I live in flyover country and have worked many years for companies way less sexy than Google. The environment here is different from the Bay Area's "moving on at 26" mentality. Certain industries (especially insurance, financial services, and healthcare) prefer someone who's been around the block and is more interested in maintainable, well-architected solutions. A lot of the in-joke humor about tech culture that you see on HN would probably go over the heads of most of my coworkers because they just don't care. They want to write great software and leave at 5.