The experience of people I know at Google seems to vary incredibly based on direct supervisor (like any company) and the specific project you're doing. There are people I know who have gotten stuck on high-revenue but to-them uninteresting teams, couldn't easily shift to other parts of google, so they left.
If you could get the right team (and had a cool direct supervisor, or had enough status to force this), it seems like a pretty awesome place to work. If you want to have a huge impact, working for a company like Google or Facebook, in the right capacity, pretty much guarantees it. Not having to worry if checks will clear, if kitchens will be stocked, etc. is a nice benefit on top of that.
(If I could get the job of "make Android the most secure mobile OS, using some of the stuff from ChromeOS, and utterly crush all other mobile platforms in the Enterprise, I'd be really tempted; or the same thing for an EC2-killer from Google, also built around security.)
If you could get the right team (and had a cool direct supervisor, or had enough status to force this), it seems like a pretty awesome place to work. If you want to have a huge impact, working for a company like Google or Facebook, in the right capacity, pretty much guarantees it. Not having to worry if checks will clear, if kitchens will be stocked, etc. is a nice benefit on top of that.
(If I could get the job of "make Android the most secure mobile OS, using some of the stuff from ChromeOS, and utterly crush all other mobile platforms in the Enterprise, I'd be really tempted; or the same thing for an EC2-killer from Google, also built around security.)