> I've never met anyone who was actually happy at Google when you sat them down for an honest talk.
I know plenty of people that have left google for greener pastures but also many that stayed. Since my previous team mostly went to other teams within Google we did a lot of talking about leaving and the consensus was that everyone would be fine whether they stayed with Google or decided to leave. "Happy" is a subjective term but everyone I talk to is comfortable and is fine with staying or leaving.
> Everyone was either coasting and depressed/disengaged, or overworked and stressed (I would say 80% were the former).
In a realist sense this one is almost tautological. Either you are trying to rank up or you're not trying to rank up. If you're not trying to rank up you get a LOT of leeway at Google, and you can coast if you want, or you can continue to do good work, as I think a lot of people do. If you're trying to rank up you're going to be busting ass, but I think this is not different than other companies. If you have people delivering impact and people who are not, are you really going to make the case that you should be promoting the less hardworking people? Or that everyone should rank up equally?
> People were frustrated about the bureaucracy, the promo process,
This is constantly brought up on memegen but there are also comments on memegen saying something to the effect of: "Despite our complaints Google is still a great place to work" and I don't think I've ever seen any pushback on this. Compare this to for example Reddit memes where there are zero people saying things are still good despite complaints. Promo by the way is being revamped due to complaints (I think this is public enough that I can mention this) and we'll see how the new process is.
> the slow pace, the meaninglessness of the work an individual IC does,
Despite my past projects falling flat, I personally find my current work important. In general I both agree and disagree with this point. It's 100% true that some people may not be personally invested in the success of the specific projects that they are working on, and I have indicated my agreement with this in a later comment. Where I disagree with this comment though is that people are very invested in project delivery in general, as your are extremely well rewarded for delivering projects. Above the L5-L6 level you will find people are working extremely hard to be impactful. This is maybe where the perception of "overworked and stressed" comes from. I will tell you these people are generally doing an amazing job and are being compensated for this overwork with amazing pay. And when they are getting pay commensurate to the work they are doing, I personally feel that the use of the label "overworked and stressed" needs to be heavily caveated.
> the stress for managers. Even on a super sexy project dealing with cutting edge AI that got tons of press coverage, everyone was frustrated.
I personally have not seen this but I don't dispute it. I have heard other teams have a lot of frustration.
> This company has a serious cultural issue.
This one is entirely subjective, but again I don't dispute this in terms the feeling of ennui at work. Sometimes leadership doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy and work is done for no reason. I can't really define what is "an issue" or "not an issue" culturally. What I can do is make comparative judgements: In my previous startups the culture was much worse, and there was much more of a sense of "what is leadership even doing?". I haven't worked in any places where I've had the sense that things are done better at Google. Others will have to speak to this.