Googler... ex-Googler

« Relationships that took me years to cultivate… mostly going to be gone too »

Why? What prevents you from spending time with your ex-colleagues?

Probably because most interactions were on company time. Because of course if the relationships were outside of work, then changing jobs would have little effect.

If those ex-colleagues were truly good friends, they ought to find the time to hang out with you outside of work.

This would likely lead to genuine, more interesting conversations.

In my experience, true relationships survive (and sometimes thrive in) a departure.

Relationships don't need to be "true" to be useful.

Relationships here might also mean professional relationships.

I think many of those can still survive a job transition, but some of them may rely on the fact that he is on the Chrome team doing Chrome things. Those relationships would now be moot (professionally).

A potentially unique feature of Google (at least pre-pandemic/McKinsey) is that it cultivated communities of people in a particular discipline despite being spread across the world.

When I first met Adam, we were both UX Engineers. We'd all gather in NYC in the spring and in the Bay Area in the fall for internal conferences. Adam lives in Seattle. There are plenty of people who adore him who aren't geographically close enough to meet for the proverbial beer. I suspect that's also true for the connections he made outside of Google.