It seems all of the things that made Google an attractive company to work for have been slowly fading away through the recent years. Many of these big tech companies started off being scrappy and fun, which arguably is what made them so innovative.
I use the cmd directory for my main files, setups, etc... but use project root level packages for the bulk of the business logic. I kinda go the impression here that he uses cmd for all source.
I already pay monthly for extra drive storage and I buy tons of media from Google Play. I donate to a few sites including wikipedia and khan academy. I wouldn't really mind paying a small fee for other google services such as gmail.
Security may not ever be 100% with e-voting systems, but it can be secured enough to where the probability of any hack attempt would have minimal impact on the overall outcome. I can think of several ways to a secure, verified registration could work just off the top of my head. I think the issue is more, where's the incentive for the government to make this happen?
I for one will often (and usually naturally) befriend the most talented developers I work with. Talking code often and bouncing ideas off of them will really help you see where you're lacking or where you can improve.
Learning new languages and different paradigms can also play a huge role in how you approach future problems. Go to glot.io and play around with a handful of languages you've never touched.
Read up on various best practices and style guides. Read blogs on architecture, design patterns, etc. I read probably 5-10 hacker news articles daily, but I also watch many videos on youtube such as pretty much anything by Martin Fowler, Rob Pike or any of the other greats.
Code stuff outside of your comfort zone. If you're a web developer, try writing some games. If you're a game developer, write a web server or a blazing fast load balancer that handles TCP/UDP sockets and HTTP. I code random shit all of the time just to gain some exposure even if I'm never likely to do related work in the future. I probably have a few dozen Go programs I've developed just because I was curious how something worked.
I've been programming for over 17 years starting with C++ when I was 13. Over the years, I've developed stuff in C/C++, Python, Ruby, Lua, C#, Java, JS, TypeScript, SQL, Dart and Go for the past 3 years. Each language has given me new insights in how to tackle problems that knowing say just C++ alone would not have lead me to.
TLDR: Exposure!!, Books, Blogs and LOTS of bouncing ideas off of other developers.