Tough Google Support Jobs?

Spotted this at Aaron Swartz’s blog, from someone who claims to be working at Google:

Does NOBODY out there realize that LESS THAN HALF of the 10,000+ employees are engineers and programmers???

MOST PEOPLE who work at Google are in SUPPORT roles!! And they are getting paid way less than industry standard for working 50, 60+ hours a week for it! Screw the free food, screw the laundry �C the MAJORITY of people working at Google are in buildings without any of these amenities, and are certainly without extra money from stock options. (...)

[T]hey are the ones working their asses off, in overtime, but that doesn’t matter because they are salaried but way below industry standards for support positions, to make sure that YOU, the user, has an accessible Help Center, has a kind, email response, has an answer to your question.

Yes, there are foosball tables in the support buildings, but who has time to play them? Giant overhead projectors alerting them to the current turnaround time for their emails is Big Brother enough to ensure that they don’t even THINK about playing foosball when they should be answering support emails. (...)

I’ve been here almost 5 years, and as soon as my refresher grant has vested, I am out like Lance Bass. It’s a load of corporate baloney �C the 400-person company that I started at has become a nightmare that has eaten my soul. God help the users.

I don’t know whether or not this is true, but it’s an interesting counterweight to all the mainstream reports on Google that follow the “everyone there gets free food, can work 20% on hobby projects, and sits on bouncy balls next to lava lamps” pattern... which may be more describing the engineers at Google (and I bet even many of them are so overworked that they don’t always know where to squeeze in that 20% time). If you’re working at Google or have friends there I appreciate your inside view in the comments.