6/6     Question for those who work at Google, how is it?  If you have a
        PhD, is it the PhD paradise it's made out to be?  Do all the PhDs
        do interesting things, or are there also PhD code monkeys?
        \_ I've heard it approaches game-company-like demanads on long hours.
        \_ Are you a PhD? What's your field?
           My professor once said that the best 1st tier PhDs do postdoc then
           eventually end up teaching at top rated universities. The 2nd tier
           PhDs teach at other colleges, or do research at corporations or
           government agencies where the result of their research is often not
           useful immediately. The rest of the PhDs do research at companies
           where their research is driven by the purpose of making money rather
           than pure research... they also have the lowest publication rates.
           I see Google as a company with a lot of bright people but the
           stuff they do is really driven by businesses rather than pure
           research.
           \_ No, I'm not a PhD.  I'm asking for a friend who is and has
              an offer from Google and another company.  I know there are
              a couple of people who work at Google here.
           \_ I've heard the same thing but some companies offer postdocs.
              A good friend of mine wants to do his postdoc (physics) in
              quantum computing at Almaden, but is also considering other
              academic institutions like MIT.
           \_ This statement that '1st tier PhDs' end up teaching at top
              universities is stupid bias on the part of your professor.
              Remember Claude Shannon?  Or the inventors of the FFT?
              Although he may be right that top rated universities will
              tend to make offers to people proven to produce stellar
              research, going to google will not condemn you to academic
              mediocrity.  There's only one thing that can do that.  On a
              vaguely related note, the Pagerank paper is one of the most
              cited papers in computer science. -- ilyas