A number of current and former employees of the tech giant used Quora, a Q&A platform, to express all the things hate about working for Google.
Although this year Google won employer of the year by Fortune magazine for the fourth consecutive year, it would seem free massages does not equal happiness for many employed there.
A frequently cited complaint on the thread was that many workers were overqualified for their jobs. Google implements a strict hiring policy and as a result, Ivy League graduates are working as customer support. Due to the company’s success and reputation, they have enough candidates for every job opening that they can carefully pick the highest achieving candidate for the most rudimentary jobs.
This has also caused another problem. As all employees of the company are very intelligent individuals, earning recognition, and a promotion, is close to impossible.
One comment explains, “It’s hard to get promoted quickly, since the person above you as well as at your level both have great educations and strong work ethics. When it’s standard to be awesome, and the work isn’t particularly tough to begin with, it’s hard to differentiate.”
This can cause many employees to feel discouraged and ineffective in both the long and the short term.
Another noted complaint was that the atmosphere was not conducive to getting any work done. Comments on the thread explained that employees took their jobs lightly and that there was more ‘play’ than ‘work’. One employee said,” Everyone at Google wanted to be cool. Delivering quickly and effectively was not on anyone’s agenda. In other words, the engineers were pampered and customers were not taken sufficiently seriously.”
Not only were there complaints about the atmosphere, but man employees had issues with their colleagues claiming that many were over-confident in their abilities without the skills to back it up.
This has created a tense atmosphere amongst the employees. An anonymous member of the Google workforce said, “Everybody believes he (males dominate) is better than his neighbour. So it is really hard to discuss any issue unless it is your friend you are talking to. Objective discussions are pretty rare, since everybody’s territorial, and not interested in opinions of other people unless those people are Important Gods.”
This feeling is also applicable, for some, towards their managers. One employee claimed that members of middle management are uninspiring and do little to motivate their juniors. In addition, they have a ‘quantity over quality’ type of mentality.
A number of other complaints, comments and opinions were shared on Quora, but one thing is certain, Google may not be all that it is claimed to be.