I am sorry, I don't know you from heck. However, I must ask you this: Have you worked at Google in the past two years? No offense but Google has thousands and thousands of engineers. Long gone are the days where each and every engineer used to work on world-changing stuff. These days, there are enough people who work at Google and are still cogs in the wheel. This doesn't necessarily mean that Google itself doesn't do interesting work or there aren't people (who have wikipedia entries to themselves) working at Google on the most cutting edge problems. Frankly, the fact of the matter is that a non celebrity who just graduated from school is not going to be paid to work on the next game changing search/social algorithm at Google. On the other hand, he or she might be a quality engineer and deserves to be paid commensurate with the market's needs.
you're right, sorry for the confusion. i didn't mean to suggest that every google employee works on world-changing software. what i meant to say is that engineers "price" google employment much like they price any product on the market.
if they value google employment more than citibank employment, they're willing to pay more, that is accept lower compensation. beyond world-changing projects, there are benefits to google employment that attract developers -- things like free restaurant-grade food, the google stamp on a resume, and bright, motivated co-workers.
if these intangibles diminish in value and cannot any longer offset the lower cash compensation, people leave.
