These days I wonder if Google is really the example to follow. There was a time 10 or 15 years ago where Google seemed to be leading the industry in everything, and I feel like a lot of people still think they do when it comes to engineering culture. These days I tend to see Google as a bit of a red flag on a resume, and I have a set of questions I ask to make sure they didn’t drink too much of the koolaid. Perhaps more importantly, when I look at Google from the outside these days, I see that their products have really gone downhill in terms of quality. I see Google Search riddled with spam, I see Gemini struggling to keep up with OpenAI, Google Chat trying to keep up with Slack but missing the mark, Nest being stagnant, I could go on and on. All this to say that I don’t think Google is the North Star that it used to be in terms of guiding engineering culture throughout the industry.