[silverlake]

AFAIK, working at Google et. al. pays well, but for most people your career will cap out at senior engineer. At other big companies (banks, telecom, oil, etc) a good Google dev can climb the tech career ladder quickly and make more money, get more responsibility (if that's your thing).

Do you want to be a small fish at Google, or a big fish at Goldman Sachs?

[sinatra]

You may be under-estimating how competitive and difficult becoming a big fish at Goldman Sachs is. And in many places (ex, banks), your technical chops are not appreciated as much.

[arbitrage314]

I wouldn't want to stay anywhere long if I was the big fish simply because I enjoy learning new things so much.

That being said, at this point in my life/career, I'm not worried about being a big fish at either Google or Goldman Sachs.