It's still top-tier, but it's no longer something people aspire to as a life goal, just another big company that pays well, works on challenging projects, and h

It's still top-tier, but it's no longer something people aspire to as a life goal, just another big company that pays well, works on challenging projects, and has a good reputation on resumes. It's sort of like Microsoft in 1995, or Goldman Sachs in the financial industry, or McKinsey in consulting, or Proctor & Gamble or Coca-Cola in consumer marketing, or Boeing in aerospace. When I started in 2009, "I work at Google" was something you could brag about at parties. Had a coworker get stopped by TSA and then told "I love what your employer does" before being waved through (that sentence sounds a lot more ominous in 2020 than 2009). I'd have people cold-email saying that it's their life's goal to get into Google and could I please share some tips about how I did it. It's not like that anymore. My wife gets more party-cred by saying she works in climate change than I do at Google. Largely I shut up about it now, because there are people who will hate you for it. It's just a job - a high-paying, relatively cushy one, but not something where you can claim you're changing the world for the better like you could in the mid-00s.