[hunson_abadeer]

I know a bunch of ex-Googlers who spent 8+ years with the company, and what cracks me up is that they all have some version of this "how the mighty have fallen" story, but it's always relative to their tenure dates.

Some remember Google as being fantastic when they joined in 2005 and then going downhill after. Some think the peak was in 2009. Some in 2012. And I'm sure there are engineers joining now who, in ten years' time, will be reminiscing about the golden days of 2023.

In reality, I think we tend to rationalize our decisions to join a company by imagining it's better than it really is, and then rationalize our decision to leave by imagining it's worse. More often than not, the only real change is that we've grown tired of the workplace and need a change of scenery.

[dekhn]

When I joined (2007 or 2008) there was actually a huge amount of literature on previous cultures, as well as people who had been there a long time.

I watched enough of the recorded Bedtime Stories (or whatever they called them, it was basically a bunch of nooglers in jammies listening to a distinguished engineer talk about the old days) and talked to enough old timers to learn that the period after the early search engine problems and ad revenue problems were solved, so about 2002-2004, was definitely a highlight that was better than my time.

For example: the microkitchens were all loaded to the gills with tons of amazing snacks. By the time I arrived they were downsized for cost and health reasons and when I left in 2021 they were only a shadow of their previous self.

My point is that some of us did research and saw that the earlier days before our tenure were even better.

Charlie was still present in his cafe (or its predecessor) and often cooked a whole cow for lunch every day. By the time I joined, Charlie's was just a long line for crappy food.

I've heard mixed results about the very early days- absolutely thrilling, but totally terrifying and stressful.

[whateverman23]

The reason is pretty simple. As companies get larger, the culture dies.

Those who joined big-tech early-ish in their career likely see the state of the company at the time as way better than what they're used to. Then it gets worse.

It doesn't really matter where you enter in the history of the company, the culture is almost always going to be the best as you know it when you join and get worse over time. Very rarely does the opposite happen.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Enshitification affects all things (except, it seems, for the compensation of the CEO, for the that line only goes up).

[snapplebobapple]

On the contrary, higher CEO pay is a symptom of enshitification because it means ownership has dispersed enough and/or the majority owners have checked out enough that there's no strong hand slapping the CEO around when he proposes utter BS for his pay package. I did my undergrad econ final thesis on this subject almost 20 years ago now, it was quite interesting. Over 500k of total compensation a year correlated very heavily with a whole host of policies that indicate CEO board capture (Don't ask me what they were at this point, it's lost to the sands of time) and likely enshitification progression as well since the guys providing the capital have checked out and the CEO's interest is in increasing his comp, not in making sure the capital is well compensated.

[plorkyeran]

They could all be right. 2005 Google can be a much better place to work than 2015 Google, which can also be a much better place to work than 2023 Google, which can still be better than many other large companies out there. When your starting point is as good as Google's early days was there's a lot of room to get steadily worse over the years.