This guy says that he's in 'Google Research' and talks about job titles like 'junior researcher'. Is there or is there not an actual Google Research organisation, similar to Oracle Labs or Microsoft Research? With people doing full-time research and publishing papers?
I was under the impression that their policy was 'you can do research anywhere in Google' and that there was no separate staffed labs doing more academic research. You may get research in the V8 team, or the systems team or whatever, but they were doing research as part of product teams. At least that's what I was told when I applied.
So, the answer to your question is really two fold:
Google Research used to be pretty separate.
That is, it was a separate product area from other product areas.
It is no longer. This is an organizational issue however, and while it would seem like it mattered, it did not. It only changed who was the SVP overseeing it at some super high level. The VP was the same for many many years, and the person really in charge.
But this is irrelevant to the second part of your question, where you mention:
"and that there was no separate staffed labs doing more academic research."
They do not do "more academic research", so in that sense, your recruiter was right.
Research at Google is not about academic vs industrial.
The practical difference between the research scientist and SWE ladders is that in research scientist, publishing is valued as well.
Outside of research, it's certainly nice, but not really part of the job description.
However, unlike most other places, publishing alone is not the goal.
If all you ever did was research and publish, you'd be fired :)
Google expects research scientists to do real coding, real work, and be as good of SWE's as their SWE's.
It is a very hybrid approach, and different from most other places.
and as for sourcing (someone asked privately), my group was under research and reported to the research VP for many years. I have been on promotion committees for research scientists and SWEs in google research, etc, so at least theoretically, i either understand what they are supposed to be doing, or have been screwing it up really badly ;-)
Yes, there is a google research department. Research occurs there and also in other parts of the company. It's not as well defined as MSR, though- the research department is fully embedded within the company's products. This is not mutually exclusive with "full-time research" although I don't think that sort of distinction really matters much.
Edit: Don't know why I'm getting voted down. The OP was questioning whether there's a research group at Google, in the comment section for an article by somebody who's worked in that department for ten years. If that's not a definitive answer to the question, I don't really know what the OP is expecting.
> Edit: Don't know why I'm getting voted down. The OP was questioning whether there's a research group at Google, in the comment section for an article by somebody who's worked in that department for ten years. If that's not a definitive answer to the question, I don't really know what the OP is expecting.
It sounded like an innocent question to me and it was one I also had. While there is a research site it still wasn't entirely obvious to me how it worked. You're probably getting downvoted for the lying bit and being condescending.
Google has previously made it look like there is no Google Research "even in areas where there is a much higher proportion of research to engineering, the “Research Team” we have established is not as formally separate from engineering activities as those in other organizations" so I thought it wasn't a separate group you could be on the staff of.
I was under the impression that their policy was 'you can do research anywhere in Google' and that there was no separate staffed labs doing more academic research. You may get research in the V8 team, or the systems team or whatever, but they were doing research as part of product teams. At least that's what I was told when I applied.