I must admit I'll drown a bit if I check all the comments, so I'm not sure if this has already been said.

IMHO, the author is playing the "I like you very much and I'm going to be agreeable with just about everything you say and do, so you won't go wrong if you pick me to come back" game. At least they're demonstrating they have a good understanding of social networking.

This reads like it's supposed to be an experience review, but it's incredibly over-positive and unbalanced/unfair. There are no real negatives mentioned. So I can only experience it as "I want to come back very much".

That the author has gone to this extent (and only mentioned their successes) suggests either insecurity (impostor syndome) or - likelier - fear they won't be accepted back. The author did mention that their reviewers showed them some instances where they went wrong, I'm wondering if this is the main reason for this or whether it was simply the overwhelming environment.

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On another note, since everyone's added their opinions of actually working at Google I might as well join in.

First of all, I took a look at the link noted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086051 and I don't agree with any of the points raised in there; most of that article can be adequately explained as conspiracy theory and provocation/incitation, I don't think the points they raise (and attempt to inflame) have much substance.

That said, I do have some concerns of my own.

The issue that's likeliest to have the biggest practical impact for me personally is that I have absolutely no foundation in math, due to the fact that I was born with severe learning difficulties that I only began to correctly identify around 18-22 and which I'm still in the process of learning how to counter for (I'm 26 now).

This means that while I'm well-developed in more areas today than ever, math is an area I'm so far behind on I have zero incentive to catch up because I'd have so much foundational stuff to deal with. For example, I was at the supermarket a few months ago basically pushing all the buttons on my calculator as I couldn't remember what operator(s) to use to figure out how many onions I could buy for the amount of money I had. This wasn't a cognition problem - it was simply the fact that I am that ignorant about math as a subject.

Tackling that to get a compsci job just doesn't seem like a good use of my time since I'll be 40 in a bit over 10 years and it may take me that long (or longer) to catch up. Normal kids to start to learn rudimentary math concepts around 8 or so after all. (I tried, but none of it never made any sense.)

So I definitely appreciated all these pictures, knowing I'll never be likely to call a place like this home.

I most also admit I'm more than a little jealous at the "nearly free" store - I could certainly do with changing my trend of having computers that are always 10 years old (my very limited disability support pension prevents me from legally getting a job, while diagnosis and ongoing treatment are unbelievably expensive!). Consistently old tech is one of the major reasons I haven't been able to springboard myself off of my pension and get a job - I've always been incredibly fascinated with animation, the visual arts, 3D, etc, and I'm on computers that swap like mad if I have more than 3 or 4 browser tabs open.

Beyond these issues, there's the very tricky problem of the fact that Google isn't a startup, and I can't say I'm too enthused by the fact that it's generally frowned upon to want to define your own job title - I can see this stifling a lot of innovation (Google Reader, Google Wave, etc) that isn't an immediately apparent hit.

For perhaps obvious reasons I've grown up always looking at the long view, and Google's corporate culture seems to have a very short attention span.

Nobody is likely to ever read this but I thought I'd leave this here as a real-world example of why someone might not be a good fit for an environment like Google.

If someone from Google ever wants to prove me wrong I'd be very happy to hear about it! :D