Jobs and Company Reviews For Women

There is no monolithic workplace culture at Google; by far, biggest determinant of your experience is your immediate team. I am lucky enough to have found a fantastic, supportive team that values work/life balance and diversity. My A+ ratings reflect my personal experience. I have heard many different (and similar) stories from women on other teams, though, and I know that my experience is not universal. My advice to a woman starting at Google is to assess your project options in terms of team culture and know that this will hugely affect your work experience.

I have worked as a manager for IKEA for over 10 years and have worked in several locations and positions. I LOVE working for this company, Not just as a women, but as a person. They provide so many benefits. Paid vacation, you start with 3 weeks, then you can get up to 6 weeks with tenure ( 10 plus years). Great Medical and Dental benefits that are open to your partners, same sex or otherwise. It has been this was for as long as I have worked for the company. They lead the way. There is paid maternity leave, and you are able to request extra time unpaid, by US standards they are good, but they have a long way to go to match the way the Swedes do it. There is on average a 50/50 split of managers that are women in the US, and they are actively increasing the number of Female Store managers. If you are willing to relocate, the chance to progress is really fast, but you still have fantastic opportunities if you choose to stay put. From a HR perspective, there is an expected code of conduct when it comes working together, that supports working in a environment of fairness, openness, trust, and an open door policy

They have pretty good programs for working moms such as on site lactation center, on site backup daycare, flex work arrangements and etc. however people are very demanding and work gets quite stressful so often that you can't really have work-life balance. It's constantly skewed to work if you want to be successful in this company. If you try to have work-life balance here, you will have bard time keeping up with the work load. I manage to leave the office "early" at six o'clock but end up either working my blackberry constantly or log into work at night.