I never worked for google (interviewed but was rejected) but I have suspected this is true -- that there was a sweet spot where google was a magical place, but that time has long passed.
One of the better decisions I ever made was not ignoring emails from folks recruiting for Amazon in 2003. It was a different place back then, and truly like "the world's largest startup." The other thing that was different back then was that the people I worked with were all so blindingly smart. I'm pretty smart, but in 2003 I often felt like the dumbest person in the room[1]. In 2025 that feeling was rare, and not simply because I had 20 years more wisdom.
I left Amazon for the third and last time a couple months ago and have no regrets.
If you're still there and reading this, Amazon still has a lot going for it as a place to work. But it's not the electric place I recall from 20 years ago. I'm not sure if there is any company that can match both the startup-like freedom of action with massive scale of early 2000s Amazon.
[1] In case it isn't obvious: this is a desirable condition because it means you get to learn something.
Could I have made a lot of money in software had the free software movement never started? Sure. Could I have had my particular career? Nope. Could the current world of a zillion startups enabled by cloud computing exist without the GNU project or something like it? Seems unlikely to me, but perhaps my imagination is limited.
A followup: The GNU project was born while I was in junior high, gcc started when I was a senior in high school. Linux was started when I was in college.
Stallman, in a very real sense, made my entire career possible. Likely yours too.
Wow, the close of Lessig's introduction is powerful. We have indeed not earned that freedom yet.
> I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe.
> He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both. Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code — when it finally sees that code, like laws, or like government, must be transparent to be free—then we will look back at this uncompromising and persistent programmer
and recognize the vision he has fought to make real: the vision of a world where freedom and knowledge survives the compiler. And we will come to see that no man, through his deeds or words, has done as much to make possible the freedom
that this next society could have.
> We have not earned that freedom yet. We may well fail in securing it. But whether we succeed or fail, in these essays is a picture of what that freedom could be. And in the life that produced these words and works, there is inspiration for
anyone who would, like Stallman, fight to create this freedom.