Spot on. There is a huge sense of entitlement from SWEs in FAANGs right now, and from the various folks I know at FAANGs, Google is worst since mediocrity and unproductiveness are not confronted because folks are scared of being 'ungoogley'. Every company has its dead weight that others have to carry, I think Google has much more and has been getting away with it because of all its profits coming in.
Google's definition of productivity is different than yours.
In general: Code reviews are strict and long. Style and structure matters more than anywhere else I ever worked. Everything requires extensive testing. You better have a design doc / PRD, some tickets, good commenting, and unit tests.
People will happily point out and roast you for any potential bugs, race conditions, deadlocks, bad style, and sloppy work.
Mediocrity in this regard is not generally tolerated. The standard of development is much higher.
But yes, it's slow. If that's your measure of productivity, they'll fail.
Except it doesn't matter because the goal of a SWE at Google is mostly to keep the ship sailing.
