> I've worked for very small companies and much larger companies than Google and I have to say that Google is a great place to work, when comparing to both and is probably the best large organization for a real , cs focused, software engineer to work for. If you love algorithms, scaling problems and the rest, you are likely to find a group where you can be pretty happy, intellectually speaking.
I think that gets to the core of it. I'd love to work in an environment like that (where algorithm design, cutting edge CS-focused concepts, scalability issues are the company's core competency, not a mere nuisance) - knowing I will be fully intellectually happy, irrespective of the salary.
Incidentally, this could also explain why there's often churn at start-ups that make it a point to recruit from places such as Google or Yahoo: you can easily build a profitable business without ever coming close to having to design your own algorithms or scale beyond a few front-end machines, a load balancer and a MySQL database (all in a single datacenter, likely through a managed hosting provider). 37signals is likely the best exemplar of that philosophy (through their posts encouraging people not to worry about scaling, database replication or building complex software).
In defense of the "simpler is better" philosophy some people would much rather work on the whole product, work together with customers/sales; some people are interested in writing code as simply as possible and find the whole idea of CS to be a nuisance (and would rather leave the issues of algorithm design and scaling to existing libraries/software packages. Some people simply wouldn't be happy taking a lower salary knowing that they could earn more elsewhere (which incidentally is a strong reason both not to underpay employees and also not to overpay employees or to give counter offers to people who found higher paying offers elsewhere).
Ultimately there is no perfect job: there is chance to work on unique/almost-academic/cutting edge subject matter (google can offer this, a start-up (say) making a lamp-based CRM product can't), there is a chance to get rich (start-ups are the best bet for this purpose), there is the ability to do easier work for high pay (enterprise IT).
You can have several of these (e.g. those who joined google when it was still a start-up both had a chance to strike it rich and ability to do unique and fascinating work; but they did hard work, for (usually) below-market pay) - you can't have all.
I think that gets to the core of it. I'd love to work in an environment like that (where algorithm design, cutting edge CS-focused concepts, scalability issues are the company's core competency, not a mere nuisance) - knowing I will be fully intellectually happy, irrespective of the salary.
Incidentally, this could also explain why there's often churn at start-ups that make it a point to recruit from places such as Google or Yahoo: you can easily build a profitable business without ever coming close to having to design your own algorithms or scale beyond a few front-end machines, a load balancer and a MySQL database (all in a single datacenter, likely through a managed hosting provider). 37signals is likely the best exemplar of that philosophy (through their posts encouraging people not to worry about scaling, database replication or building complex software).
In defense of the "simpler is better" philosophy some people would much rather work on the whole product, work together with customers/sales; some people are interested in writing code as simply as possible and find the whole idea of CS to be a nuisance (and would rather leave the issues of algorithm design and scaling to existing libraries/software packages. Some people simply wouldn't be happy taking a lower salary knowing that they could earn more elsewhere (which incidentally is a strong reason both not to underpay employees and also not to overpay employees or to give counter offers to people who found higher paying offers elsewhere).
Ultimately there is no perfect job: there is chance to work on unique/almost-academic/cutting edge subject matter (google can offer this, a start-up (say) making a lamp-based CRM product can't), there is a chance to get rich (start-ups are the best bet for this purpose), there is the ability to do easier work for high pay (enterprise IT).
You can have several of these (e.g. those who joined google when it was still a start-up both had a chance to strike it rich and ability to do unique and fascinating work; but they did hard work, for (usually) below-market pay) - you can't have all.