[giantg2]

I don't know about those points.

I remember a well publicized story that talked about a startup trying to poach a google engineer (they offered him $1M but he turned it down because Google was paying $3M). So I guess some startups want them depending on the skillset or reputation.

[quickthrower2]

Funny because you poach the Google engineer, and probably they are hamstrung because the startup doesn't have Google's infrastructure. E.g. you are stuck with Kubernetes, not whatever Google now uses. I could understand maybe Microsoft poaching for the long term brain dump value.

[giantg2]

I think they were headhunting him because he had a reputation for being excellent in a technology that wasn't specific to Google. He definitely wasn't just an average employee (Google was paying $3M/yr!).