For opinions on the other hand reputation matters a lot. You can't seriously give credibility to somebody with an obvious ax to grind, with an agenda and with a certain history. Even if that opinion seems valid, you may just be suffering from confirmation bias and at the very least you should seek out that confirmation from people you can trust.

There's a lot of good, and there's some bad, to Google. Whenever I post honestly about the place, there are 3 or 4 people who consistently come out for a fight. I don't mind that they exist and do what they do, because it's free entertainment for me, but regarding "people you can trust"... anyone who trusts them over me is too stupid to live. Trust me or trust none of us.

I am not claiming to be unbiased, and my experience at Google is rather limited. (I was there in what I've been told were the worst 6 months for the company's culture.) However, I learned an incredible amount in that time (more than most people learn in 10 years) about what happens to make good companies go bad.

It's amazing to me how, if I write a post that's 90% pro-Google and 10% critical, people who I have never met come out of the woodwork to get their flamewar on. I think they enjoy it. I don't. I'm over that stuff and I find it tedious.

Protip: they're not laughing "with you" when you compare your managers to Osama bin Laden.

Saboteur is a better metaphor for the execs who came up with this shit than terrorist. They are maliciously destroying a company for amusement, but they're doing it from the inside. It's sabotage, not terrorism.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing the people who came up with the calibration-score and transfer-block nonsense at Google getting "a boot in [their] ass, it's the American way". Anyone who thinks it's morally acceptable to make political-success reviews part of the transfer packet deserves no less.