I think that's fairly common. When I was young and single, when it was my first real job after university, I worked a lot too. I didn't have a lot of obligati

I think that's fairly common. When I was young and single, when it was my first real job after university, I worked a lot too. I didn't have a lot of obligations, didn't know a lot of people in the bay area, the room for career growth was tremendous, and there was always that imposter syndrome in the back of my mind where I wasn't 100% sure if I would end up meeting expectations. But after a year with good performance reviews and maybe even getting promoted, all that tends to subside. Some people are really driven to climb the ladder or love their jobs and work more, but that's hardly unique to Google or even tech. Frankly, I never found Google much different at all in that respect from other places that don't have the same perks. If anything, all the amenities make it more common and acceptable to spend time away from your desk, so I felt less pressure to be at my desk N hours per day to keep up the appearance of being hard-working than at other companies. For all those people with anecdotes about their friends working insane hours at Google: How many of them had worked at other large companies previously? How many of them had families?