Former Google Exec: Here's 'One Thing The Media Gets Wrong About Google'

kengzA group of Google employees

Google gets a lot of media coverage. What do people often get wrong?

"Easy, the level of importance of all the perks," former SVP of Product Jonathan Rosenberg writes on Google+.

Between the crazy-good health insurance, shuttle rides, instantaneous tech support, abundance of dogs, and delicious free food, employees have a lot to be grateful for. Rosenberg's argument, though, is that the media over-covers those benefits. Employees take those perks for granted compared to another aspect of working at Google.

"When we ask employees, we've found that [the perks] aren't what ultimately keeps people at Google," he writes. "The biggest motivator for Googlers is actually the opportunity to work on audacious projects. Self-driving cars, Google Fiber, Google Loon - these and so many others are the kind of things that spark people's imaginations and get them excited about coming into work each day."

Making magnetic nanoparticles that will search through your body looking for cancer and other diseases probably falls under that umbrella, too.

"Proximity to crazy ideas and the people who dream them up is probably the single greatest perk we can offer," former CEO Eric Schmidt added.

Check out more Google advice in Rosenberg and Schmidt's new book "How Google Works."