Always interesting to hear these counterpoints. I've never worked at Google, but reading internet comments and such you get the impression that most people consider it some ideal workplace (though to be fair, many people selling you this fantasy are also trying to sell you their Google interview prep courses). Yet when I meet Googlers/ex-Googlers in real life, I never got that same impression. Seems like any other corporate job (I'm personally pretty jaded from corporate), just more prestige and maybe more pay. Also it seems like one's experience will vary drastically depending on what team they get placed on (eg. Google X vs. some internal tool).