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Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook
- maukdaddy 16y agono reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. That's got to be a joke.
- pchristensen 16y agoWhy? If Facebook finds a monetization engine for its huge userbase, $100B isn't out of the question. They're already making $1B/yr from ads.
- nostromo 16y ago"Making" to me tends to refer to profit, not gross revenue. In operating revenue, they made a few tens of millions last year on less than 1b gross. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Facebook-09-revenue-neared-800-mn-Sources/articleshow/6063819.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Facebo... That's impressive, but they will have to double their profit several more times to warrant a 100b price tag. Google has a PE ratio of 20. If you extend that to FB, they'll need to make 5b in revenue to get to 100b. Assuming that last year they banked 20mm, they would have to double their earnings eight times to get to 5b.
- px 16y agoNot saying that Facebook deserves a $100b valuation, but, in all fairness, a PE ratio of 20 isn't realistic either. Facebook is perceived as the growth company that Google used to be. Investors will be willing to pay a premium for that.
- joe_the_user 16y agoYes, if Fb finds a strong monetization engine for its huge user base then $100b seems possible. However, as I remember, Google had found their monetization engine before their IPO. Fb hasn't and the IPO is supposed to be just around the corner. Plenty of other large sites didn't work out like Google. I mean, Fb could wind-up like Yahoo, lots of users but no great monetization from them. In fact, Fb looks a lot like a better Yahoo since it more or less provides what Yahoo provides in a more integrated format. Consider, if a brick-and-mortor company somehow offered free storage of real-world goods anywhere in the world, they could easily grow to millions of users too. The monetization question would loom large as well.
- forensic 16y agothe facebook name alone pretty much guarantees a stratospheric IPO, even if totally unwarranted
- brown9-2 16y agoYes but what about long-term value? I may be wrong but I thought options given to employees don't allow them to sell for some amount of time after an IPO.
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- philwelch 16y agoAmazon is $59B. (http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AMZN http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon's user base is probably comparable to Facebook, and they're monetarizing the hell out of it. How is Facebook supposed to almost double that?
- edanm 16y agoI'm not sure Amazon's userbase really is comparable (I'm not even sure how to measure, since Facebook users vists Facebook every day, whereas Amazon users don't). I think the difference is in potential. Facebook has more potential than any other company to make huge amounts of cash. What it's making now is (probably) just the beginning.
- philwelch 16y agoAny other company? Really? Name a sufficiently large petroleum company: they automatically have more "users" than Facebook for something those "users" are automatically guaranteed to pay for. (Do anything and you use petroleum, directly or indirectly. Even getting out of bed in the morning requires energy, i.e. food, and that food was shipped using petroleum products and likely harvested with petroleum-consuming tractors as well.) You can even get more potential from having a lot fewer users, but monetizing each user by a greater amount. Having tons of unmonetized users and looking for a way to monetize them is questionable at best.
- maukdaddy 16y agoGoogle has a $146b market cap. Google brought in 23 BILLION in revenue last year. You think FB is making 23 billion? I don't.
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- hugh3 16y agoHmm, let's see. Facebook claims to have an active userbase of 500 million people. If they can find a way to show $46 worth of ads to every one of 'em every year, they can make $23 billion. It does sound a little high, but not as insane as it initially might.
- elblanco 16y agoAt 500 million active users, they're sweeping up some pretty non-trivial percentage of all of humanity. Unless they figure out something that'll grow their revenue by 100x...I hope that any investor isn't banking on the continued exponential growth curve of the human species as a market for targeted adverts in the near term. Basically they're going to need to start selling "stuff" for that valuation to make any sense at all.
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- narkee 16y agoWow, mid-level developers pull $150k? Everything I had read previously stated that Google salaries were nothing special compared to industry averages, and it was the perks and culture that differentiated them But there's no way $150k is average for a mid-range developer.
- nostromo 16y agoAnd you're not even mentioning the $500k retention bonus... Something seems off here.
- gecko 16y agoI have friends at Google, and have heard nothing indicating that salaries are anywhere in this ballpark. I also just spoke to someone whose girlfriend works there, and he too agreed that this article is bullshit. They might mean mid-level manager, or they may be counting all of the perks as part of the salary. But even there, a half-million retention bonus seems absurd to both of us.
- joe_the_user 16y agoCould "Mid-level developer" might mean a super developer who's considered at the level of a mid-level manager? IE, mid-level != mid-range? Google is a lot bigger than Facebook currently so I'd assume Facebook would be aiming to pick what they consider the "cream". The article mentions 118. Google has ~20K employees and a good portion of them would engineers.
- lotharbot 16y agoIn any corporation of that size, there are some "mid-level developer"s who are far better at what they do than their title suggests. For whatever reason, they just haven't moved up in title as fast as they've moved up in skill or productivity.
- whakojacko 16y agoJust wondering, what would you call average for a developer straight from college?
- sumeetjain 16y ago"Facebook is quietly telling people, never in writing, that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. No guarantees, yadda yadda, but hey if you get 1/10 of 1%, that’s $100 million in stock." Am I missing something, or is expecting "1/10 of 1%" equity insane? I've never heard of a mid-level developer getting that at a company of Facebook's size.
- ecuzzillo 16y agoWell, maybe they're expecting 1/100 of 1% or less, which would still net them several million, which is a lot more than Google's counteroffer.
- jackowayed 16y agoThere was a rumor somewhere that a few people they really want are getting offered as much as 1/10 of 1%. But yeah, obviously not every Google employee that swings by Facebook for an interview is going to get offered that much. That's the ceiling.
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- Tim_M 16y agoWhat does "1/10 of 1%" actually mean? How is it different from 0.1%?
- kloncks 16y agoI wonder why Apple's different. From what I read, their average salaries are much lower but their loyalty is much higher. Besides, you don't hear of too many Apple employees quickly leaving for other places, at least not as much as Facebook/Google. Why?
- maxawaytoolong 16y agoApple salaries are not much lower, they are in fact much higher than Google. This article is bullshit, $150K is not what a mid-range engineer makes at Google.
- kloncks 16y agoDo you have an idea of what they really make, then? What I'm thinking is that Mike got "Mid Level Manager" and "Mid Level Developer" confused...
- maxawaytoolong 16y agoYes I know many people at both companies and have had offers from both. Even glassdoor skews in favor of Apple.
- orangecat 16y agoMy vague impression is that working at Apple gives you more prestige with the general public than Google or Facebook. Google has a geeky (well, even geekier) aura, and people don't like Facebook like they like Apple.
- whakojacko 16y agoI buy that, but Ive never understood why any half-decent engineer would care about what the public thinks of his/her company.
- enomar 16y agoThe public includes parents, friends and members of the opposite sex. A lot of people confuse what others think of them with self worth.
- chailatte 16y agoWhat's Facebook's profit this year? Any guestimates?
- AlexBlom 16y agoUmm...Can somebody get me a job at Google right..... now?
- studer 16y agoI think you're supposed to start here: http://www.google.com/jobs http://www.google.com/jobs
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- brown9-2 16y agoI thought Facebook famously has/has a relatively small engineering staff - ~300 people - are they trying to rapidly expand this?
- _delirium 16y agoTheir Facebook Factsheet (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet) says they have "1400+" employees, though it doesn't break it down into job descriptions.
- aresant 16y agoArrington seems to be suggesting that FB is telling recruits "that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation". If that is the case, and that's coming from any sort of person in a leadership or HR position, isn't that seriously afoul of SEC rules?
- chollida1 16y ago> isn't that seriously afoul of SEC rules? Which rules?? Public traded companies often give out something called guidance, which tells investors what range they think their profits and revenues, and by extension, stock price will be in the coming quarters.
- known 16y agoNever take a counteroffer. It is not a win-win proposition.
- known 16y agoIsn't competition catching up for FB http://www.madina.com/ http://www.madina.com/