-Biggest problem at Google = poor managers who lack leadership skills. My manager never once created an annual or quarterly strategic business plan. He (actually *I*) filled in the template given by management, but he never created a plan we could work toward. As a result, people did what they wanted, which was not always most profitable (in part because short term incentives don't align with long term profitability). This created a lot of problems. In 2007, the company created a new layer of middle-manager jobs and hired people internally...without training them to be managers! Disaster. Lots of inefficiency and broken promises. Horrible decision that continues to plague employees. There are some good managers, I just didn't work with any.
-No career development. Minimal worthwhile training. You can take a course here and there, but when it comes to moving around the company, watch out. Sales, Engineering, and Enterprise are silos---you can't move between them. *Everyone* complains about this. Smart people have for years been talking about leaving.
-They fired most of HR in 2009 (the others have always been contract workers without benefits); what remains of HR is really weak. HR is never helpful anyway.
-No one "owns" decisions (not even managers or their managers!), but everyone gets a say...so few risks get taken and greatness rarely evolves beyond the idea stage
-There's a lot of mediocrity; why improve when improvement might require you or teammates to work a little smarter or harder? Lots of resistance to change that requires more work.
-Flat organization is bad for people whose work shows skill beyond job level / area & typical promotion cycles (senior management encouraged national sales team to think of lateral moves as promotions...even though you don't make more money, get better titles--and then must start the promotion journey afresh as if you had never worked there before)
-Salary. When Google offered me the job, a well-known, respected web property with a similar job did as well. The latter offered me TWICE as much money as Google. Twice! And all the good benefits.
-Salary increases over time. When you're promoted, you don't make all that much more. Bonuses are small (and taxed at 50%). Options are not worth as much as you think. And you don't get as much stock as you think, either. (These are taxed at 50%, too, so you don't really get very much!)
All of this relates to the non-engineering side. I always really liked the engineers and when I worked with their projects found great synergies. Unfortunate the sales side made it so hard to move over!
