I had the opportunity of speaking with a Google employee last weekend, who previously worked for Microsoft, and he basically said, "As long as Google is around, he'll be working at Google." He also has a family (2 children), and certainly has time to spend with them on the weekends.
However, the culure at Google is very different from that at Microsoft, so he also noted that someone who works really well at Microsoft, might not do as well at Google, and vice versa.
From his perspective, Microsoft is a lot more structured and hierarchical with repsect to management, while Google stems more off of your imagination (hence the mandatory 20% of work time being dedicated to your own side project).
I am a CS graduate student and if provided the choice, I would personally choose Google (I think I might have made up my mind 2 years ago while still an undergrad, and the passing years only solidified my choice).
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I had the opportunity of speaking with a Google employee last weekend, who previously worked for Microsoft, and he basically said, "As long as Google is around, he'll be working at Google." He also has a family (2 children), and certainly has time to spend with them on the weekends. However, the culure at Google is very different from that at Microsoft, so he also noted that someone who works really well at Microsoft, might not do as well at Google, and vice versa. From his perspective, Microsoft is a lot more structured and hierarchical with repsect to management, while Google stems more off of your imagination (hence the mandatory 20% of work time being dedicated to your own side project). I am a CS graduate student and if provided the choice, I would personally choose Google (I think I might have made up my mind 2 years ago while still an undergrad, and the passing years only solidified my choice).