I don't even know why people still wants to go to google.
The easy money has been done, all you will get by joining now is a tiny paycheck and millionaire cubemates because they were at the right place at the right time 5 years ago.

LOL

What a bunch of whining pricks. Adsense/Adwords account associates are just clueless kids from 'elite' universities such as CSU Northridge with lib arts degrees.

Answer phones for 4 hours, reply emails for 4 hours, and then they go home. Well, hey, your job can easily be replaced by macaque monkeys but the only reason not to is because Google has a modicum of respect for scamming its customers by using native English speakers.

You're working as CSR agent for Google in a non-sweatshop like atmosphere with all the perks of an engineer and more money than you're suppose to earn.

Get a grip.

with so many people underwater now on options, things will only get worse. say hello to the new yahoo!

What I'm hearing is "Wah, wah, my job isn't perfect!" If you don't like your job, find a different one that your apparently fragile psyche can handle.

Interesting that the supposed "bad" managers are all female.

@SFJoe: Any woman in Silicon Valley can tell you that they're not surprised.

Will some kind Googler please e-mail Valleywag her "moma" photo post haste?
Thanks.

Sheesh, so many complaints. If you dont want to work for Google get out. That company on your curriculum vitae will open doors for you.

45k is good money just for that position and with all the benefits Google employees get, its still a lot of money. What the hell do you guys do there anyway? Surf all day? Reply to emails? Drink free lattes? Eat free sushi?

Check out the fake Tracy Lee Blumbergs on LinkedIn.

She IS hated.

@yawnster: Shutup... the wannabes have to go somewhere, and better Google than the next Google.

What is a "community college bachelor degree"?

@corncat: A BA/BS degree from school so bad that it would be considered equivalent to a community college.

$45K with those benefits, first job out of college and they're complaining? STFU and look for something better then...

Now this is some god dirt. This guy actually names names --- yippee!

@corncat: An associate's in how to not get married.

@Alaska Miller: except that google doesn't pay better than what those people could be making other places. Google pays worse. The Google adwords jobs are among the easiest to get. I knew at least 5 kids who applied for that as their "safety job" in case they couldn't get a decent one.

What a maroon! You can't get a BA/BS from a community college!

And just what does an "e-lite" school entitle you to do? Not a hell of a lot! When graduated from an "e-lite" school, I was just some snot nosed little brat that just got out of grad school with no experience and less common sense!

My e-lite" MBA did little but inflate my "e-lite" ego. Reality check! So what if you make $45K, you worthless little bastard! Get to work and quit whining! Pay your dues and you'll get your opportunity.

When I hire some one who turns out to be like I was...I give them the most menial job to start, as was done to me. If they suck it up and do a great job, they've earned my respect and better things. If they don't, let them perish and leave!

@cowsandmilk:

i can't recall glorified CSRs making more than 25-30k in the valley. all the google glamor and they're still complaining? last i recall my cafeteria wasn't free, my latters weren't free, i didn't get a christmas tree with free ipods underneath for anyone to take and i didn't get a free all inclusive trip to disneyland.

yeah sweating it out in an air conditioned office building off google campus in mtn view answering phones for 45k sure sounds tough.

@QADude: Um... the school someone comes from doesn't make them smarter or better. First of all, you may not know how they got into the school in the first place. A good manager will remain a good leader. It shouldn't and won't matter where they get their degree from.

Grade inflation makes people coming out of certain schools look like geniuses. So those who came from the "vanguard" landing 45k and who are complaining are fools.

Man, this convinces me that Google is hella cheap (and that takes into account the free cafeteria)... Pay people crap because of the "resume value" of Goog and thank me for the favor. And watch Marissa count her ducats. Lame.

The best thing about the fake Blumberg Linkedin profile is the section that lists who else's profile viewers looked at.

Just goes to show that money, breeding, and the Ivy leagues are still running the show. These whiney kids need to learn that if you want to fuck with the eagles, you gotta learn to fly. Everyone gets shit on the first few years at a big company. Get over it. If you are jealous of the well-connected, then get social, connect yourself. Don't just sit there and be a troll. Stop being a human being and be a human doing.

To all the commenters saying "stfu and stop whining": the thing you're missing is the false advertising on Google's part.

Google doesn't tell you when you're going through their intense and selective recruiting process that your job is going to be crap. Google managers like Paul Carff *specifically* make plans to dress up the job descriptions of what are essentially CSR positions, to lure top talent from top universities. Where they do mention CSR-type work, it's often called a "minor" or "infrequent" part of the job.

And regardless of the position, if you're accepting something on the order of 0.01 percent of applicants like Google is, and you're asking the kinds of quantitative+creative interview questions for which they're known, you are GOING to get a lot of intelligent, highly talented people. Lying to these people and putting them in dead-end positions is a recipe for disaster, which is why Google Support has such incredibly quick turnover.

You have to realize that high-caliber recent college grads are probably friends with lots of other high-caliber recent college grads. This means that, when they get lured across the country to the Bay and end up in a crappy CSR job they didn't sign up for, while their friends get much more appropriate roles in companies like Bain, Salesforce, and McKinsey, they aren't happy about it -- and they shouldn't be.

I've heard that Univ. of Maryland and San Jose State are considered "prestige" schools at Google because that's where Sergey and Omid went, respectively. Imagine going to real school and then having to work for someone who went to SJSU....

Agreed with tengallonhero - to everyone saying "stfu you spoiled brats", keep in mind that the low base pay was negotiated because benefits and work perks were factored into it. Once the benefits (like free snacks, once great, now just bulk granola) and work perks dissappear, what happens? You're left iwht a measly base salary, as google pulls out the rug from under your feet.

I worked for one of google's crucial operations teams, and my manager's last job was working at a fishstore. How he got in, I do not know. He started out swapping hardware, and since he did not know much linux or have any tech skills, he became a manager.

He was widely viewed as incompetent by the entire team, and there was *one* promotion that was slotted for the team (another pet peeve - promotions were given out as a slotted quota per team, vs. merit based). That one promotion, the manager gave to his cousin who was good with people, but couldn't code or troubleshoot worth a damn. THe more senior people who were more deserving of the promotion were told that they didnt' have enough coding experience! Wtf. Google has great talent, smart people, and the people on the floor are energetic, good people, and are awesome to work with. The management ruins it all though, which is why I left.

@tengallonhero: What Google does is pretty much business as usual in SV. Most companies lie about themselves in every way possible to sucker people to join a sinking ship, or a job where it sucks. At some point, what goes around comes around, and even Google will have trouble finding people eventually.

I'm sure anyone who's been in SV long enough has been through at least one job that shall we say "wasn't as advertised". I've had my share, and I voted with my feet.

If you're that unhappy, then leave and find something else. They wanted to work at Google because it's perceived as a hot and trendy place to work. That's why I say STFU, now drink the koolaid or leave.

@QADude: while you're absolutely right about SV misrepresenting jobs in their descriptions, I think dressing up a CSR role as a dev role is pretty extreme -- that's what Google did to me.

also @QADude: I did leave, and I'm happily working in a startup :) Most of my friends have also left.

45k out of college and all the benefits. Seriously dude, quit and let me have your job.

@tengallonhero: Yeah that is kind of lame, I'm pretty sure you didn't want to answer phones all day. Sides a startup is way better anyway, cause its a smaller nit group and you make much more in general. Congrats on that

(disclaimer: I don't work on either group mentioned)

How do you know this person is full of it? because one of the persons he listed doesn't even work on Adsense or Adwords - never has.

In the past 3 years I've hired many people from elite I banks or consultancies (the McKinsey, BCGs, Goldmans, etc.) and from b-schools (H/S/W). The ones that I have lost have gone to grad school or moved for family reasons.

Looks like this person just found some directory somewhere and pulled names... no mention of projects, or specific instances: very swift-boaty

@Kounji: 45K won't even get you a decent apartment in that shit hole Mountain View. Good luck living in swankier Palo Alto and don't even bother driving through Atherton.

@el_googlo re: "How do you know this person is full of it? because one of the persons he listed doesn't even work on Adsense or Adwords - never has."

I never said he worked in AdSense or AdWords.

DSS is under OSO, which the latter "O" of which is the big bad support wing. The person I mentioned does in fact directly oversee and recruit support staff. I didn't mention what software is being supported, because that staff supports other tools, some of which are internal tools that may be confidential.

In fact, the offenses committed by the person I mentioned and by his division of the company are in many ways *more* extreme than those referred to in the Valleywag article, because they not only dupe top talent into working in CSR roles, they dupe top *engineering* talent into working in CSR roles. These new grads don't have the liberal arts degrees mocked by previous commenters -- they have engineering and CS degrees. Managers like this abuse the recruiting allure of Google to trick these kids into working crap jobs.

How do you know el googlo is still drinking the kool-aid? Because he's defending them via inaccurate ad hominem attacks, rather than addressing the issue at hand.

@el_googlo: Consider that your personal positive experience with Google is not admissible as evidence that any negative claims are false. On the other hand, our negative experiences with Google point to an undeniable pattern -- perhaps a pattern that only affects an area of the company other than your own.

@ the whining author of this post:
hahahaha.
Are you fucking serious?
Let me guess... You thought that when you graduated from (insert name of ivy-league waste of money here) you'd have every fortune 500 company tripping over each other to hire you and you'd be making Tiger Woods-type money inside of a year.

Sorry your starry eyed optimism(read:cockiness) didn't last more than the 6 months since you graduated. But guess what: You aren't all that. Google is still a better company to work for than 99% of the others you'll find out there (in Silicon Valley or out), and you are going to WISH you were working for managers like the ones you mentioned once you quit Google and get a "real" job.
What I'm saying, in case you can't follow, is that Google isn't perfect but trust me when I tell you, you are fucking lucky to have a job there.

Tracy Lee-Blumberg was my manager for over a year at Google. I found her to be very approachable and easy to work with. I learned a lot from her and enjoyed having her as my manager. She is pretty well liked on our team. Interesting how one person can so blatantly spread lies about someone - what kind of loser has that much spare time? What I've noticed at Google is the increase in spoiled fresh out of college idiots like the person quoted in this article - they come into a customer support job and expect to be paid as well as an engineer hired from MIT.

@tengallonhero: that was not the person i was referring to...

I use to work in the department mentioned in this article. Don't work there any more but I can tell you that the job is actually far more involved then pumping out a few emails and answering calls. It is an exceptionally demanding role for the pay but with extremely limited potential for true advancement.

The department is run in a pretty disgusting way - its incredible really. Especially since one of these 'kids' could be in charge of millions of dollars coming into Google but themselves making 45, 000 a year. Too bad the economy is so tough right now. If it wasn't - well lets just say people wouldn't stick around for more than a couple of months before moving on. As it is most people there just stick around long enough to move on to graduate school...

stacy brown philpot works in finance, which is still OSO...
i don't think this person mentioned that the managers were only in AdWords, but just said 'bad managers' in general.

i like working here, but maybe that's cuz i'm an engineer.
thank god for being a nerd.

Google recruited for AdWords/Sense at my college last year and they totally dress up what you'll be doing. It took a lot of grilling, on my part, to get to what the job really was about. Fortunately, I heard back from my top choice job before I got too far into the process. Maybe many of my classmates with wall street jobs might disagree but I think 45k right out of school is pretty damn good. Especially for liberal arts majors. But given how fucking mindnumbing the job really is, I still wouldn't want to work there.

el_googlo: being able to hire from good schools has little to do with quality of the job and much more about that stock price. Lets see how far those free lunches and 20% time go when the stock price is going down. The next hot tech company down the street starts looking mighty enticing. .

Google recruiters are out of touch. This 20% project concept is a thing of the past yet they still promote it as if it exists. Recent survey (Googlegeist) shows that most people don't even have a 5% project since they're working overtime on their primary project. Nothing really innovative has come from within in the past few years. Most of the stuff is just maintenance.

There's a 70/20/10 initiative, meaning 70% of the resources are spent on ads. Not surprisingly most of the new hires work on ads. Maintenance. Bug fixes. Fun. Most of the Adwords and Adsense managers are young kids who have had little work and management experience and the code base is absolutely hideous. In fact most of the engineers from Google ads are some of the worst engineers I've ever worked with. The only reason why they're keeping their job is because Google needs them to be around. I don't even want to get into ad PMs. They are very territorial and very unpleasant to work with.

Thank god I vested and left before the implosion.

@tengallonhero:
I hadn't thought about it that way, but you are right. It would be like taking the most amazing digital animation artist, and offering him a job in Disney Animation, only to find out he is just working guest service at the Animation Station attraction at Disney's California Adventure.

I totally get it now.

agreed. especially about the difference between engineers and adwords crew.
engineers get to travel, work autonomously, and get paid much much more.
plus they work at main campus (think: where the dinosaur is, where sergey and larry's offices are, where the volleyball court and good old charlies cafeteria is).

adwords has moved to crittenden which is pretty far (a 10 minute bike ride) away.
so those kids don't even get the perks of working at main campus (which is the real draw of accepting this job anyway)

and with the recent SF office opening up. i heard they don't have a cafeteria. and besides some sweet views, it is really paltry compared to main headquarters.
adworders are treated like second class citizens esp. since there is no real skill needed except having "excellent customer service." which is pathetic.

and the hoops they make you jump through to get even that measly position is ridiculous: an intensive worksheet, numerous phone interviews, writing samples, and a grueling 5 hour interview on site with 6-7 top managers. plus it takes over 3 months.