Gregor Konzett, a 27-year-old former Google software engineer, grew up far from the glass offices and whiteboards of Silicon Valley. Raised in a small village in Austria, he was fascinated by technology from a young age and dreamed of being “where innovation happened.”
That dream began to materialise in 2022, when Konzett joined Google as a software engineer on the Google Pixel audio team. Based in London, he was technically part of a California-based team.
“My team was based in California, but I was working from London,” he recalled to Business Insider. “Not even a year into my job, I was asking if I could be transferred.”
Two years after being hired, Google approved Konzett’s transfer to its Mountain View headquarters. For him, relocating to Silicon Valley in 2024 felt surreal. “When I got relocated to work out of Google’s Mountain View headquarters, it was a dream come true,” he told Business Insider.
“I always dreamed of living in Silicon Valley.” Living in California largely lived up to his expectations. He found himself surrounded by engineers, immersed in conversations about coding and deep tech even while surfing.
“I remember going surfing with some people and just having the most Silicon Valley conversation ever about coding and deep tech,” he explained to Business Insider.
Still, not everything matched the myth. “It’s not this crazy, futuristic place,” he explained to Business Insider. “The infrastructure was just OK, and the internet speed wasn’t even very reliable.”
Learning faster than ever, then hitting a ceiling
Professionally, the move was transformative. Working in the office eliminated time-zone friction that had once slowed him down. “If I hit a blocker with a specific subsystem, I’d send a message and wait 24 hours for a reply,” he said of his London days.
In Mountain View, problems were solved in minutes, often by walking “10 feet” to a whiteboard. For the first few months, Konzett thrived. “I learned more in those first three months at Google than I had in the last two years,” he said.
His team trusted him with large responsibilities, something he described as rare at a company of Google’s scale. But after about a year, the momentum slowed. “I felt like I had reached a natural ceiling in my work,” Konzett told Business Insider. “I wasn’t learning much anymore.”
Visa limits and an unfulfilled startup dream
Though the role itself was stable and prestigious, it constrained what Konzett wanted most, building something of his own. His US visa prevented him from working on side projects or founding a startup, a long-term aspiration.
“Working on my own projects outside of Google was my real dream,” he told Business Insider. The internal conflict intensified when a close friend in London was accepted into a startup accelerator program and encouraged Konzett to apply as a cofounder. When the acceptance came, it came fast with a start date just a month away.
Walking away from Google and a green card
Quitting was not an easy call. The tech job market was weak, and leaving Google also meant giving up a clear path to a US green card. “The hardest part about deciding to quit was that it was objectively a really good job,” Konzett told Business insider.
He faced a major dilemma, remain in a role he had outgrown for “four, or potentially even more years” to secure permanent residency or walk away in pursuit of fulfillment.
Ultimately, he chose the latter. “I packed up my bags and moved back to London in just two weeks,” he told Busines Insider. Konzett returned to the UK to join the startup accelerator, ending his Silicon Valley chapter abruptly but deliberately.
Despite the risks, he felt confident in his skills and in the weight Google carried on his resume. “I believed I could find another job,” he said. But more importantly, he wanted the chance to build something meaningful.
Today, that decision has paid off. Konzett is now a startup founder in London, having traded job security and a green card pathway for autonomy and growth. For him, leaving Google was not about rejecting success, it was about redefining it.
