Google is big. Big companies are usually run by bureaucracy and policies. Leave and go work in startup, which are usually run by people. I know, working in Google is cool and pays well. But there's no free lunch. I've always preferred smaller companies where you can actually talk to the CEO (and all people in between) and it's not that bad a place to be.
> Leave and go work in startup, which are usually run by people.
Keep in mind that, in full cynicism, the "CEO" of an SV startup is the VC; the guy who calls himself "CEO" is a product manager. If you actually want to work at a place where you have any chance of influencing things, make sure you can talk to the investors, not just the folks in your own office. (In a bootstrapped startup, the CEO is the investor, so this just becomes tautological.)
