in the
presence of witnesses, promised to bring the benefits to a par. He
consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a
year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his
tired, familiar standby (“People don’t work at Google for the money.
They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A
statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a
billionaire.

I still can’t recall all the moralizing postures without a shudder of

disgust.

From: Ben
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 14:43:09 -0700
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 3:43 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Stephen wrote:
> He
> consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a
> year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his
> tired, familiar standby (“People don’t work at Google for the money.
> They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A
> statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a
> billionaire.

I ran into a similar irritation while at Google, actually – during that

time when the minikitchens were being stripped heavily. I heard that one
of the reasons was cost – I remember figures mentioned like “thousands
of dollars per day” – and it just didn’t jive well with me.

I mean, look at the profit numbers. Google’s net income for 2006, when I
left, was 3 billion. 22 million a year? Less than 1% of their *profit*.
“Thousands of dollars a day”? Even if it’s ten thousand, that’s still
well under 1%.

Reduce profit by 2% to make your employees much happier . . . well, I

know what I’d choose. In some ways it seemed like Google was getting
increasingly pennywise/poundfoolish, and that just seemed like a dubious
situation.

(Although, to Google’s credit, they opened up a new cafe that solved

many of my food-related issues . . . after I left. Sigh.)

-Ben

From: Ted
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:39:06 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 6:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Sounds familiar (I was at Kirkland too.)

Google took longer than any company I ever worked for to get thru the
hiring process (approx 5 months from resume to job start.)

The interview process was very mixed: They had me slated as a Windows
Developer for some reason, tho everyone on my interview loop wondered
why. I flubbed my first coding pretty bad but after that it was clear
that no-one on my interview loop had enough experience or knowledge to
level me. On the other hand they figured that out and scheduled a
follow on interview with the head of the Kirkland office who asked
reasonable and pertinent questions.

Unlike the previous posters, I was happy with my salary and (for some
reason I can’t articulate) I kept my own private medical insurance…

Also I was surprised that Google seemed to be proud that they didn’t
communicate from one interviewer to the next: at Microsoft it was a
good opportunity to find more appropriate interviewers, etc. if a
person seemed misslated. Oh well, I thought my interview and hiring
process was an anomaly.

From: Laurent
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:10:08 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 9:10 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I also left Google after only 5 months.

As soon as I got inside, I had the feeling of being swallowed by a

giant borg

Really, I felt like I didn’t exist, watching people buzzing around

with laptops.

I did however meet with Larry and Sergey during a product review
meeting, and have only good things to say about these 2 guys.

Regarding compensation, I did have to negotiate quite a bit to get on

par with what I earned before.

For options however, I didn’t get much (something like 180 options and
330 gsu).

What was strange with me at Google was: while outside, I had all these
big ideas I could do if I ever worked there.

Once inside, you have 18,000 (at the time, Feb 2008) other googlers
thinking the same things.

I think it’s a good move for them to have App Engine: they won’t need
to hire that many people anymore, or buy small garage-guys because
now developers will be able to develop over the Google OS for free for
Google

One last thing: Google also thinks inside a box (the browser). I felt
this a lot, and was another reason I left. (too constrained)

It’s no surprise that they push to extend what the browser can do.
(Gears, Earth plugin)

Cheers.

From: “shuba
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 22:01:06 -0500
Local: Wed, May 28 2008 9:01 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

Hi Friends,
Yes, I do agree with Stephen about HR. I totally second the statement that
Google’s Hiring process is slack. Agreed, they receive a record number of
applications everyday, but still the feeling that the resume is lost in a
‘black hole’ when there is no reply in as long as 6 months, is terribly
disappointing. Also, the whole exit process could be bettered and ironed
out.

I understand when Eric Schmidt says, one doesn’t work for Google for the
money alone. Job with Google is sure an experience. But, yes, bringing the
perks on par with other bigwigs will bring down the attrition level to some
extent, thou we all do understand that attrition is not a big problem for
Google right now.

Keep writing!

Shuba.

From: Shelby
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 10:26:39 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Thurs, May 29 2008 11:26 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I had an equally ridiculous hiring process – although mine actually

seemed normal (by Google standards) until the result. “And let me
say this: if Larry Page is still reviewing resumes, shareholders
should organize a rebellion. That is a scandalous waste of time for someone at that
level, and the fact that it’s “quirky” is no mitigation. ” – this
couldn’t be more true.

My experience actually in Aug. 2004 when I was interviewing for a

sales position in the Seattle office was the typical 13+ interviews,
including a day trip to MV where I was told that someone would take me
to lunch and instead she took me in a conf. room and interviewed me.
So I ended up not eating at all that day until I returned to the
airport at 4pm. However, I passed my interviews with flying colors
and was surprised 3 weeks later when I still hadn’t heard from my
recruiter about the results of the hiring committee meeting. Finally
he called to tell me that I was rejected because I was currently
working as a Flight Attendant. A job I had started 4 months prior
because it was a great opportunity to move into their management group
but then the airlines started downsizing management and so I applied
for the Google Travel Sales role instead. However, apparently the
elitist hiring committee members believed that FA’s are stupid and
there was no way they would be able to work at Google. Lucky for me
the recruiter agreed it was incredibly sexist and fought with HR to
bring me on as a temp. Three months later they resubmitted me to the
committee and had me remove my former job – instead I mentioned that I
was “traveling” for four months and bingo! I got hired full time. 3+
years later I was promoted twice and named a Google Luminary! Good
think Larry is such an excellent judge of character.

I have to say though, that level of bureaucracy remained pretty much

the whole time I was at Google. I finally left after a lifestyle
change moved me to Austin and they re-nigged on an offer to move me
into the Travel Vertical role for which I was promised before the
move. It’s a real bummer because I loved my co-workers and there are
a ton of great people at Google. But the management has no power to
influence change because they are micromanaged by the Execs.
I’m very happy at my new company though – making twice as much and
enjoying the benefits of a start-up culture again.

From: issara
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 08:50:45 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 9:50 am
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I was hired to work in Google’s Singapore office. I found out very

quickly that Google International is not the same as Google-US. The
offered pay was way too low to survive in Singapore, so I left after I
got another job offer that I felt was better for me. I really do
believe that Google is doing some important work with humanitarian
mapping projects and digitizing libraries. But for me, I felt that
Google’s popular image did not match its actions in the work place,
and that some of the things they did were not very “Googly.”

Issara

From: “Lisa
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:16:20 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:16 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I’m enjoying this group and this thread.

I had a far different hiring experience — it moved too

quickly! I wasn’t actually ready to leave my previous position, but
when the Google recruiter called, it would have been silly not to talk
to her.

I had one full day of MV in-person interviews, a few phone

conversations, and the next thing I know, they’re calling me to
present an offer. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have accepted it. I spent
all of 11 days working at Google before I returned to my previous (now
current company.

I wish I had asked more questions and asked to meet the team I’d be
managing (at least some of them!) before I jumped on board, but
Google’s reputation as an employer is legendary. At the time, I felt
conflicted, but then I’d think “Google wants me, and everyone knows
how hard it is to get hired there. I should jump on this opportunity.”
I don’t bear any ill will — I think Google is an amazing company, is
doing some revolutionary things, and is full of smart people. And I
bought shares in 2004, so I hope they continue to be very successful.

Cheers!

Lisa
From: Pam
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:39:04 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I have been sitting back, surprised at the level of negativity

expressed by those on this thread, and wanted to share my very
different experience. Sure, Google isn’t perfect, its management isn’t
perfect, the HR department isn’t perfect, etc, but by and large they
do things better/smarter/friendlier than the vast majority of
companies out there.

My hiring process back in 2003 was, like some of yours, somewhat drawn
out, and I was made to contract for almost 4 months before being
hired, but Google gave me a chance, and I gave Google a chance. And
I’m so glad.

Forget about the cool products I worked on over the years that are on
the cutting edge of technology and impacting millions of people. We’re
mostly talking about work/life balance and job satisfaction. I get
such a kick out of thinking about the incredible stuff I got to do
while at Google (watch Barack Obama/Al Gore/Hillary Clinton/Colin
Powell/Malcolm Gladwell/Jimmy Carter speak, go to a trapeze class,
hear John Legend play in Charlie’s cafe, go to a chocolate trufflemaking
class, ski on Google’s dime year after year in Tahoe, to name
just a few), not to mention enjoy a work environment at Google that
was informal, comfortable, safe, and supportive — so different from
the work environments of my friends in other industries or at other
companies.
I wonder if post-Google bitterness is correlated to when you joined
and/or how long you were at Google. It seems that it is. Maybe it’s
the memories of Google in the first few years I was there that make it
it seem magical, but I really do treasure the time I spent at Google.
I left a few weeks ago, after almost 5 years at the company, because I
wanted to pursue a markedly different career path. Sure, I had times
when I was frustrated with the way Google was doing things, or when I
felt that my particular project, or assignment was lacking, and I
definitely had managers that I didn’t enjoy. But all in all — what a
freakin’ amazing experience!
—–
And, separately, regarding the compensation issue, it seems to me that
Google would do their research and pay market wages high enough to
attract the best. If good candidates refuse to take the jobs because
the wages aren’t high enough to live on, they’d be forced to raise
compensation.

From: “Logan
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:56:47 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 4:56 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I experienced the same painful hiring process all of you did. The
reputation of Google is why I worked there for three and a half years. I
took pride in where I worked and the work I was doing. I knew I could get
paid more elsewhere but the caliber of people to my left and right was
amazing. I learned a lot and have benefited from the time I spent at
Google.

When asked by friends and family why I was leaving I came up with an
automobile analogy.

One auto has a 5 star crash safety rating, with good gas mileage, low
maintenance costs and good performance. Another, has bluetooth for your
mobile phone, 10 cup holders, sexy looking instrument panel, premium sound
system, DVD player and seat warmer but has poor gas mileage, poor
performance, bad safety rating, expensive maintenance, etc.

Some will make a purchasing decision on what really matters; safety,

performance, serviceability. Some will make a purchase based on “how many
cup holders the car has”. Google is the car with all the sexy features
but very little of what really matters. The amenities,extra-curricular(s)
and conversastion peice of “working for Google” is what keeps most
working at Google.

My $.02
From: Ted
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 16:27:35 -0700
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 5:27 pm
Subject: RE: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

My bitterness is almost entirely because of my manager. He was in my

orientation group in Mt. View and seemed like a good egg at the time. Just
as Google can be a great place for the software engineer to do great work
unencumbered, it’s also possible for a manger to be a complete jerk
unencumbered. Tho the other members of the group (that didn’t leave sooner)
thought that they could put up with anything to work at Google they did
notice my manager’s particular irrationality when dealing with me. There
were only two days of my six months there that I didn’t dread going to work.
My manager made sure that no other manager would talk to me and as soon as
the head of the office left town he tried to put me on a PIP. Life is too
short to deal with jerks so I felt I had no choice but to leave.
I do believe that I could have really enjoyed myself at the home office or
with a different manager, etc. but I wasn’t given the choice of what to work
on nor who to work for.

-Ted

From: “Greg
Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 20:29:18 -0400
Local: Fri, May 30 2008 6:29 pm
Subject: Re: So… Why’d you left, guys? I mean, seriously.

I wonder how much of a difference there is between

engineering/non-engineering and MV/non-MV, in addition to the
old-timer/non-old-timer split.

I started working at Google a while ago as an engineer when there was

only the Mountain View office. (If I recall correctly, the NY sales
office opened later that month.) Google certainly seemed like an
ideal place to work at the time, and if I wanted to be an engineer,
I’d probably still want to work there. But there were certainly
issues, even back then, and I believe they’ve mostly gotten worse as
the company has grown.

The hiring process:

Google’s hiring process tends to have a lot of false negatives. If I
had submitted my resume myself, rather than getting recommended by an
employee, I don’t know if I would have gotten in. My GPA was a 3.7,
and the cutoff (at least at one point in Google’s history) was 3.8 (I
went to a tough school, the 6th 4.0 GPA in its history just graduated
this year). I honestly don’t know if this cap is still there (I
suspect not) but this is just one way Google arbitrarily cut down on
the number of people interviewed.

After I had been working, I found out that I was lucky that one of the
members of my team hadn’t interviewed me. My C++ skills weren’t
really all that great, since I hadn’t used C++ in a couple of years,
and I would have totally failed if he had interviewed me. He told me
that he would have been wrong to do so, since I actually ended up
replacing him on the team and automating most of what he had been
doing by hand, so I hope that my example helped make at least one
interviewer a little more reasonable. But the old-timers certainly
felt like they had to have tough interviews, and in many cases “tough”
equated to things like trivia questions or brain teasers, neither of
which are completely relevant to what people were being interviewed
for.

The Google lifestyle:

Food at Mountain View in the early days was great. Things got a bit
crazy when Charlie was cooking in the same tiny kitchen that he had
cooked for 70 people in when there were something like 400 people
eating in the cafe, although the food quality didn’t go down nearly as
much as I would have expected it to. But this was just one of many
examples of overcrowding in the offices that happened over the years
at Google. (And honestly, keeping the cooks happy seemed like a good
idea to me…)

But along with the food came the Google lifestyle: if you were staying
for dinner, it better be because you were working afterwards. It was
frowned upon to leave right after dinner. I think a lot of people
spent quite a bit of time either just before or just after dinner
hanging out and not really being all that productive, which is nice
for the mostly 20-something crowd, but I can sympathize with the
people who have families that didn’t fit in. I had my own reasons for
not wanting to hang out at work, so I never really got that far into
the Google social scene. And my experience was that the people who
spent all their time at Google were the ones that ended up on the
sexier projects or in charge of things. (Admittedly, some of these
people were also workaholics, and I wasn’t willing to give up some of
my non-work social activities, but there seemed to be a bit of
favoritism going on as well.)

Engineers and everyone else:

Unlike most other engineers, I had a job that required me to talk to
people all over the company. I talked to the lawyers, marketing, PR,
product managers, executives, engineers… And because I started
early enough, I also knew quite a few people in sales. As far as
salary went, my offer was 35% higher than my next highest job offer,
so I think I lucked out there. That was certainly not the normal
situation, though. Over the years I talked to plenty of people about
what they thought about Google’s compensation… There’s a huge
discrepancy between engineers and non-engineers. Most of the adwords
support people I talked to complained a lot about their situation.
Not only were they generally overqualified for the jobs (given what
the work actually was, but Google has always prided itself on having
people with extra education) but they could fairly easily have gotten
higher-paying jobs elsewhere. The usual reason for sticking around
that I heard was that after a few years at Google, their resume would
look a lot better on the job market.

And that’s not counting the people who are contractors. I never
understood why all of the recruiters were contractors, given that
Google showed no signs of slowing down its hiring. All this meant was
that a lot of the recruiters had to spend a lot of time training new
recruiters, since they were replaced so frequently. (This, I think,
goes at least partway for explaining why the hiring process was
occasionally a bit slow.)

Management
My biggest pet peeve was the management, or lack thereof, at Google.
I went through many managers in my first few years. I ended up having
at least one manager during this time that was an unpopular manager,
and because of that, I was told many times over that I shouldn’t
bother trying to get a promotion. When I left, I had never been
re-slotted. This, in spite of the fact that my technical judgment was
respected enough that I occasionally delayed launches until their
logging systems were operating correctly. And in spite of the fact
that I essentially consulted to other technical groups. I could go on
about this for a while, but then I might actually sound like I was
bitter.

Remote offices
I worked in Mountain View for 3 years before moving to New York.
Around that time, I started traveling a lot: I had college alumni
activities in southern California, so I occasionally worked out of
Santa Monica, and my brother lived in Seattle, so I worked in Kirkland
a few times. The “Google experience” is substantially different
outside of Mountain View. And being outside of the Mountain View
culture bubble makes it that much harder to get taken seriously. I
honestly have no idea what it’s like to work for Google outside of the
US, but even when you’re only 3 time zones away, it’s sometimes hard
to get noticed by Mountain View.
This e-mail has gotten a lot longer than I really meant it to. But my
point is that there are plenty of good reasons people can have
negative impressions of working at Google. Just like there are plenty
of good reasons people have great experiences there.
–
Greg