I worked at Google for five years. I learned a huge amount, but the sad truth is that you get hired because you're good at solving tricky problems and then you don't really spend much if any time doing that in your job.

I worked there from 2004 to 2009. While I still have very warm feelings for the company, I perceive that Google has gone hard to the dark side in the last decade, and I would not even consider working there at this time.