• Name: Dimitris
• Title: Product Manager
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Thessaloniki, Greece
• Education: Ph.D in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I have a computer science background and prior to Google I worked in IT departments of big companies whose core business was not IT. Compared to that, I felt that within Google I would be able to shape things and drive change. Moving from "supporting the business" to "being the business" can be quite a liberating experience for someone who is passionate about technology.

Why do you like working at Google?

Work is about people and personal satisfaction, right? It is refreshing to interact with the personality types we have at Google and I get satisfaction by doing my hobby as a job.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I've had the pleasure of working in very diverse projects. I started working on Google Base (which allows merchants to submit product listings to Google to make them searchable on Product search), and then worked on Google Alerts (a consumer product that allows users to receive updates of the latest relevant Google results). I currently work on Mobile Products for Sub-Saharan Africa. It is an enormously exciting and interesting role that requires gaining an understanding of a vast continent, where exciting things happen on multiple fields and identifying how can we can best serve the needs of a large and diverse user base. Working on such diverse areas makes Google a very attractive place if one values professional and personal development.

What is unique about your role?

For Product Managers at Google, one trick is not enough. It is a passe-partout role: performance and optimization discussions with the Engineers, user experience together with UX designers, the occasional legal and policy issues with the Legal team, marketing strategies together with the Product Marketing Managers, and interaction with external partners... all of these are part of the menu. In addition, PMs must achieve results without having direct control, meaning you have to have that convincing argument under your sleeve at any time. There are few boring days as a PM at Google, and for those days you can always walk down two floors to get a massage.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

Interacting with amazing people, constant intellectual stimulation, and ample supplies of freshly-squeezed orange juice.

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

When I was asked to work on Sub-Saharan Africa and everything after... I still remember the dialog with my manager: "So what should I do about SSA, and what should be my goals?" He simply said "Just take a plane, go there, get to know the team and the continent, and find out what has to be done." Being located in Zurich and having no prior background knowledge about Sub-Saharan africa, it has been quite a journey, full of excitement and discoveries.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

I believe technology and information are agents of change in society and can be fundamental to achieve progress. That is even more so in Africa and mobile technology is going to play a vital role there. My goal is to make that happen by making products that are useful, accessible, and enjoyable for our users.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

The sheer scale of things and the amount of information floating around is a big surprise to every newcomer. You expect it but it exceeds your expectations.

• Name: Gary
• Title: Site Reliability Manager
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Cape Town, South Africa
• Education: Bachelor's in Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I've worked in four countries across three continents, from small Internet startups to massive banks, finance and commodities companies, and knew that Google would offer me the opportunity to make a real impact on the outside world. Every day one hears how they publish advances in a myriad different disciplines, and I wanted to be a part of that.

Why do you like working at Google?

90% of it is the people I work with. My team, my colleagues – all are amongst the brightest and boldest I've ever had the privilege to associate with. We're able to make independent decisions about the projects and products we work on, drive the direction of development, and interact with hundreds of different groups across the globe.

Also, inside of engineering at Google, the philosophy is that of openness. Information is there to be shared by default, and the notion of "if you feel something is broken, you have the ability to fix it yourself" is pervasive.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I focus primarily on internal storage – almost all data that Google stores is handled in some way by my team. Believe me, the scale is mindblowing! Previously I've had involvement also in Google Base API and YouTube API, ensuring that the service is fast, stable, and available for all our customers.

I engaged also in a 20% project awhile back to improve service delivery to Sub-Saharan Africa. Being from Africa myself, I know all too well the problems that they face in lesser-established Internet regions and I wanted to make a difference. We were relatively successful, and since then even established a number of new offices in the region including a burgeoning engineering office in Nairobi.

I also facilitate events run by our Engineering Education department, ensuring that teams across the globe are able to be as productive as possible, improving internal and external communications between different groups and identifying points of strength and areas for improvement.

What is unique about your role?

I sit on the cusp between being a full-time engineer and a full-time manager. In fact, in engineering at Google, all managers are first-and-foremost engineers; it's quite different from the traditional people manager role at other companies. So, while managing my team, growing the roles of each member, and expanding our reach and mandate, I concurrently add to our code base, make technical decisions, and participate in the on-call rotation.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

Of course the first thing that comes to mind is the fantastic food that we're afforded. However, I think the most valued would be the freedom we're given to self-develop – be that internal courses, travel between different offices, quarterly fun team off-sites to bond teams, 20% project time, language courses... the list really is almost unbounded.

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

Every year we have a survey to determine how each Googler feels we could improve (in a large number of areas). One of those identified was that we should do more for the community. Because of this, last year every person worldwide spent at least a day doing community service. Since I'm a keen (albeit somewhat lazy) cyclist, I chose the option of bicycle mechanic at the local community bike shed. It was a wonderful experience being a grease monkey for a day and making a real contribution to the local community.

What are your goals at Google - what are you working to achieve?

I'm currently working on expanding my team across multiple geographies, and growing our mandate – taking on more responsibility for the team and ensuring not only that we're depended upon but also that we are able to deliver. There are a number of VERY interesting projects on the horizon in which we're a core component and growth will be significant, but we're up for the challenge!

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

I was immediately surprised by how open everyone is with information. I've worked at large multinationals before, and there was seldom an opportunity to mingle with coworkers from other departments (eg. traders and engineers at massive financial institutions almost never mix). Here, there is an opportunity for everyone to meet everyone, to interact together, to collaborate on interesting projects together, and at our weekly socials to interact with one another on a personal level. I can have face-to-face discussions with our founders and CEO, and I've had email or chat responses from Sergey and Eric within minutes. That's phenomenal, considering the size of the company. As large as we are, there is still in many ways a small company ethos.

• Name: Josephus
• Title: Site Reliability Engineer
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Els Poblets, Spain
• Education: BSc, Haagse Hogeschool, The Hague, The Netherlands

Why did you decide to come to Google?

As an infrastructure-oriented engineer I felt that Google would be able to provide challenges at levels not available anywhere else on this planet. Combine that with the opportunity to work with some of the brightest people in the field and you pretty much define "an offer that cannot be refused". And the free food of course, that speaks for itself.

Why do you like working at Google?

If I limit myself to a top three it would be: The great people I am working with, the company culture which fosters transparency and openness, and the opportunity to work on very exciting and complicated stuff. And did I mention free food?

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

Until recently I worked as a Site Reliability Engineer on Google's social network Orkut. Although little known in the western world, Orkut is one of the biggest social networks on the planet with many millions of users that rely on the product to maintain connections with their friends and family. Right now I am part of an engineering team that is responsible for all of Google's production monitoring and alerting infrastructure.

What is unique about your role?

The Site Reliability Engineering role combines software engineering and system administration on an epic never-before-seen scale. It combines thoughtful engineering with fire-fighting. As an SRE you are often directly responsible for providing the users with a fast and reliable Internet experience.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

Freshly-squeezed orange juice. No doubt about it. Or maybe the sushi on Thursday? Hmmm.... and the beer on Friday of course, that goes without saying. The Nexus One we got for Christmas was kinda cool, too...

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

Without a doubt, it was the day of my job interviews. Until then I had never met so many amazing people at any company I had ever interviewed with or worked for. After the interviews were done I was pretty sure I was never going to get hired but I was more sure than ever that this was the place I wanted to work.

• Name: Bhaskar
• Title: Senior Software Engineer
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Faridabad, India
• Education: B.Tech and M.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, PhD from Univeristat Duisberg-Essen, Germany

Why did you decide to come to Google?

Google offered me the best possible opportunity to learn, grow as a professional, and of course make an impact on the world. I had heard wonderful things about Google from friends who already worked there, and after that I was keen to get into the company!

Why do you like working at Google?

Coming from academia I found Google much more challenging and fulfilling, as I was finally making relevant use of my skills as a CS researcher. The people are awesome, and there is just so much to learn every day from people at the top of their game.

What is unique about your role?

I've been able to participate in many projects in different roles, with incredible support from my managers. I think the most unique thing was that it was possible to lead a group of people to work on an exciting idea without requiring any formal process or position.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

The free food! Also, the free and open attitude with respect to internal information and best practices and the culture to not accept without questioning.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

My goals are to make an impact on Google's users, and assisting them in utilizing their own information in a manner which best enhances their individual experience. It would be like acting as their own personal oracle telling them things they didn't know, and providing information they are looking for but are not sure how to find. I'd also like to further my skills as an Engineer, Technical Leader, and People Manager, all the while learning from the very best people!

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

It was remarkable how consistently and wonderful talented Googlers tend to be .. very good people with amazing backgrounds and stories and just a pleasure to work with. Even though that can lead to tremendous competition, the open and incredibly fair work environment ensure there are no office politics and very fair distribution of credit and personal recognition.

• Name: Doug
• Title: Software Engineer
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
• Education: BE (Elec), BSc (Comp Sci), and PhD (Machine Learning) from Melbourne University and the ANU

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I was in academia and realised that my research was unlikely to ever have a positive impact on peoples day-to-day lives. I saw Google as a way I could achieve that. I also wanted to experience life in the "real world".

Why do you like working at Google?

It's Dynamic with a capital D. I work with very smart people and large-scale bleeding-edge technology. It's a powerful combination for promoting innovation.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I've worked on various projects within Gmail, mainly on "backend" systems. The Gmail user experience is really nice, but that's not the impressive part. The impressive part is that Google can offer this experience to a huge number of users reliably, and in so many flavours. I've learned that making a nice product is one thing, but making that product work for millions of users is something else entirely.

What is unique about your role?

I work on all facets of the project I belong to: design, coding, testing, monitoring, production, scalability, evaluation.... all teams are multi-talented.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

I love the food. It's not just three meals a day, it's three really nice meals a day. We have an awesome kitchen staff!

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

I spent a weekend hacking up a demo app to monitor public perception of Google services. Much to my surprise it was adopted by just about every Google service within weeks, and I didn't even have to advertise. As a result we're detecting problems with our services that we never thought of.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

I want to work on a product that actually helps the right information get to the people that need it.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

I think it's the organized chaos. There are so many things happening all the time that it's hard to track everything that's interesting. There's not much imposed structure around projects, and every project is run in a very different way. This is very flexible and promotes innovation, but I think it drives managers nuts!

• Name: Oana
• Title: Software Engineer
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Constanta, Romania
• Education: BSc and MSc in Computer Engineering from "Politehnica" University of Bucharest, Romania. PhD in Embedded Systems from Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands.

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I still had a year to go for my PhD when I was approached by a Google recruiter. By then I had heard really cool things about the atmosphere and the work style at Google and so I thought I would give it a shot as it sounded really promising and I wanted some "real-life" experience after academia. I joined Google when I graduated my PhD studies and it was just like I expected it -- cool, dynamic and crazy.

Why do you like working at Google?

Coming from academia, I found working at Google challenging and re-warding. I think it’s great that you get to see your friends and millions of other people actually using your work on a daily basis. You also get to work with really smart people and learn something new each day.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I have worked on various projects within Gmail, mainly on "frontend" systems, and now I work in Calendar.

What is unique about your role?

Working on frontend systems, people eventually see the result of your work and so I get to tell my friends "Look at this cool feature that Google just launched - I worked on it!" :)

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

The good food and the awesome relaxation areas :).

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

My goal is to make an impact on the way people use the Internet and the information it provides. I also want to enhance my technical, leadership and people skills.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

That you are encouraged to turn crazy ideas into awesome projects.

• Name: Sorin
• Title: Frontend Software Engineer
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Bucharest, Romania
• Education: BSc in Economic Computer Science from the Economic Studies Academy, Bucharest, Romania

Why did you decide to come to Google?

By the time I applied to Google I had my own freelance enterprise and I was maintaining a few applications and websites that I wanted to scale. I wanted to work in an environment where I could learn more about scalability and work on things that have high impact. I initially did not want to leave my hometown, but Google always had an amazing reputation for work/life balance so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Why do you like working at Google?

The first thing I noticed is that it's quite unlikely to ask somebody something and not get at least a lead on the answer. Imagine this: You have a question and just pick somebody at random and ask. Instead of getting the standard "I don't know", the other person says "Well, that's an interesting issue. I never stumbled upon it but I think there may be some source code here and some design document here and that guy on the second floor actually may know this. Why don't you ask him?". It's this kind of environment that I really love. Really smart people, really constructive managers, and you can make your voice heard easily.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

My first two projects were internal projects where I got to work with the Google Web Toolkit and the Google Visualization API. I loved the chance to learn more about the software and API design of such big open projects. Then I worked for a few months on Google Analytics. The people in this team really clicked and even though I was located in an office far from the core team they were very supportive. What was even more exciting about this was the stability, design, and scalability of the framework. Now I'm working on Google Calendar where I just wrote my first lab (ssshhh, it's coming soon!). I get to work with a lot of cool stuff, such as the newly open sourced Closure Compiler, Framework, and Templates.

What is unique about your role?

As a frontend engineer, people see what I do. I also get to learn more about users from interacting with them or from the UX (user experience) people.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

No doubt, it's the office environment. I can't tell you in words how well all the people, minds, software, and hardware fit together from an engineering standpoint. T he freebies are nice, too. Good food, game rooms, relaxation rooms, the subsidized massage... and also the fact that I get to "dogfood" so many amazing products before they are live and therefore "live on the technical edge".

What has been the most amazing experience or day you've had at Google thus far?

One that comes to mind is organizing last year's Holiday Kids Party for the Zurich office. I had to put together a venue, call Santa, organize some toys and make arrangements so that a few dozens of kids would be happy and their parents wouldn't get bored. And I had to do all of this in about two weeks. I'm a software engineer, remember? Oh well. The good part was that I had to deal with Googlers and they are usually great volunteers and self-motivated people. I had the support of about 10 colleagues who donated a couple of hours of their time to plan and set this up and I easily got support to use the office's cafe to host it. Thankfully, we got to see a lot of happy faces seeing Santa that day.

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

My biggest surprise was to hear that people refer to Eric Schmidt (the CEO) by his first name and that people are free to argue (constructively and responsibly, that is) decisions taken at a higher level. Become of this type of atmosphere, I trust that some day when I come up with a really cool idea that will change the world I can count on a chance to talk to "Larry" or "Sergey" or "Eric" and get my chance for a proper pitch.

• Name: Andre
• Title: Software Engineer in Test
• Office: Zurich, Switzerland
• Hometown: Lisbon, Portugal
• Education: Masters in Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal

Why did you decide to come to Google?

I have always wanted to have an international experience, and to work at a world-class tech company. Google didn't even exist when that dream began, but I knew that working here would allow me to completely fulfill it – and then some. It's a company that allows you to do great things and encourages you to stand up for what you believe is right, which together with the great trust and confidence placed in its employees made coming to Google an easy decision.

Why do you like working at Google?

Google is a very flexible and trusting workplace. Employees are trusted to use their good judgement in the things they do, and to produce the results that are expected of them (or communicate early when they see that they will fail to meet their goals). Because of this trust I never feel micro-managed, and I always am able to choose what I would be working on at any given moment. In short, I like being trusted to do my job instead of always having someone on top of me telling me what I should be doing and how.

What cool projects have you worked on at Google?

I'm very new at Google, but I have already had the opportunity to work on two projects that are used by a lot of people around the globe every day: Google Transit and Google AdSense. The sense of being able to work on the very things you use daily, and which actually help people's day-to-day life, is indescribable.

What is unique about your role?

Google is a pretty efficient and fast-moving company, but it's always possible to get better. As a Software Engineer in Test, I help find and fix those repetitive and error-prone tasks by automating them, and am always on the lookout for tools and procedures that will help things go along more smoothly.

Working with many different teams in many different products using many different technologies can be challenging, but the impact we can make at all levels turns it into an extremely rewarding experience.

What is your favorite perk/benefit about working at Google?

This will sound like an old cliché, but I really like the free food that is available all day long. Not having to worry about money or where to go grab something to eat makes a huge difference in your day, as it's one less thing to worry about.

The libraries where you can grab any available book are a huge plus too – the large selection of books ensures that the probability of finding a book on the technologies you're using in your current project are high. As if this weren't enough, there are lots of tutorials and refreshers written or recorded by other Googlers to help ease the learning curve.

What are your goals at Google – what are you working to achieve?

Learn, learn, learn. There are few opportunities to work at a company which does things at the scale Google does and which are used by so many people, so I expect to be learning new and exciting things for as long as I work here – however long that might be!

What's been the biggest surprise about working at Google?

Before my initial internship I wasn't really sure of what the experience would be like – I didn't think I was a bad programmer, but we are talking about a company who has hired many people who changed the world! But people here are not just bright – they are immensely helpful too. The culture of "there are no dumb questions" ensures that you never feel ridiculed even when asking apparently basic questions, which contributes to a much better end result.

Not only that, but people expect you to make mistakes – after all, as a colleague once said to me, "if you don't break things it's because you're not working hard enough!"