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Comment by niggler | Hacker News Reader

I look at it as a more public exit interview. I don't doubt that his expressed concerns were part of why he did leave (I also don't doubt that there are other factors)), and by making those concerns public there's a chance that more people may see it and try to rectify the problems.

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Yeah, but in the entire history of people quitting and writing "letters to the editor", has any manager ever actually read it and thought anything other than "whatever, dude wasn't on board, glad he left"?

Do you really think Sergey Brin or Larry Page or Eric Schmidt are going to read this and think "oh man, we better change what we're doing".

Nope.

People who are fans of MS are going to read it and say "yeah, see, I told you google is evil. Even his 15 year old daughter had a poignant critique of Google+ that shows she's not only wise beyond her years, but that Google+ sucks just like I always thought already."

It just doesn't sound genuine.

It sounds genuine to me. He articulates a lot of the same reservations I felt during my brief time working there.

If they are hearing the same complaints murmured (muted, more anonymized and filtered) inside the company, but saying, "whatevs, they'll stay for the paycheck", and people start walking away from the paycheck and announcing it, it might sink in.

Of course, when leaving Google for Microsoft, it's hard to claim that culture/mission/vision are really the reason for leaving, as opposed to: MSFT offered $X,000, and GOOG managers said "you're not worth that to us"

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