Google employees confess all the things they hated most about working at Google (GOOG)

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

A job at Google.

It's career heaven, right? How could a gig at the biggest, most ambitious tech company on the planet possibly be bad?

Well, take a look at this Quora thread, which is being constantly updated by current and former Google employees to dish the dirt on working for the search giant.

Turns out that working at Google isn't all free food and bike rides around campus.

Take their complaints with a grain of salt. These are the complainers, after all. But we've heard many of these same things from our own sources. ↓↓↓

"You are given everything you could ever want, but it costs you the only things that actually matter in the end."

Joe Cannella, former senior account manager: "Basically, you end up spending the majority of your life eating Google food, with Google coworkers, wearing Google gear, talking in Google acronyms, sending Google emails on Google phones, and you eventually start to lose sight of what it's like to be independent of the big G, and every corner of your life is set up to reinforce the idea that you would be absolutely insane to want to be anywhere else."

"To which the majority of folks will say 'boo-hoo, poor spoiled Googler'. But that's sort of the point. You are given everything you could ever want, but it costs you the only things that actually matter in the end."

It's hard to be honest with your colleagues.

Vlad Patryshev, former software engineer: "It is really hard to discuss any issue unless it is your friend you are talking to ... Objective discussions are pretty rare, since everybody's territorial, and not interested in opinions of other people unless those people are Important Gods."

No one believes you if you say it isn't awesome.

Katy Levinson, Former software engineer, Infrastructure: "People feel justified asking you why you left or if you still work there, and insist that everything must be perfect. They don't want to hear anything less than total enthusiasm for your luck getting into Google, and how much you want to stay. If you left or have anything other than rainbows and ponies to talk about, nearly everybody from my mother to my cab driver pretty much demands you explain why you'd be anything less than thrilled to work at Google."