As a xoogler who interviewed way back in 2004, let me say that this post sums up my feelings exactly. The people I worked with at Google back then weren’t necessarily there for high six figure salaries. We were there to work with other people like us. We were there to be part of something larger than ourselves. In some sense I felt alone most of the time, and when I interviewed I felt as if I had found my tribe. These are people who made me feel dumb, but also astutely aware that I could improve. I learned so much during my tenure there, and I regret none of it. Perhaps I do regret taking so long to realize the sense of purpose and mission died when Emerald Sea started and good projects (reader, google talk, code search) were being canabalized to prop up a pipe dream that was never going to work. That’s the nexus event in Google’s time line… where things went askew and never came back to normal. Now people only care about perf, OKRs, and levels. Being a poor new grad with no savings and intentionally picking projects that would not get you promoted (but were fun) was frequent back then. The courage to do new things is rewarded in ways different than titles and symbols. Perhaps no “one” is more cognizant of that than the anthropomorphic Google of today.