I ran across an interesting article recently. It was a blog post from a google employee. What shocked me about this article is that it isn’t like the article I had come to expect with one of Google’s 7,000 blogs they seem to publish.

It wasn’t about some new technology that they had invented. It wasn’t about how they were going to trash the competition with some new service that they will offer. It wasn’t about how wonderful their job is at the Googleplex , and how they get paid 6 figures for dinking around at their computer. No this article was from a Google employee, high up, that was leaving and actually expressing relief and discontent from the company. Maybe the days of Google Bliss are gone. Or maybe they never existed. One employee of seven years finally tells us the true story from the inside.

I really could relate with this guy. As a designer, we sees the world different than others. As he talks about in his post, when you get a group of engineers running a company, every buisiness desicion becomes an engineering decision. Where is the data? Does it compute? But with that, the design is lost. It is funny how he descirbes these little design solutions, ran by people that are used to running data.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

It is an interesting dilemma. Where is the line between engineering and design? Where does one stop and the other begin? It is a fine line for sure, but is it relative? does it change? As I mentioned earlier, I feel as though I could relate with this guy. I have struggled with many of the same things as I worked. I have had an innate design philosophy on life since before I can remember. I guess it was a gift, but I have felt its cursing attributes as well. I have listened to employers, my boss, my teachers, my leaders and have felt a constant disagreement and have fought the mental battle on where that line was. Internally it ate me up. I noticed these details. I saw things as more simple than many of these data crunchers, or textbook lemmings. Which is better? I guess it depends. I guess it is a happy medium. The person that discovers this answer will become an instant Billionaire. He will have solved the problem that every group of people around the world faces. He would change the sociology textbooks.

However, moving back to the story of Google. These decisions affected this man so much as to cause him to leave. Although he didn’t just get up and leave, he looked for something else and left without a second regret. This isn’t bad. He revealed to the world that the Googleplex isn’t the nirvana that everyone makes it out to be. I guess it also shows that no matter how many benefits you get, you need to love your job, or they won’t be worth it.

I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to work at Google. I learned more than I thought I would. I’ll miss the free food. I’ll miss the occasional massage. I’ll miss the authors, politicians, and celebrities that come to speak or perform. I’ll miss early chances to play with cool toys before they’re released to the public. Most of all, I’ll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.

All in all, You need to love what you are doing. Google isn’t the answer for everybody. Which means in turn… Google needs to change it’s framework in its’ quest to conquer the digital world.