Will hit 18 yrs as a SWE at Google in a couple of months. Some thoughts, all my subjective opinion of course:

- break up the timeline into two eras: the triumvirate era TE(Page/Brin/Schmidt), and the Sundar era SE.

Financials

TE CFO Pichette's job was to point the money hose at places that needed the gusher, and do it quickly. He had almost no control on the tap.

Every year at the last TGIF before Christmas he would come to Charlie's with his famed bright orange backpack full of cash to give Googlers their $1k holiday bonus in cold hard cash. It was grossed up to make sure it was 1k after taxes.

The financial tone is set by the folks at the top. L+S never really cared about money. To them it was just fuel to do more cool stuff, not some number to chase. Schmidt was supposed to be the counterweight to this youthful optimism, but he was still a technologist at heart, and by background. They were certainly not profligate, but also viewed it as worthwhile to fly the entire company to Tahoe to ski for a weekend every year.

SE CFO Ruth Porat, of Morgan Stanley pedigree, was a "real" CFO. A real message that Google needs to shed it's "playground for PhD hackers" image, start acting like a responsible adult.

Please understand that I'm not judging either era as "good" or "bad", a trap I see many commenters (inside and outside Google) fall into. I'm not sure a public corporation with the size and scope of Google could viably continue and grow under TE attitudes. SE is in many ways an aggregate expression of the competitive, financial, legal and regulatory environment. But others have made the opposite case, go read them.

Work environment

The layoffs, two Januarys in a row, have made the mood somber. The hope that Jan 2023 was a one-time rare correction is utterly dashed. SVPs and up should excise the word "excited" from all their communications.

BUT-- if you wiped history clean and looked at it objectively today, among its big tech peers, Google remains a great place to work.

If you ask most Googlers they will tell you that whatever misgivings they harbor about leadership direction, their immediate team is good/great. That says something.

Technology

15 yrs ago Google was a decade ahead in raw tech. It laid the hardware and software foundation for how to do planet-scale reliable distributed computing, and built giant apps like search and gmail on top of that. Mapreduce, GFS, BigTable, Borg etc. But by now that knowledge has diffused.

Seems like an eternity ago, but up until a year ago, the perception was Google had a similar lead in AI. Yes, the transformer architecture was invented at Google. But OpenAI ran away with it.

Many insiders are worried that OpenAI is doing to Google what Apple did to PARC. Note that even after copying the GUI from PARC, it was miles ahead in raw innovation.

Personal

Mourn not a change in culture that you have little control over. Figure out what you want your career arc to be, chase that. Try to be useful in the meanwhile.

Be kind to those you interact with. Keep your skills sharp and options open. I know this is easier said than done, but if at all possible, try to live a lifestyle not inflated by big tech comp.

If you are a manager, do your best to mentor and inspire your reports. Sometimes you have to shield them, but also know when to explain hard truths. Don't coddle.