[EmployedRussian]

> I would never apply

I guess you'll never know what (if anything) you've missed.

> I'd end up working with a bunch of sycophants who are willing to do that sort of thing

You are implying bad intentions where none are likely to exist.

Google is a very large company, and 0.001% of candidates are bound to have suboptimal interview experience by sheer bad luck (and it's likely that you see their horror stories more than you see "I interviewed at Google, had a good experience, got hired, and now work on cool stuff with incredible coworkers" kinds of stories).

[yongjik]

> "I interviewed at Google, had a good experience, got hired, and now move protocol buffers from one directory to another every day"

There, FTFY. :P

(used to be a Googler.)

* Well, that and eat tons of snacks and coffee. So it was actually pretty good.

[thesmallestcat]

Do you work for Google? I hate that I have to ask this, but Googlers are known to come out to defend their employer on HN, for better or worse.

[EmployedRussian]

> Do you work for Google?

I do. I've also done 200+ interviews.

> Googlers are known to come out to defend their employer on HN

Well, sure. It's not because Google tells us to defend it though, but rather to state the facts as we see them.

[thesmallestcat]

On the other hand, I understand that part of the employment contract is that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company. Horror stories come out, but few and far between due to this risk. Google's certainly not alone in having clauses like that, but the volume of Google defense on HN feels like astroturf. So that's where my cynicism comes from.

[EmployedRussian]

> I understand that part of the employment contract is that ex-Googlers cannot bad-mouth the company.

You understand this based on what?

Out of curiosity, I just went through my employment agreement, and did not find any such clauses.

> Horror stories come out, but few and far between due to this risk.

Or due to the fact that they rarely happen (I am not disputing that they do sometimes happen).

> the volume of Google defense on HN feels like astroturf.

Like I said earlier, since you are dead set to never apply, you'll never find out what (if anything) you've missed.

[thesmallestcat]

Seriously? Maybe you're an exception, but it's not like a search for "google employee nda" returns nothing. It's been discussed on HN as well.

[EmployedRussian]

Google NDA covers (non)disclosure of Google confidential info. It has nothing to do with "bad-mouth"ing before or after termination of employment.