Google still manages to get far too many non-sociopathic employees, by feeding them a supernormal[1] morality surrogate ("googley values") industrially designed to draw moral attention away from Google. Many employees actually start to perceive whatever they do at Google as "good" because Google has these supernormally good "googley values" of Google's own manufacture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

I think it's more the $200k salaries and badge of having Google on your resume.

(Asking out of curiosity and not trying to be a smartass) But is Google still that impressive of a note on your résumé these days?

Most of the brightest students from my university off to work for or start innovative startups solving hard problems or they got research jobs at various engineering/energy companies, but a large number who were just kind of OK students got some fuzzy job at google doing who knows what but getting paid a lot to be there.

Sometimes I'm shocked by the dumb designs and whatnot that google puts out these days and wonder what kind of people they have making these decisions, then I think back to some of the people I went to school with and things start to click.

yes - look at LinkedIn people who used to work at Google and where they work now. Try 100+ samples.

Just like any large company there is a huge variety of work being done and varying degrees of competency among employees. Sure, there are some people who fit your description, but there are also lots of people doing cutting edge work that is absolutely impressive.