So I'm an ex-Google employee and I can tell you that is an earnest, but ultimately unanswerable question. Google, like any organization, changes over time so for some it wasn't cool before but now it is, for other it was cool and now it isn't, and for still others it never was and may never be a cool place to work. (And of course those for whom it will always be a cool place to work, looking at you Larry)
Engineering work is generally referred to as "R&D" which is short for "Research and Development." That is a spectrum where Research results in a peer-reviewed paper, and Development results in a shipping product. For many years Google was pretty hard into the R side of the equation for most people, and hard over into the D side for a smaller group of people. It created a lot of unhealthy tension where the groups were near each other.
It was a little too much R and too little D for me, I prefer working on problems that have an impact on the business as opposed to just pure coolness factor [1]. But a number of people I know are quite happy just working on science projects.
Also note this is no different than Sun Microsystems for the 10 years I was there, it went from Workstation company to Enterprise Server company to Web services company. Very different companies all in the same skin.
So the only thing you can do is interview, accept if they offer a job, and form your own opinion.
[1] In full disclosure I would have liked to have worked on the Self driving car since it combines my interest in robotics with programming/engineering but alas Sebastian turned me down.
Engineering work is generally referred to as "R&D" which is short for "Research and Development." That is a spectrum where Research results in a peer-reviewed paper, and Development results in a shipping product. For many years Google was pretty hard into the R side of the equation for most people, and hard over into the D side for a smaller group of people. It created a lot of unhealthy tension where the groups were near each other.
It was a little too much R and too little D for me, I prefer working on problems that have an impact on the business as opposed to just pure coolness factor [1]. But a number of people I know are quite happy just working on science projects.
Also note this is no different than Sun Microsystems for the 10 years I was there, it went from Workstation company to Enterprise Server company to Web services company. Very different companies all in the same skin.
So the only thing you can do is interview, accept if they offer a job, and form your own opinion.
[1] In full disclosure I would have liked to have worked on the Self driving car since it combines my interest in robotics with programming/engineering but alas Sebastian turned me down.