2015 sounds about right. Three Years of Misery Inside Google is one of the best articles you can find about the seemingly sudden change of culture that made working at Google miserable.

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...

Wow, thanks for that article. It’s quite a long read, though a bit sad/disappointing, as someone who once believed in Google.

I interned at Google around 2015 and again 2019 as a grad student. The culture was dramatically different, even in a very similar team.

Care to elaborate. In what way? I have always though their crazy hiring rate would erase their "culture" like every two years.

TGIF was not a thing people watched or went to anymore. The number of meetings doubled. Employees were actively discouraged to look through code in google3 and design documents that did not concern their work (search for 'need to know' in Memegen if it still exists).

The main thing that weirded me out and ultimately caused me to decide not to work for Google was that everyone was talking about perf and promotions all the time. Everyone in the team structured their work accordingly, and tales of people who obtained promotions because of heroic effort for achieving something was a recurring topic in group conversations.

There was cost cutting efforts everywhere. There was significantly more red tape involved in requisitioning a heavy duty computer needed for my work (compiler development). The food in the micro kitches were toned down in variety and quality. Food trucks disappeared. The food in the cafes was unchanged but dinner was no longer served at about half of the cafes.

Stadia was launched after 2015, best streaming service for games by far.

Then they killed it.