I have applied to 13 companies.

I dipped my toes into recruiting with a first round of 3 companies: Roblox, Patreon, and Crosswire. They had reached out to me, and I mixed my interest in them with an interest in practicing interviewing. To my delight, I got offers from all 3. However, I turned them down, Roblox and Patreon too mature and Crosswire too early for my taste. The last one I declined nervously, knowing I would not have any standing offers for a while.

In the second round of recruiting, rejection became my bitter friend. 6 companies rejected me: Ramp, Brex, Lithic, Modern Treasury, Databricks, and Moveworks. One other company, Instabase, extended an offer then rescinded it due to changing business conditions, concretizing the economic downturn in enthusiasm for technology companies.

Finally, I stand with 3 offers: Glean, Lacework, and Scale AI.

Having gone through so many applications, I've solidified the narrative of why I want to move:

1. product: I don't want to build ads¹
2. growth: Google Ads represents an extremely stable, mature business, while I'd like to prioritize growth
3. company: work at Google requires lots of overhead divorcing me from the joy of building

Discussing with my friends and mentors, I've repeatedly referred to the power of systems over individuals. At Google, I'd have to compete against so many smart people over limited scope. This post captures my fears well:

Once you work at Google, you look around, see thousands of genuinely brilliant programmers who aren't successful, and you get totally trapped. All of a sudden, you go from “I'm incredibly gifted and would do great things if only society wasn't holding me back” to “there are literally 100 people within eyesight more gifted than me, and they've all settled for mediocre jobs, so I guess that's the most I can hope for”.

In contrast, in a fast-growing company/product, the system would more naturally encourage me to learn broadly and take on scope.

I'd make enough with any of my current 3 offers. Given Glean has the most room to grow, and I enjoyed interacting with Glean employees the most during my in-person office visit, I'd like to take the Glean offer.