My bad experience aside, I got over it, and life as a Xoogler is fine. In fact, I think I'm on better terms with Google as an ex-employee than when I worked there. And that's because the thing I'm really really good at is at odds with the core beliefs of Google's management. This begs the question of why they so aggressively recruited me in the first place, but really, that's mostly water under the bridge now. And that question is answered, I suspect, by the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

In the end, if a team at google in need of my specific skills (cue obligatory Liam Neeson schtick) recruited me, I'd happily go back. I don't expect that to happen, and in fact, the one project that remotely resembled something I'd want to do there got deprecated.

Life goes on...