The failing for google is not providing this person a path to do more or at least understanding their ambition to do more.
That's what we call "the perfect job." It pays the bills, but leaves you the maximum amount of (mental|emotional|psychological|spiritual|whatever) energy to work on the things that really interest you ... outside of work.
Of course different people will approach this differently, but I don't want my job to be interesting. I don't draw any sense of self-worth / self-satisfaction / joy-in-life / etc. from my job. My job is just a means to an end, where that end is to pay the rent, pay the electric bill, buy food etc. I have enough other ways to achieve those other things, and an "interesting" (and by extension, "demanding") job just gets in the way.
That's probably not the case. It looks counterintuitive but being bored and feeling unmotivated at work can leave you at the end of the day with much less energy than an very intensive but interesting work.
Your 2nd paragraph makes sense for a person like you, but I'd guess that the OP is one of those different people, for who self-satisfaction at work is a key thing.
I actually agree with you on that. With the caveat that this is true if you do (by choice, or by inclination) really want your job to provide self-fulfillment / self-actualization / blah / etc.
What I'm not sure about, is whether or not that is a personality trait which is basically fixed and can't be changed, or whether this is something where you can make a conscious choice to change. I think it's the latter, because my own subjective experience has been that I used to be more of the "if my job is boring that leaves me feeling dis-spirited" or whatever, but over time I found that I cared less and less about the "day job" and more and more about what I chose to focus on outside. But I'll freely concede that this just one anecdote, and that what makes sense for me may not work for others.
Now for your second point, I completely agree--I don't want to feel like my job is my worth or joy in life, and it isn't. But at the same time, I wouldn't take a job at an assembly line even if it paid $1M a year.
In fact, I've changed jobs roughly every 2 to 3 years precisely due to boredom.
It sounds nice to be able to get by day-to-day in a full job but it's not a good fit for me personally.
- Management Consultants get paid handsomely to clean spreadsheets and make nice charts
- Software Engineers get paid handsomely to copypaste a couple of lines of code here and there.
Lots of these people sacrificed their youth to get into the right school and work.
But still a lot of them are stuck with menial task for years and years.
In the end, you don't get paid because you're so damn smart - you get paid for your time, and the assurance that you won't fk up things.
A lot of the interesting work sadly doesn't come before years down the road, after you've proven yourself, and made it through the promotions.
BOB PORTER I'll handle this. We feel that the problem isn't with Peter.
BOB SLYDELL Um-um.
BOB PORTER It's that you haven't challenged him enough to get him really motivated.
BOB SLYDELL There it is.
BILL Yeah, I'm not sure about that now.
BOB PORTER All right, Bill. Let me ask you this. How much time each week would you say you deal with these TPS reports?
That's not a failure of Google. People need to be self-driven.
People who want to do more should talk to their manager about it, or pursue other opportunities within the company, or leave. Google and all the other big tech companies offer plenty of things to do for ambitious people if they express an interest.
Google is failing to identify and extract more valuable labor from OP.
OP failing to manage their emotional engagement is a separate criticism.
Google is doing a pretty good job extracting labor value in general. If they miss a specific individual who doesn't seem very motivated (to the extent of being a self-described slacker), I wouldn't view that as a failing. Ambitious people generally make themselves noticed, and trying to extract ambition from every slacker in the company is probably not very rewarding.
The fault is on OP here, for not moving on earlier. FAANG is not the end all be all of software development. Consider joining a startup where you'll have a much larger influence over critical pieces of the software stack.
The issue seems to be hiring the highly educated and entitled to do boring but necessary work. GSUs can only motivate people so much.
A company I worked at hired smart engineer with a masters from Berkeley, and then tasked him with breaking down cardboard boxes and other mundane tasks. The fact that they were grossly overqualified for any of the tasks was a advantage because they were flexible, and reliably needed no oversight.
If money isn't an object, why not get the best tools possible.
Look at the political discourse spewing out of Googlers at the moment. It's bursting at the seams from internal ideological friction.
Welcome to working.