So far I've mostly found different (often worse) kinds of dysfunction and not really much better velocity.
There are broader dysfunctions in our industry.
Unless the frustration led to bad performance reviews, which could have happened.
My mental health would have suffered, but holding on another 1-3 years would have probably led to me being 5 years closer to early retirement.
It was also 2021/2022, when the job market was completely bananas. The temptation to leave and get a decent paying remote job was very high. And at the time I felt Google was doing a very poor job of remote work, at least on the teams I was on. And they made the hybrid in-office unpleasant (floating desks, nobody else there, just a weird vibe).
Hindsight 20/20, etc.
I'm actually now at Google and things are just fine and peachy.
These places are for people who hate thinking but are good at pretending otherwise.
But unfortunately the answer now is that "best engineers" can't work there either because the layoff / employment-squeeze is in full swing.
You're right that the equity packages offered by startups to engineers are generally insulting. Every time this has come up in negotiation in the last few positions I've interviewed for the founders won't even tell you what % of shares they're offering, nor any sense of what the real value is, just pretend nonsense.