I totally believe that Google is very different from 12 years ago and that they are now ponderous, bureaucratic, and dysfunctional in the ways that mega-corporations almost always are. So what? If you've decided to move on, just move on.
I know some folks don't care about reputations, but this guy already established a reputation as a leader and should not have to do what he did to justify working on a project (PhD in his field from MIT, worked at AT&T as an MTS, which was a coveted role, for almost 2 decades, professor at a Tier 1 university. To me, if somebody with that level of background at high-value institutions is willing to write this, it means it's true, and important, and should be paid attention to by the appropriate constituency.
What's the point of not writing a bitter public critique of your former employer, if you believe they went the wrong way?
> are now ponderous, bureaucratic, and dysfunctional in the ways that mega-corporations
Somebody gotta call them on being ponderous, bureaucratic and dysfunctional. This post does just that. We gotta call bad and critique it where we see it, otherwise things will just stay as they are.
Maybe it was cathartic to write, I dunno. I think if I'm at that point, I waited way too long to leave. Golden handcuffs, hey?