[refulgentis]

Right, honestly I shouldn't have posted the 2 sentence version, and we'd need to have a beer and an hour to even begin understanding now that I started from there.

But, what I'd say in another flippant sentence, since I'm tempted again: exactly, and that's the problem.

I had a great time, will be forever proud and grateful, and there's more to life than work. But, it left me with a permanently jaundiced view of a lot of things I used to admire, and I saw the worst, most careless, self-centered, behavior I've seen in my life there.

[scarmig]

I went through a progression, where I was first accepted to Google (genuinely one of the most exciting moments of my life), and I gradually fell into a deeper and deeper cynicism as I saw all my fantasies about how the world should work evaporate. Maybe it was just growing up. Even the "best company in the world that does no evil" is really just a bunch of profit-mongering assholes.

That said, so is the rest of the world, at least in my experience. So long as you go into it with open eyes about what it really is, Google is a pretty solid experience. You should never identify with it or sympathize with it, but if you approach it as a parasite hoping to extract as much value from you as it can, it offers a pretty great personal opportunity. You've just got to keep in mind that it is not your friend, it is not looking out for your best interests, and it is definitely not not evil.

[beacon294]

> You should never identify with it or sympathize with it, but if you approach it as a parasite hoping to extract as much value from you as it can, it offers a pretty great personal opportunity.

I like you. This is my general perspective, however I try to be a greedy symbiote.

[refulgentis]

That can make it more acutely painful in a specific situation: you're aware of its limitations, you end up getting the opportunity to do exactly what you've always wanted to, you deliver, but yadda yadda yadda, so you have increasingly full knowledge you'll be roadkill eventually and they'll blame it on you even if you act perfect. Sisyphus.