I don't think he meant soul-consuming as in difficulty, but soul-consuming as in existentially unfulfilling or disturbing to your ability to sleep at night. Th

I don't think he meant soul-consuming as in difficulty, but soul-consuming as in existentially unfulfilling or disturbing to your ability to sleep at night. There is, in my experience, plenty of appetite for hard, risky, complex, grinding, ambitious problems, and very little tolerance for boring, unimpactful or evil projects, since everyone at Google can already feed themselves and is more towards the self actualization end of the hierarchy of needs, and has no strong incentive to not roll off onto something more interesting or fulfilling.