I am actually very, incredibly proud and happy of what I do.

First of all, selfishly I am learning like crazy. I am able to work on the world's most advanced software defined networking implementation in Google Cloud, and it's just amazing and mind boggling.

Second, I create real value for a lot of people: the reliability I help improve has a direct effect on the happiness of the Google Cloud customers that run on our platform.

Third, even outside my Cloud business unit, while no company is perfect and there are clearly issues around data usage and centralization, I still think Google's effect on society is wildly and massively positive, it improves all our lives like not many other companies have ever done, so I have no problem at all working here.

But that's just me, I have no problem in accepting that your opinion might be different and you would never work there for ethical reasons, your (my?) loss :-)

>I am curious how reasonable people with many options of where to work turn a blind eye to what their companies do.

In my case a lot of it comes down to me, as an insider, knowing that you're wrong. "Monetizing people" is sort of meaningless. That's an objection to capitalism, if anything, not Google. Google no more monetizes people than a bank, or a rideshare company or even a university. Short of maybe fundamental research, you're not going to find a job that doesn't monetize people under some interpretation.

As for a "surveillance society", I don't really think that's true. The care my coworkers take with user data is, in a word, significant.

There are certainly things that Google has done that I think aren't ethical, but I'm much better positioned to be aware of and change those things as an insider than an outsider.

And then of course there's the multitude of selfish reasons: compensation, interesting technical work, intelligent coworkers, etc.

Well we are way OT so I will let you have the last word. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.