I'm only halfway through this, but it rings true to my experience. The circumstances are different, but the emotions and lessons I had to learn are much the same. Near the end of my PhD, when I knew that graduating was just a matter of time, I had difficulty explaining to people what the process had been like, and how to answer people when they asked if they should do it, too. In the future, I'll point them to this.
I've been out for 7 years now (ended about the same time this guy started). I actually had some experience working at Dawson's bug finding startup a bit at the end, which was an interesting experience, but not what I was interested in, so I went to EPFL to work on Scala for my post doc. I can sympathize with the author's struggles!
I'm only halfway through this, but everything is true, especially about research agendas and insider academic sub-communities.
While you are at google, you might consider continuing to engage with the academic community to a limited extent. Onward! is very different with a new/improved community that is interested in bridging gaps between PL/HCI/systems and isn't so concerned about the publishing rat race.
