Google has an incredibly secretive culture. Secrecy was drilled into us time and again. When collaborating with external vendors, it was quite painful to stri

Google has an incredibly secretive culture. Secrecy was drilled into us time and again. When collaborating with external vendors, it was quite painful to strike compromise between corporate secrecy and sharing enough information to be productive. After leaving Google, I'm always amazed at what I'm allowed to talk about with vendors. I'll start talking in my Google-conditioned non-committal cagey way, and a colleague will remind me that I'm not at Google anymore, and I can just say what I mean.