Seems like a desperation move. Can you imagine the exciting, dynamic Google of 5 years ago thinking ""Uh.. give them slightly more money?" was a great solution to this problem?
Every extraordinary perk can be interpreted as desperation.
They give out free food? They must be desperate.
They drive employees to work for free? They must be desperate.
They give free massages at work? They must be desperate. Etc.
The truth is, all else being equal, salary is an important factor when deciding between offers and the only one that is easily comparable (i.e. if you have an offer from few good companies, like Amazon or Google or Apple, you will only know if you're compatible with the company/team/particular job you landed after you have worked there for a while but salary is a known quantity upfront hence it might tip the scale in favor of the company offering the highest salary).
Which is why offering above average salary is a good hiring strategy for any company, including Google.
I can't think of a reason why a single current Google employee should be displeased with such a raise.
Almost every perk at Google I had at Microsoft. One of the biggest things keeping me from being fully invested in securing a position at Google is knowing that the salary is approximately the same at Google while the cost of living in Silicon Valley is much higher. You may not think about salary (beyond having enough to do what you like) but it is a very real maker/breaker for me.
True. They also have one in Chicago. However, that doesn't mean you get to work on anything you want. Different teams are in different places and you usually get assigned to a team based on where you work.
Yeah, I heard that Google tries to colocate teams. I recommend that you ask Google what they do in Chicago and other locations that are acceptable to you. There might be something that interests you.
20's: money? whatever. I want to work on cool stuff!
30's+: cool stuff? I can do that on my own, whenever I have free time. (And btw, I don't want to work 60+ hour weeks in order that I can maximize that free time.) Give me money! [This is compounded if you know have a spouse and children to take care of financially]
Your ability to have free time and maximize your money probably happened because you worked on cool stuff in your 20s. I know a bunch of people a few years older than myself who would like to settle down and start a family now, but can't because they spent their 20s either unemployed, in a variety of clerical jobs, or in organizations (eg. school systems) that are chronically underfunded and overworked. They don't have either the money or time to start a family without falling a rung down the socioeconomic ladder - let along work on cool stuff.
A lot of popular blogs (eg. Marc Andreesen's) divide up your career into phases, where you optimize for different things in each phase. Your 20s is usually the "development" phase, where people hire you for what you can do in the future. Your 30s is the "harvest" phase, where people hire or acquire you (at substantially increased rates) for what you've done in the past. You want to optimize for skills & experience during the development phase, because otherwise, there's no reason for anyone to hire you during the harvest phase.
