Actually, it's approaching 50,000 employees. Wikipedia cites 46,421. Speaking as a Googler, I do think that people here are generally smart. However I've come

Actually, it's approaching 50,000 employees. Wikipedia cites 46,421. Speaking as a Googler, I do think that people here are generally smart. However I've come to some conclusions after working here for a few years... As an established company, I think it appeals more to specialists, compared to the newer internet companies. About the saying "Do cool things that matter" ... I don't find much of the work to be that cool, but giving Google the benefit of the doubt, I suspect it's because I don't have a strong or specialized CS background (I have a EE/CE background but I work as a SWE). The company is so big now that you really need specialized knowledge to understand and appreciate why a certain project is important. I think that a lot of Googlers are are specialists in some field. To them, Google is like one big sandbox funded by the ad revenue, and they get paid to work on stuff in their field. Contrary to lagging popular belief, not every Google engineer is a hotshot creative/entrepreneurial type. Most don't seem to be -- they're content just to do work that is technically advanced and challenging, but not particularly important or innovative to someone outside of their field. e.g. one of the things people say is great about Google is that you get access to all these data centers and map reduces, and you can run algorithms over huge terabyte-sized data sets. But that "selling point" is only a true benefit to those who actually have terabytes of data to crunch. I think people with a background in machine learning or similar research might. I certainly don't. I know a lot of Googlers who have joined Google X to work on the self driving car, Glass, etc. I think that's one outlet for the people who want to do something that's new and cutting edge. Now if only we could put more people on Google X, where they're actually doing cool things that matter.