My first reaction would probably be "communication overhead". It is a big company, and while we try very hard to work like a startup, it usually means that you have to interact with a lot of teams to get anything substantive done. The great thing is that you get to interact with a lot of very smart people; the hard thing is that you have to interact with a lot of very smart people to get anything done.
I had a back-and-forth with another (ex?) Googler yesterday about this:
Oh, you haven't seen "big company" yet, if you think Google is a big company.... I came from IBM which has something like 350,000 people working world-wide.
I came to Google and said, "how refreshing!" VA Linux Systems was too small (and taught me an awful lot about how not to run a startup). IBM was too large (and awfully bureaucratic). Google for me is a very nice mid-sized company.
My first reaction would probably be "communication overhead". It is a big company, and while we try very hard to work like a startup, it usually means that you have to interact with a lot of teams to get anything substantive done. The great thing is that you get to interact with a lot of very smart people; the hard thing is that you have to interact with a lot of very smart people to get anything done.
I had a back-and-forth with another (ex?) Googler yesterday about this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3466439