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Why don’t you work for google for a bit and experience it first hand. You can probably go back to your present job later if you want. As senior engineer at google, it is definitely 75%+ politics and project management and 25% technical competence. Depends on a group but perhaps if you are on a mission driven group like Brain etc, it can be better. I don’t know.

I would recommend joining a smaller group at google, and also one which has engineers who haven’t all been around at google for 5+ years.

Overall, it can be fun at times but relatively unfulfilling. Google pays above market though. I think if it paid market, almost 50% of tech staff would leave.

Product managers at google are also very political and if they are not, they get pushed out etc. I had one PM who always passionately argued about the user etc, and was eventually pushed out because he was not internally ‘aligned’. The product he was arguing against got cancelled this Friday after 2 years of work




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