Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?
I can certainly see a lot of parallels with Oculus &#x2F; Facebook.<p>Perhaps unusually, I actually wanted FB to impress itself more strongly on Oculus post acquisition because, frankly, Oculus was a bit of a mess.  Instead, Oculus was given an enormous amount of freedom for many years.<p>Personally, nobody ever told me what to do, even though I was willing to &quot;shut up and soldier&quot; if necessary -- they bought that capability! Conversely, I couldn&#x27;t tell anyone what to do from my position; the important shots were always called when I wasn&#x27;t around. Some of that was on me for not being willing to relocate to HQ, but a lot of it was built into early Oculus DNA.<p>I could only lead by example and argument, and the arguments only took on weight after years of evidence accumulated.  I could have taken a more traditional management position, but I would have hated it, so that&#x27;s also on me.  The political dynamics never quite aligned with an optimal set of leadership personalities and beliefs where I would have had the best leverage, but there was progress, and I am reasonably happy and effective as a part time consultant today, seven years later.<p>Talking about &quot;entitled workers&quot; almost certainly derails the conversation.  Perhaps a less charged framing that still captures some of the matter is the mixing of people who Really Care about their work with the Just A Job crowd.  The wealth of the mega corps does allow most goals to be accomplished, at great expense, with Just A Job workers, but people that have experienced being embedded with Really Care workers are going to be appalled at the relative effectiveness.<p>The communication culture does tend a bit passive-aggressive for my taste, but I can see why it evolves that way in large organizations.  I&#x27;ve only been officially dinged by HR once for insensitive language in a post, but a few people have reached out privately with some gentle suggestions about better communication.<p>All in all, not a perfect fairy tale outcome, but I still consider taking the acquisition offer as the correct thing for the company in hindsight.