Pros
Pros for Google as a company: - PERKS! Absolutely incredible perks. Just to name a few, free meals and snacks, $2000 technology reimbursement when covid hit, commuter cards for metropolitan cities, medical plan with $1000 added by google each year so your deductible is really only $200 annually and then the rest you only need to pay 10% of medical bills, and finally working from home flexibility (I was fully remote since 2020) Pros as an Administrative Business Partner: - working directly with and having an extremely close relationship with VPs, Directors, and Senior Managers at the company - being able to be the go-to-person for hundreds of engineers (the folks that make up your assigned Directors teams) - Traveling to different countries or offices for your directors summits - Independent job that doesn't rely on anyone else, for the most part - The pay: I made $130k annually (after 4 years of being an admin). To me, this is far above the industry standard
Cons
Cons for Google as a company: - as most people have seen in the last few years, even at Google you're just a number. In 3 rounds of layoffs, folks weren't given any notice, they just woke up one morning to find that their access had been shut off. I don't blame google for doing this when they needed to layoff thousands of people, but just keep in mind that even at Google (in my opinion one of the best places to work) you're still just a number. Cons about being an Administrative Business Partner: - "Girls Club" energy: this is a female dominated role, thus there are a few cons specifically related to this. unfortunately the Admin teams i've worked with have always been chatty, gossipy, and not very tech savvy. These are what they call "career admins." Ex: women who started being an EA in the 80s or 90s before technology, and stayed in the role until their 40s and 50s. Not very good at their jobs, but unaware. - Ageist: being under 30 in this role means you'll never hear the end of the "career admins" unwarranted advice, or talking down towards you, despite the under 30 admins almost always being far better at their jobs than the admins over 40 - Promotions: getting promoted is specifically about who you know. the promotion committee is made up of senior admins, thus if you're not best friends with the admins on the committee, it will be much harder for you to get promoted. - despite this being an independent job that doesn't rely on the other Admins in your org, you're forced to attend unnecessary meetings with your fellow admins, which often times are full of gossip and "back in the day" chat.