So, look again at the words "If" and "may" and maybe you'll read that quote with less vitriol and see its not so different from what you are talking about. Also, note that nowhere in what I said did I say this is the only reason people leave.
I was relating my experience and trying to qualify it carefully, but you are choosing to read what you like and ignore the rest. Which is fine for an internet argument, I guess.
Actually, the way you read it almost exactly contradicts most of the reported reasons that the engineers who left did so. It seems far more likely and believable that you'r exactly wrong -- and that the engineers who are leaving google are leaving BECAUSE they like working on algorithms and solving scaling problems, and aren't able to get opportunities to do that at google.
The point is, the people who left Google did not do so because they weren't into algorithms! So why did you even bring up such a point when discussing attrition at the company? Almost every engineer Google hires likes this stuff and is good at it.
The reason I am so aggressive in decrying what you said is because it's both misleading and insulting to the people who left Google. Not only is your post at odds with what I know, but it's also at odds with the mailing lists posts people leaked to techcrunch.
Please show me one email in that whole sheaf in which a person says "I left Google because I didn't like working on algorithms and scaling problems."