The other option is to realize that in the world of people, your people skills can be even more valuable than your technical skills. I think that L5 is the tipping point where people skills start to dominate.

Technical skills are the skills to make machines do whatever you want, they get no say in the matter. People skills are the skills to make people do whatever you want. You can see why many are reluctant to get involved in that.

...the obvious answer to that would be “non-Google companies that are also not startups.”

Y’know, there is a whole world of companies out there that don’t depend on venture capital to survive...