Sometimes, but not necessarily. Sometimes it's people who always have to be "right" - which means every conversation (whether about technical things or what you did last weekend) devolves into a carefully orchestrated dance of definitions that allows everyone to escape with their egos intact - because he conceives of himself as "the smart guy" or "the guy who is always right" - so if he's wrong, he changes the rules[1].
Sometimes it's the reverse - the exhaustion of needing to always be "on" intellectually, because someone will point out the smallest inconsistency or fuzziness (again, in non-technical contexts where it doesn't matter)[2].
Sometimes it's because I'm super bored by conversations that mostly consist of geek-culture or technical references, where I get the reference but don't laugh because it's not that clever or not that funny, and people assume I don't get it (maybe that one's on me, though).
I've never been to a Google campus or event so I don't know what it's like there - I'm just describing my own experience at a place like CMU CS.
[1] An absurd example was the guy who claimed the song "Right Here Waiting" was by Bryan Adams. I told him it was Richard Marx, but he insisted that it was Bryan Adams. I didn't care so I just let it go. Later that day he emailed me a link to a mislabeled Youtube video as "proof" - when really it was just an ego salve for him to prove to me that he was justified in claiming that it was Bryan Adams. I offer this anecdote because it illustrates a common personality flaw of smart people (especially ones who spent their formative years as the smartest person they knew)
[2] Think comic book guy's xylophone comment from The Simpsons
Thanks for a very interesting perspective. To further your argument RE:[2], I would like to point out that comic book guy was not the one who made the magic xylophone comment. Though I did not attend CMU nor do I work at Google, so perhaps pedantic jerks are simply endemic to our profession. ;) Possibly because it attracts the sorts of people that have no problem fighting compilers, I'm not sure.
Sometimes it's the reverse - the exhaustion of needing to always be "on" intellectually, because someone will point out the smallest inconsistency or fuzziness (again, in non-technical contexts where it doesn't matter)[2].
Sometimes it's because I'm super bored by conversations that mostly consist of geek-culture or technical references, where I get the reference but don't laugh because it's not that clever or not that funny, and people assume I don't get it (maybe that one's on me, though).
I've never been to a Google campus or event so I don't know what it's like there - I'm just describing my own experience at a place like CMU CS.
[1] An absurd example was the guy who claimed the song "Right Here Waiting" was by Bryan Adams. I told him it was Richard Marx, but he insisted that it was Bryan Adams. I didn't care so I just let it go. Later that day he emailed me a link to a mislabeled Youtube video as "proof" - when really it was just an ego salve for him to prove to me that he was justified in claiming that it was Bryan Adams. I offer this anecdote because it illustrates a common personality flaw of smart people (especially ones who spent their formative years as the smartest person they knew)
[2] Think comic book guy's xylophone comment from The Simpsons