My name is The Tech Lead

and I will be the tech lead today.

I wanted to talk about

why I left my six-figure job at Google

because for a lot of people they imagine

that once they get into Google,

it will be happily ever after from there on now.

Like, it's a great company to work for,

it's kind of the life-long dream for a lot of people

and once they get in they imagine

they'll just be there forever.

They would basically have it made.

But that's not actually how it plays out in reality

and you may be surprised to know that the average tenure

of a Google engineer is like 3.2 years only

and that's actually on the high end

and for other company's it's even less.

Now, I was working as a software engineer tech lead

on the YouTube iOS app

and you know, it was a six-figure salary,

very good pay, good compensation,

very nice benefits, free food everywhere,

free drinks, good parties, occasional trips,

like we had annual ski trips

and you know, it was great.

Now, before I'd gone into Google,

I would be one of those people who would just go like Costco

and just get as many samples as I could

and that would be my lunch.

I would love food samples.

And I might go to Trader Joe's

and grab their free coffee

and I might go to chocolate shops

and just get free samples everywhere.

And you know, I was just hungry and starving basically,

everywhere I went.

And after Google, that kind of changed me a little bit.

Basically, I was able to get

as many free samples as I wanted at Google

because all the food was free

and it was fantastic.

And you know, when I first got in

I couldn't understand why anyone would ever want

to leave the place.

Like, I had worked so hard to get into Google

and it was for me a dream come true.

I had been applying to try to get in for many years and

I had failed the interview process multiple times actually,

like three times or something

and on my last attempt

I remember the interviewers even telling me, wow,

you must really want to get into Google,

because our records show that you just keep applying

and I was like, yeah, I just really wanna get in.

And so when I got in I couldn't fathom

why anybody would ever want to leave the company.

It didn't make sense to me.

There's was no place better than Google

in my opinion.

And they also allow you to switch teams too,

so if the team or work ever got boring

you could just switch to another team.

You could even switch to another location

if you wanted to.

So they had you covered on all sorts of areas

and I think for that reason the tenure is a

little bit longer there than other places

and it's a great company overall to work for.

But throughout my time I did see people on my team leave.

And I can tell you a few of their stories like, one guy had

basically gotten into Google right after college

and he just worked for years at the company after that

and he never had the chance to travel.

And I can understand that.

And so he wanted to take some time off

to just travel full time

and fulfill his dreams of going to like Tahiti

and going all over the place.

And he had money, he had youth and he just wanted to go out

and travel for a few months.

And yeah, I think that makes sense.

Like, I honestly thought that was a little silly

when I first heard it

because I had just finished traveling myself

and I was a little disillusioned by travel.

I didn't really think it was so cool of a thing anymore.

So giving up a career

to just, basically, I knew that he would be back.

And within three months he was back,

basically asking for his job again.

You don't really need that much time to travel.

Like, you think that you can travel for years and years

but in reality, after about two to four weeks of traveling

you're basically done, like you're exhausted

and you want to sit down and rest.

But anyway, he's doing fine, he's great.

And I think that in order to get even a few months to go out

and travel you may need to quit your job anyway.

Like, I'm not sure if anyone's going

to just allow you to stay with a company

and just take a few months off, like,

even if you can promise you'll be back

after that short amount of time.

Like, I don't know if they'd do it.

They might.

I've heard other people joining companies like Uber.

You know, these are unicorn start-ups

and it's a shot at making big money maybe,

but in reality I'm not sure

I recommend that path really either,

because I think that

these unicorn start-ups,

they never really tell you

how much money you're actually getting, how many shares.

They just tell you, you get like, 50 million shares

but in reality you have no idea

what valuation that's going to be at

and what percentage of the company you've got.

So it's really a leap of faith

that you're taking for the company

and basically I'm not sure if that's really

that great of an option, but it could be,

especially because when people

from large tech companies like Google go into start-ups

they get better positions and they can like,

you know, maybe get more control, more responsibilities

and develop personally more.

So yeah, I think that could be interesting, actually.

Other people I know have gone

to other large tech companies in similar categories

I've seen some junior engineers just quit

to go run their own start-ups

and again, I'm not really sure that's really a great path

because I think it's good experience

to basically like, just work

in a large tech company like Google

and just learn the ropes

and the chances of a start-up succeeding are

actually, perhaps far lower than you might imagine.

A few years over at Google you'll be promoted a few times

and you'll salary will probably go up

so I think kind of in my mind like, maybe a junior engineer

who got into Google is taking it for granted

and thinking it's easy to do it,

but I don't think it's that easy in reality.

Like, at least it wasn't for me.

So it took me quite a while to get in and yeah.

One thing to note though, is if you've gotten in before

you may be able to get back in again, another time.

Like, I've heard a few stories of people who left

and then later came back

so if people wanna go out and explore some other route

like start-ups or something like that

maybe something really promising

and then if it doesn't go well

they come back.

I think that's actually a fine route, actually.

So I think what's interesting to consider is that

when you first get into one of these top tech companies

you think, oh, it's so great and you're never going to leave

but overtime that actually becomes your baseline

and it's not really the end of a journey

it is the continuation of your journey.

And basically, you owe it to yourself

to see how much further you can go.

Whether within that same company

or if another company or another path is going

to be for you.

As for myself, I hit three and a half years, pretty similar

to say like the 3.2 average year amount

that people start leaving companies

and I just felt that it was about time

to broaden my experience, take a look around, see what

else was out there.

You know, basically, once I was able

to get into Google, having that on your resume

really helps open a lot of doors and options for you

like the world becomes your pick, basically.

Like anything else that looks interesting

to you people will probably at least give you an interview

and talk to you about whatever opportunities.

So I went to Google and I was stunned

by all the amazing technology

they've got there.

Like, it's really like living in the future there.

There are so many cool internal tools and systems

and everything is set up so well

and a lot of this is proprietary internal software

that has yet to be open-sourced or released

for public usage.

And you know, some of these may not be released

for years or forever,

because they're integrated so well

with Google's internal tools

that basically, some of these tools may just be inseparable.

And so I thought, if I got into Google

and there's this whole hidden secret world of technology

just within that company

that was not public for anyone else to see

and the only way to get access to see that whole world was

to get into the company,

I wanted to see what was

behind the walls of other companies as well

because I was just so fascinated by the internal technology

that has yet to be released

and I wanted to see how other companies

where being set up inside what tools they had.

I wanted to see what their workflow was like,

what the culture was like,

what their vision is.

You know, every company has its own culture,

its own pro and cons, their mission,

their you know, like for example, Google is known

as a very engineering-based culture,

they have strong processes, good code reviews,

good ownership and they really focus on

just like well-crafted solid engineering

and that's great.

However, one criticism has been that

they move a little bit too slowly

and that other companies may have another whole set

of different cultures.

So it was just interesting for me to think about all that

and for me it kind of got the best of my curiosity

and I started taking a look around

and wanting to apply to other companies

and see what else was out there.

Eventually, I found a company

that seemed quite interesting to me

and I wanted to see what was behind the walls, take a look

and yeah, that was basically the path that I took.

Anyway, the takeaway I wanted to get across to you was

a lot of people are trying to get into Google

and they can't and I want you to realize

that it's not like getting into heaven

and then you just live there happily ever after forever.

It's only good for about 3.2 years on average

for most people and after that they go on

and find some other things.

So if your life goal is to get into Google

just remember that for the average person

after just 3.2 years,

they've had their fill, they're done and they move on

and they find some other place to go.

Maybe it's a start-up, maybe it's another company

and so there's more than one way