1. So what do you want to do about it? Are you going to force all these smart young people to stop joining google? Pass a law banning tech companies from giving

1. So what do you want to do about it? Are you going to force all these smart young people to stop joining google? Pass a law banning tech companies from giving out free gourmet food? 2. What you don't seem to realize is that the existing college curriculum in almost all US colleges, including the ivy league ones, do not correctly prepare a student for a real software engineering environment. Sure it's nice to learn all about algorithms and patterns and all that stuff, but until you actually dive into being part of a million-line project, you don't really know what it's like. Google is providing valuable real-world training to these freshies, using throw-away projects, well except sometimes one of those throw-away projects becomes something real and important. They also are creating a new generation of elite programmers who are setting new expectations in the marketplace such as: a. Only technical people should manage technical people. b. Programmers should be given the freedom to innovate and exercise their creativity. c. Programmers should be pampered and treated to luxury so that they don't have to worry about anything other than coding. You say that all these Google people are likely to stay at Google -- well that will remain true only if other companies don't start providing the same types of perks and environment as Google. Empirically we can already see that Facebook is doing just fine competing with Google for quality employees. Smaller companies can be competitive too -- ask Fog Creek (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...) if they have problems attracting quality candidates. 3. There are already TONS of startups started by ex-googlers, so in short, what I see, is not that Google is sucking up all this smart talent and then wasting them on creating ad-space. What I see is Google is gathering all this untrained potential, adding engineering discipline and high expectations from employers, and then letting them loose to spawn their own innovations. 4. In my personal experience, jealousy and whining makes you feel better temporarily, but they don't really solve any problems and they just keep you stuck in your current mode so that you forget to look for real solutions to your real problems. When you are a child, if you fall down and start crying, your mommy or some other adult will come over and pick you up and make you feel better again. When you become an adult you have to pick yourself up.