[microtonal]

As another former Googler, this was one of the most concerning things about my experience at Google. The pressure I put on myself and received from others when I was debating whether to leave was enormous, especially because it was my first job.

This was one of the reasons I decided to bail out after the first phone interview. I had some serious concerns, such as:

- I am not interested in working as an SRE when I just finished a PhD in Computational Linguistics.

- I am not really interested in living in London or Silicon Valley.

But any such question were all waved away with an air of 'such concerns are all irrelevant if you can work for the greatest company in existence'. The interviewer was really a nice person, but there seemed to be an immense groupthink.

(I now also have strong moral objections to working for Google, but that's another story.)

[SemiEarlyGoogle]

Yet another ex-Googler here. "Working for the greatest company in existence" was the mindset since Google's earliest days, well before reaching that pedestal in the public eye. They made tough offers to candidates back then, too, e.g., job titles taken down 1-2 levels, even when the job market was hot. Though practice started when job market was cold.

Many stories have been written about how their early hiring practices made for Google's huge success. I largely agree.

And related to your comment, groupthink or not, they do overall look pretty happy, even if you dial back for the social media factor: https://gxjam.com/ig-gallery/googler-instagrams-by-googlers-...