The first time I encountered Big Tech was at age 15 when I won Google Code In. They flew me and my family to San Francisco and showed us around the Googleplex. I arrived with wide eyes, eager to see where the “smartest people in the world” worked.

But, what I found… disturbed me.

Everyone wore the same badges, slept in nap pods, played the same games, and ate at the same cafeterias. I couldn’t escape the realization that I was looking at a daycare for adults.

That day, I silently promised myself I would never work in such an environment.

Adult Daycare

In recent months, I’ve connected with many people working at Big Tech companies. They’re all paid extremely well and enjoy enviable work-life balance. Yet almost without exception, they share a common trait: deep frustration with their jobs.

Let’s acknowledge some positive facts about Big Tech companies:

  • They pay extraordinarily well
  • They offer flexible work schedules & generous PTO

But there’s a catch:

  • Employees typically work on tiny, fragmented slivers of massive projects
  • A significant portion of the workday disappears into meetings, documentation, and communication
  • Promotion-chasing and office politics consume enormous mental energy

Seeing these patterns, it’s no surprise my Big Tech friends feel unfulfilled.

But the question that took me years to answer was: why do these companies deliberately foster such a work culture?

Insiduous Reality

There’s a form of corporate doublethink inside Big Tech that only became clear to me after reaching adulthood.

I first sensed it during my teenage visit, watching Google shower us with free gifts for open source contributions that had virtually no business value. It reminded me of the saying: “If something is free, you are the product.”

Google Code In wasn’t about open source at all. It existed solely to give programming-savvy students a taste of the Google lifestyle, to implant the idea of working there as early as possible. The free swag, the campus tour, the friendly recruiters — it was all strategic.

I’ve since realized the truth: Big Tech companies massively overpay for one critical reason: they don’t want talented individuals to work anywhere else.

Don’t Let Them Work Anywhere Else

These trillion-dollar companies understand a terrifying truth: if brilliant young developers actually got together, they could build business models that would utterly disrupt traditional tech giants.

So what’s their solution? Simple: don’t let that talent work anywhere else.

Of course, they can’t force anyone, so they seduce with what talented people want: money, prestige, comfort, and the illusion of impact.

And to succeed, they must capture the right talent at precisely the right moment. I call this deliberate strategy “talent capture.”

Talent Capture

First, they have to recruit talent from top schools. Next, they must retain these recruits for at least 4-5 years: long enough to drain away the courage of youth and install mindsets that make it nearly impossible to leave.

They’ve perfected this through three techniques:

  • Offering compensation packages that dwarf anything else available to new graduates, easy to do with the absurd profit margins in software.
  • The trap of “equity” and “vesting.” By withholding a significant portion of compensation until completing four years, they dangle the golden carrot that keeps talent locked in place.
  • Creating environments where making mistakes doesn’t have any harsh consequences, making people risk-averse.

During those critical four years, they methodically:

  • Encourage employees to climb the hedonic treadmill by displaying the lifestyle of senior employees
  • Make them comfortable with unsustainable spending habits
  • Fragment work to such a degree that no one develops the comprehensive skills needed to build something independently
  • Create bubbles where everyone believes this is simply “how work is”

Breaking Free

By the time most people realize they’re trapped, they’re already deeply enmeshed. The golden handcuffs rewire their brains.

I’ve watched friends transform from innovators to people who measure success by equity packages. Their dreams of building something of their own gradually dissolve into discussions about which team might offer better promotion prospects.

Meanwhile, with each passing year, the courage required to leave grows exponentially. The financial risk of pursuing your own ideas seems increasingly irrational when compared to the millions from staying put. What can be done?

Your Creative Potential

If you’re reading this while working at a Big Tech company, you might be feeling defensive or dismissive. That’s normal. We all protect the choices we’ve made.

But ask yourself honestly: when was the last time you built something that genuinely excited you?

For those outside looking in, wondering if you’re missing out by not landing that coveted FAANG job: perhaps you’ve accidentally avoided the most sophisticated trap ever created?

Remember, your most valuable asset isn’t your coding ability or your degree. It’s your capacity to imagine and build something new. And that’s precisely what the adult daycare is designed to extinguish.

The Path Forward

If this post resonates, remember you are not alone. If you’re already caught in the system, recognize that the longer you stay, the harder it becomes to leave. Consider setting a firm exit date and working backward from there. And make sure you save aggressively instead of matching the lifestyle inflation around you.

For those still deciding their path, understand that there’s nothing wrong with spending a few years at Big Tech to build skills and savings. The danger comes when those “few years” become a decade because the golden handcuffs tightened so gradually you never noticed.

Your talents are too valuable to waste on making already wealthy shareholders slightly wealthier. I don’t think that the world needs trillion-dollar companies perfecting ways to further capture our attention and data.

What we instead need are builders willing to solve real problems, even when the challenges seem impossible.

The big tech daycare was never designed for your fulfillment. It was designed for your containment.

The choice, as always, remains yours.

But at least now you understand the game.

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