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| 2008/5/12-16 [Computer/Companies/Google] UID:49935 Activity:kinda low |
5/12 Where does Google go next? Yes, it's making gobs of money. Yes, it's
full of smart people. Yes, it's a wonderful place to work. So why
are so many people leaving? By Adam Lashinsky, senior writer
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune
\_ Maybe they don't have enough new business plan to require so many
smart people?
\_ It takes an army of PhDs to sell online ads!
\_ Without turnover and recruitment stats, this article doesn't really
say anything. People will always leave companies, no matter how
successful, and "I'm a pre-IPO employee at Google" is a ticket to
anywhere. How does Google's turnover compare with Yahoo's? -tom
\_ Why would you compare Google's turnover to Yahoo's? Even if
it's lower, that doesn't support your implicit thesis that
Google isn't having more turnover than would be "expected",
considering Google is supposed to be more attractive than Yahoo.
\_ Google will ALWAYS out-hire Yahoo, at least those who
are in their 20s, for several reasons. First of all,
it's atmosphere is not too different than Stanford
life. AMAZING FOOD (5 stars), laundry, amazing gym,
car wash, dentist, massage, GAMES GAMES GAMES, and
lots of restless and smart young people who like to
stay late and work on... stuff.
\_ The food is good but it sure as hell isn't 5 stars.
\_ True. They have over 50 cafes in the US (not just
mountain view) but only one of them is 5 star, and
it's not on campus for obvious reasons. Just like
all marketing bullshit like "Hey some of our
merchandize is 50% off!"
\_ ALWAYS is a really long time.
\_ What is the "expected" rate of turnover? Is Google's higher
than that? Is Google's higher than its competitors' (assuming
there are any left?) The article doesn't attempt to get at
meaningful questions; it lists half a dozen context-free
anecdotes. -tom
\_ That's why "expected" is in quotes. No one can give an
absolute "expected" turnover rate for any company, only
some rate relative to its peer group. In particular,
Google's turnover rate compared to Yahoo doesn't support
your argument regardless of which way it goes.
\_ my argument is that the article is crap, and I think
that's pretty obvious. -tom
\_ Okay, so no one need ever write any articles about
Google's hiring practices because they will all
necessarily be unsubstantiated crap.
\_ Nice straw man. *This* article is crap. -tom
\_ Google has always been secretive about things. Did you
expect this guy to give hard numbers on Google's actual
turnover rate compared to previous years? I'm sure he
would if he could. That doesn't mean you can't draw
conclusions based on those things that you can see
(e.g., perhaps a higher rate of turnover among the
executive ranks, which is far more obvious).
\_ Some quotes I picked out:
"They have a fantastic cash cow. They need a goat and a chicken."
"I was surprised by the number of things that were being done
[outside Google by former Google employees] that could have been
done at Google."
\_ What, you think noone outside of Google should write software?
\_ I think it odd that so many people found Google to not
be the environment they wanted to write software in. Why
are the employees with good ideas not sharing them with
Google or, more ominously, why isn't Google recognizing
good ideas?
\_ You find it odd that people who worked for a cool startup
and made a whole bunch of money didn't want to keep
working there once it became large and therefore
different? I would think that would be the expected
behavior. -tom
\_ It's a brain drain, don't you think? That doesn't
concern you as GOOG shareholder? That the people
who helped build GOOG don't want to work there
anymore and took their ideas with them?
\_ Their ideas aren't very important. Goog is
still a 1-idea company and they can buy whatever
other startups these guys start. Those initial
employees were also just random lottery winners
according to the motd and are easily replaced.
\_ The only good ideas in Google are those that make
money. AdWord. AdSense. If it doesn't make money,
it's not a good idea. -X-G
\_ How is that different from every other company
in the United States?
\_ Lots of companies have "good" ideas that don't make
money. http://pets.com, webvan, etc. Yahoo will be there
before long. -tom |
| 7/8 |
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| money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune -> money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune/ Subscribe to Fortune (Fortune) -- Sean Knapp had it made. As a young computer scientist, he couldn't have had a better gig: working at Google, the engineer's paradise. He had all the usual perks - a massage every other week, onsite laundry, free all-you-can-eat haute cuisine. Even better, he got to work on some of Google's highest-profile products, including the search technology that is the heart and soul of the company. And he made full use of his "20% time," that famous one day a week that Google gives its engineers to work on whatever project they want. A little over a year ago he and a couple of colleagues, brothers Bismarck and Belsasar Lepe, ages 28 and 21, respectively, did what many of the young geniuses do at Google: They came up with a cool idea, in this case a new way to handle Web video. Then Knapp, who's 27, and the Lepes did something truly remarkable. They expelled themselves from paradise to start their own company. That sort of thing just doesn't happen at Google - or it didn't used to anyway. In April 2007, when the trio informed Google they were leaving, they didn't give any specifics, just that they were going to do their own thing. Without even knowing what their idea was, Google wanted them - and their project - to stay. "They told us, 'Here's a blank check,'" recalls Knapp, a baby-faced former track star at Stanford. Instead, off they went, leaving behind the perks, the 20% time, and a combined seven-figure pile of unvested options. The startup has raised $10 million in venture capital, which doesn't even come close to matching Google's resources. But the Ooyala founders say what they lack in institutional backing they make up for in speed and the ability to communicate with one another by turning around in their chairs and talking. Google was like that too, about eight years and 18,000 employees ago. It would be easy to dismiss the exodus of some of Google's best people if it were an isolated occurrence. Paul Buchheit, an early Google engineer who coined the "Don't be evil!" battle cry, is a founder, with three ex-Google colleagues, of a social-networking company called FriendFeed. Yanda Erlich, once a popular Google product manager, started an instant-messaging company called Mogad. Nathan Stoll, who managed Google News, is hard at work on his new company, Mechanical Zoo. David Friedberg, another former biz-dev executive, who started a company called WeatherBill, which sells insurance pegged to climate risks, recently attended the club's first meeting at a conference center in Palo Alto. "I was surprised by the number of things that were being done that could have been done at Google," he says. There's been an exodus of executive talent too: Its chief information officer, Douglas Merrill, just left. Several top people have gone to Facebook, most notably Sheryl Sandberg, who ran Google's automated ad sales, and Elliot Schrage, who ran PR. George Reyes, Google's CFO, announced his retirement last summer and has yet to be replaced. Employee turnover is the norm in Silicon Valley, especially at companies where early hires get rich enough to do whatever they want (and post-jackpot hires don't). For his part, Google CEO Eric Schmidt - who left Sun Microsystems for Novell and then Novell for Google - brushes off the effects of all those departures. "We've been hiring on the order of 100 people a week," he says. "So in one week we hire more people than the people you just named." But fleeing executives and star engineers aren't the only challenges Google faces these days. Fact is, Google's torrid growth is finally slowing, as the company's sheer size dictates it must. Gone are the days when Google could take full advantage of its quirkiness. It's the market leader now, which presents a classic conundrum: Which is more important, process or innovation? For all Google's success, it still has just one meaningful way of making money: its powerful search-advertising system. All the other projects it has in the works are just that, projects. The mere hint that Google may have issues to deal with clearly hits a nerve. CRM) and a Google business partner, phoned to discuss an alliance his company had inked with Google. I'm always happy to hear from the voluble Benioff - except I hadn't called him in the first place. Someone "at the top" at Google had asked him to reach out to me. "What they need to do is build a full portfolio of revenue, as Microsoft has," says Benioff. More than diversification, though, Google has to prove that its quirks - its odd hiring practices (eg, asking 45-year-olds their GPAs), refusal to play the guidance game with Wall Street, the free food, etc. It has to show that its success is because of its Googleyness (more Googlespeak), not despite it. A basic tenet of Google's way of doing business is that it is not like other businesses. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin celebrated this quality in their famous letter to prospective shareholders before the company's 2004 IPO, and they promised to keep things that way. For example, Google's operations themselves are unconventional. One of the most fundamental precepts of modern management has to do with how to allocate resources: deciding which projects to pursue, where to spend money, when to take a pass. In fact, MBAs learn in their first classes at business school that resource allocation is a manager's most important task. Yet it's a concept that, while not exactly alien to Google's top dogs, isn't their highest priority. After all, why focus on allocating scarce resources when the resources aren't all that scarce? At the end of the first quarter Google had cash and other liquid assets of $12 billion; A smarter, greener grid Our clunky, brownout-prone electricity distribution system is about to enter the Computer Age, and Ray Bell's smart meter could be the key. MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc. Intraday data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. |
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