Google Senior Software Engineer reviews

4.3

89% would recommend to a friend

(1,547 total reviews)
avatar

Sundar Pichai

63% approve of CEO

78% positive business outlook

Senior Software Developer Engineer employees have rated Google with 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 1,547 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Senior Software Developer Engineer professionals have an excellent working experience there. Google is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Senior Software Developer Engineer professionals compared to other employers within the IT (Information Technology) industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
5.0
Oct 3, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Coming out of college, I think Google provides a huge opportunity to advance quickly, but to a point. You'll be given considerable responsibility, and paid accordingly with some pretty terrific perks.

Cons

Google is fighting the 'law of large companies', and is doing pretty well but there's a certain inevitability afoot too: Over the four years I've been there, I've noticed scaling back of perks (and also at times a sickening culture of employee entitlement), a steady rise of red tape to run a scalable service in the production environment, a certain amount of stiff corporate speak and a uptightness over branding, image, and in some cases (though definitely not all) an aversion to risk taking has to some extent dampened my enthusiasm a little bit. Still an amazing place to be though.

3.0
Jul 4, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* World-class, brilliant coworkers * Excellent benefits and physical environment * Above-average total compensation compared to other local companies * Some groups do very cutting-edge work

Cons

* Much of the work is not interesting * Mid-level executive leadership is questionable * "Death march" schedules and random priority changes becoming more common * No career path from engineer to having substantive influence over what gets worked on * Too many overqualified people forced into work that's beneath their abilities

4.0
May 20, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The culture - Google has an amazing culture and is a very engineering centric organization. They pretty much defined how the modern silicon valley company should look like and they still do it very well. The learning opportunities - It's possible to move easily between teams at Google and you can learn a lot of about a lot of things. The perks - Everyone's heard of the perks, and they are awesome. The food is great, the benefits are great, the salaries are competitive with bonuses and stock options.

Cons

Sometimes difficult to get recognition for a job well done. Can be a little hectic on some teams, while it can be painfully slow on others. Moving from one team to another hinges on getting well known, and in some instances promoted, yet the promotion process is quite difficult to make it work for you. You may try to get promoted one year and get refused by a committee when another one would have given you the promotion, because the members of that committee were more aware of what you did or who you are.

Viewing 1513 - 1515 of 1,547 Reviews

Glassdoor has 70,358 Google reviews submitted anonymously by Google employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Google is right for you.