Goodbye Google
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-generated unless otherwise noted. robert@ocallahan.org ... Follow on X, Follow on Bluesky Thursday 24 September 2026 Today I’m sending the following email: I’m resigning from Google today. This has not been an easy decision. I love my colleagues and my work environment, and being paid handsomely to solve fun puzzles has been amazing. But my team’s goal is ultimately to make AI much cheaper and lower-latency, and I don’t think that’s good for people right now: I firmly believe AI progress is currently far too rapid (and I have doubts about the destination too). It’s practically impossible for me to move to a different Google project that wouldn’t accelerate AI (partly due to my ties to New Zealand, where Google prefers not to do engineering), so my hands are tied. There are millions of people contributing to AI acceleration and taking my foot off the accelerator will have a very small impact … but not no impact; some of