the two big tech companies that showed people how "fun" an office could be. They're now relegated to normal companies...and their output over the last few years show a set of companies with few stand-out winners

1. Stop making work engaging
2. The geniuses act less engaged and leave or get salty (the Dead Sea Effect)
3. "Why would millennials do this to us?"

Seems Google forgot what made it great.

But it's correctable:

• let the smart people be smart
• hire and organize worker bees around the hard work of maintenance and code evolution that isn't SRE
• don't give up on slow starts (ohai Wave)
• run the old folks home for beloved projects that are just PR wins to keep people happy (ohai gReader, Picasa, and a cast of thousands)

Worker-bees don't need to save the world every quarter. They also don't earn the big bucks, but form the ecosystem to retain culture amid superstar churn.

Build a functional company again. And fire the people thinking quarter by quarter.