I can already think of a friend off the top of my head who worked there. They will tell me their engineering work at Google is not even that impressive compared to her other technical accomplishments. Our industry doesn't seem to care and she gets immediate extra-prestige just from having "(ex-)Google" on her resume independent of her actual technical accomplishments at Google.
Those Stanford grads aren't dumb. They are reacting to the incentives of our entire industry and making a wise decision that favours their professional growth through accruing status and wealth - both resources which can catapult you to finally having what you need to go do "the thing" you actually want to do. Hence all the ex-Google startup founders.
It's about the money.
Work at a startup, and get paid meager table scraps to "follow your dreams" and "work on something meaningful." Watch all your friends become millionaires while you work 14 hours a day to afford name-brand ramen noodles.
Or, work in Big Tech, get paid an actual decent salary, clock out in 60 hours or less every week while getting every perk imaginable, and retire into the upper-middle class before 50 (or 40, or sometimes 30).
....is that....meant to be good? As someone who works in "big tech" and works 37.5h a week I have no idea what kind of perk/money they would need to offer me to work 60 hours a week. I'm not sure that even exists - I like having a life outside of work.
You misspelled 6.
IMHO, misplaced blame. Rather let us think as _Amazon_ is utterly a joke, because they sprayed infinite(in terms of plebs like me) cash into drone delivery and still didn't make much progress in the space. Google is not even in logistics business and drone doesn't make any sense for them.
> Yet almost every CS major at Stanford still stays up all night doing leetcode or whatever stupid thing they're doing to try to get a place there.
In long-term, nothing trumps comfortable money and the prestige that comes with the name "GOOGLE" on a CV and opening more useful doors later on, compared to Zipline, which could've been any one of the other thousands of drone startups that came and went silently and didn't turn up much. We don't live in an ideal world, something all of us should remember.
Another business Amazon retired, but a ton of start-ups still think is a good idea, is groccery deliveries.
Changing the world involved actually thinking for yourself. And that is exceptionally rare.
Edit: Downvoted immediately. What social commentary. Now I know what I’m saying is true: people hate it.