[youssifa]

It really depends on the perspective you bring and what you're comparing it to. If the equivalent alternative to working at Google on AdSense sales is working as a consultant at McKinsey or at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, then no it may not necessarily be the "opportunity of a lifetime".

To someone in the Silicon Valley bubble comparing a PMM role at Google to a PMM role at Uber or Airbnb, it may be difficult to see the real value of Google on a resume.

However, to most people in the world those roles are all opportunities of a lifetime. If you look at my peers in every job I've held since working at Google and treated Google as a neutral company (i.e. not having any real career boosting value), I would have been by far the least qualified individual in many of those roles. Having Google on my resume landed me interviews and job offers I would not otherwise have gotten.

It also suggests a credibility to employers in the non-engineering world because many believe that an employee at Google must be super intelligent and highly competent. Believe it or not, I'd venture to say that this is more so true outside of Silicon Valley (where Google isn't as common of a former employee among job applicants) than inside. But I think it boosts your career prospects either way.

The key, like most things in life, is how the individual chooses to leverage the name recognition on their resume and supplement that experience with other experiences.

[uola]

The tech industry is full of stories of meritocratic success, sophisticated technology and abundance of wealth. For the average person working at, or with, one of the big tech companies is going to sound like a good idea. Maybe not the opportunity of a lifetime, but few people can afford to search for those, just a decent job in an industry on the rise. They can't really know that the janitor isn't getting rich anymore, heck he probably can't even afford to live anywhere near the offices.