I assume the thinking is that if the ROI is not high enough, then you might as well just invest that money into the more profitable portions of your business.
> I still lay claim that google is not hiring the talent that they think they are or claim to be.
Obviously I am biased. I don't think I'm particularly great or anything, but I find my colleagues to be by far the most capable I've ever worked with, and I did previously work at AWS, where engineers were also very smart.
> With such huge budgets and failed product after failed product one has to wonder what is the genesis of their failings.
Personally I think it's an issue with management structure rather than individuals. Frankly I don't think smart people matter all that much.. for the most part you only need sufficiently smart people to do their job, and good culture/management will make the team shine. I'd argue that engineers are individually significantly less important than product managers and managers.
That being said, I think the issue is that Google is just too engineering focused. This makes it a wonderful place to work, but I don't think it leads to great products most of the time. It's fine for products like search and ads, where you can literally measure if you are making improvements, but not so good for most products.
Engineers are more or less allowed to pick what they want to work on. Again, I enjoy this flexibility, but I think it also leads to a lack of focus, especially when product managers probably have a much better understanding of what customers want or need.
Of course, Google is a massive company so I don't know how reflective my own experience is of the larger picture! This is just my personal feeling.
> For those of you using GitLab, BitBucket, or <insert-other-git-host-competitor-here>, does this make you consider switching back at all? If so, why?
Absolutely, though I don't think it's really "switching back". I always preferred to use GitHub but had to use BitBucket for private repos. Now I don't need to bother with BitBucket.
I assume the thinking is that if the ROI is not high enough, then you might as well just invest that money into the more profitable portions of your business.