Working for Google vs Square?
Both positions are the same.
Square's salary is slightly higher (only a little).
Which would you pick and why?
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Is it an engineering/dev position or something else? – Webbie 10 years ago
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@webbie It is indeed a software engineer position. – Rebecca Becker 10 years ago
2 Answers
Square without a doubt.
EDIT: I assumed the job was in engineering, so all feedback below is mostly relevant to dev/engineering.
Here are some reasons (from what I heard from people at Google or interviewed at Google):
1. Google doesn't hire for a specific team or project, so when you get an offer you don't know a) who your manager will be b) your team c) project you will be working on. In my opinion, it's terrible for the new hire.
2. Google is so big that often times multiple teams work on the same project/problem without teams knowing about each other's efforts.
3. A lot of Google tech is proprietary and heavily customized. I heard it's not unusual for former Google engineers not being able to code in a typical LAMP stack environment. *ouch*
4. You are likely to learn more and grow your tech skills faster at a tech startup, than at Google. If you are a curious and fast-learning type now, you are likely to stagnate at Google.
5. I hear nobody gets fired from Google, and that means there are incompetent people floating around. I personally would hate this. Firing some underperforming employees is healthy.
As you can see, all my nuggets of wisdom are about Google. Square is a fairly known brand, not some unfunded startup, so at least it's not that far in brand recognition in the tech industry from Google. Also, growing companies have growth opportunities for their employees.
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Thanks! I hadn't thought about the bureaucratic processes that Google probably has. – Rebecca Becker 10 years ago
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@Rebecca, see my edit please - I just realized that I assumed that the job was in engineering, but my feedback would NOT be as meaningful for non-dev position. So perhaps my answer isn't even applicable to your situation, apologies if that's the case. – Webbie 10 years ago
I would recommend Square.
@Webbie has already listed the reasons why to pick Square. Here are the reasons why you might want to pick Google:
- You have less tolerance for risk. Startups (even though Square has plenty of funds and has grown a lot already) do come with the risk of going out of business in a short amount of time.
- You want to see how a larger corporation operates. If you one day want to scale your own startup, it does help to see what processes a larger company has in place.
