> don't work for Google, but I think you're making bold assumptions about how much a year or two of domain knowledge is worth to Google compared to a couple hundred k of stock.

I did. Google is so large the vast majority of engineers contain domain knowledge that is mainly just useful to their group. And if their group is undergoing layoffs, their domain knowledge isn’t too useful.

About the only useful things that a long-time googler will know when joining a new group over a noogler is the test infra and code review process.