Facebook, Google and other major tech firms were every student’s dream workplaces. Until they weren’t. : Facebook, Google and other major tech firms were every student’s dream workplaces. Until they weren’t. In 2006, Google bought YouTube for more than $1 billion, Apple was preparing to announce the first iPhone, and the American housing bubble began to deflate. Claire Stapleton, then a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, faced the same question over and over: What did she plan to do with that English degree? She flirted, noncommittally, with Teach for America.