5 ms·

Google Will Add 1,000 New Employees In Europe

41 points by madewulf 16y ago

Jun8 16y ago
"I’m a computer scientist, so I think computer sciences can solve a lot of problems – I may be a little biased." A little? Look, I'm a EE and sometimes I get carried away (OK, most of the time), e.g. one of my pet theories is applying control theory to societies, to change them from one state to another (how would you write the state transition matrix?) But this gung-ho, "have hammer, will pound on any problem" approach has its limits. When Schmidt says "How many wars have started because of miscommunication? Now we can try and solve that." about the future of voice translation technology, that's not only laughable (for the foreseeable future) but it comes off as horribly arrogant to people working in other disciplines and has a bad effect on collaboration. I have seen people on HN pragmatically applying their technical knowledge to fields ranging from healthcare to economy to the stock market. Using your non-domain expertise to get a fresh look at a hard problem is a great thing to do. As long as you know your limits.
- dantheman 16y ago
  Have you studied system dynamics? It's applying control theory to societies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
  - haraball 16y ago
    This is the book that was used in this class at my university: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Dynamics-Systems-Thinking-Modeling/dp/007238915X http://www.amazon.com/Business-Dynamics-Systems-Thinking-Mod...
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  I agree completely. I think the thing that's going to "kill google" [1] is that they tend to look at everything as a. A,gorithmic problem. This approach works great for web search, and pretty well for email (gmail really beats everyone else with their thread view of email, which can only be achieved with really smart algorithms), but groupon has showed that there is still value in traditional sales, apple that there is still value in good design, and facebook that there is still value in being cool. [1] And by kill I mean potentially slightly slow profit growth. Google will keep being google for a long time.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    "gmail really beats everyone else with their thread view of email, which can only be achieved with really smart algorithms..." Really smart algorithms like comparing subject lines without the Re: or Fwd: and matching to and from email addresses?
    - alexgartrell 16y ago
      I would bet something along the lines of my first born that the algorithm is significantly more complicated than you make it out to be. jwz's threading algorithm from the 90's - http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html But, if it's so easy, I urge you to write and open source it, so that other products might take advantage of it :)
      - BCM43 16y ago
        https://github.com/kanru/notmuch https://github.com/kanru/notmuch This has thread views. It works very well. If you look at the headers of an email you can see: In-Reply-To: and References I'm not sure that this is what it is using, but it is a possibility.
      - stanleydrew 16y ago
        Oh come on. The standard "if it's so easy why don't you just build it yourself and open-source it" is a meaningless reply. There are tons of things in the world that are pretty easy to implement if you are provided the supporting systems and environment. If I had already put in the tons of hard work to build an email client I would write the threading piece the way I suggested above. But I haven't. My point above is that the algorithm probably isn't terribly difficult for someone to implement. I don't think the fact that I will never implement an email threading algorithm precludes me from making that assessment. The algorithm may be more complicated. It may not be. I doubt that it is significantly more complicated. I certainly wouldn't bet my first born on it, but then I doubt that you actually would either.
smiler 16y ago
I see the most significant change that AOL have implemented thus far at TC is full page interstitial ads - anyone else getting those?
pygy_ 16y ago
Any details on which sites are recruiting? Zurich? Datacenters?
- haasted 16y ago
  Hundreds of these people will be located right here in our technology center in Munich. Apart from that, I would assume that Zurich will expand heavily. IIRC, it is the largest development center outside of Mountain View.
- cdibona 16y ago
  Zurich, Dublin and Paris (OR nerds, Chromium, and others) come to mind. We're always looking for solid people for our Datacenters, but they're Sekrit. Ssh!
- silvajoao 16y ago
  Munich is hiring, have a look at the cool possibilities: http://www.google.de/intl/en/jobs/germanylocations/munich/swe/index.html http://www.google.de/intl/en/jobs/germanylocations/munich/sw...
hammock 16y ago
"Google Will Add 1,000 New Employees In Europe " Score one for the US recovery?
hessenwolf 16y ago
9,000 interviews, at €30.00 an hour, times two interviewers, is €270,000 x 2 = €540,000. If through recruitment agencies, assuming a 10%-of-first-year's-salary fee and average salary of €40,000, €40,000 x 10% x 1000 = €4,000,000 I hear that you should multiply x two the gross salary to get the annual cost of an employee. €40,000 x 2 x 1000 = €80 million. Assuming they are permanent staff, and the risk free rate is 3%, then an additional liability of €80,000,000/.03 = €2.7 Billion Euro is created for Google. This figure makes the previous two immaterial so I am going to forget about them. Current market capital of Google is 144.079573 billion Euro. (and somebody should tell Google's search calculator folks that it's Euro, not Euros, as 's' does not pluralise in all languages) 2.7 divided by 144 = 1.8% of market capital (or overall current share value based on most recent market price) that this should cost them. Says nothing about what this could or could not earn them. Just thinking out loud. I probably made a mistake somewhere.

41 points by madewulf 16y ago

Jun8 16y ago

"I’m a computer scientist, so I think computer sciences can solve a lot of problems – I may be a little biased." A little? Look, I'm a EE and sometimes I get carried away (OK, most of the time), e.g. one of my pet theories is applying control theory to societies, to change them from one state to another (how would you write the state transition matrix?) But this gung-ho, "have hammer, will pound on any problem" approach has its limits. When Schmidt says "How many wars have started because of miscommunication? Now we can try and solve that." about the future of voice translation technology, that's not only laughable (for the foreseeable future) but it comes off as horribly arrogant to people working in other disciplines and has a bad effect on collaboration. I have seen people on HN pragmatically applying their technical knowledge to fields ranging from healthcare to economy to the stock market. Using your non-domain expertise to get a fresh look at a hard problem is a great thing to do. As long as you know your limits.

dantheman 16y ago
Have you studied system dynamics? It's applying control theory to societies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
- haraball 16y ago
  This is the book that was used in this class at my university: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Dynamics-Systems-Thinking-Modeling/dp/007238915X http://www.amazon.com/Business-Dynamics-Systems-Thinking-Mod...
alexgartrell 16y ago
I agree completely. I think the thing that's going to "kill google" [1] is that they tend to look at everything as a. A,gorithmic problem. This approach works great for web search, and pretty well for email (gmail really beats everyone else with their thread view of email, which can only be achieved with really smart algorithms), but groupon has showed that there is still value in traditional sales, apple that there is still value in good design, and facebook that there is still value in being cool. [1] And by kill I mean potentially slightly slow profit growth. Google will keep being google for a long time.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  "gmail really beats everyone else with their thread view of email, which can only be achieved with really smart algorithms..." Really smart algorithms like comparing subject lines without the Re: or Fwd: and matching to and from email addresses?
  - alexgartrell 16y ago
    I would bet something along the lines of my first born that the algorithm is significantly more complicated than you make it out to be. jwz's threading algorithm from the 90's - http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html But, if it's so easy, I urge you to write and open source it, so that other products might take advantage of it :)
    - BCM43 16y ago
      https://github.com/kanru/notmuch https://github.com/kanru/notmuch This has thread views. It works very well. If you look at the headers of an email you can see: In-Reply-To: and References I'm not sure that this is what it is using, but it is a possibility.
    - stanleydrew 16y ago
      Oh come on. The standard "if it's so easy why don't you just build it yourself and open-source it" is a meaningless reply. There are tons of things in the world that are pretty easy to implement if you are provided the supporting systems and environment. If I had already put in the tons of hard work to build an email client I would write the threading piece the way I suggested above. But I haven't. My point above is that the algorithm probably isn't terribly difficult for someone to implement. I don't think the fact that I will never implement an email threading algorithm precludes me from making that assessment. The algorithm may be more complicated. It may not be. I doubt that it is significantly more complicated. I certainly wouldn't bet my first born on it, but then I doubt that you actually would either.

smiler 16y ago

I see the most significant change that AOL have implemented thus far at TC is full page interstitial ads - anyone else getting those?

pygy_ 16y ago

Any details on which sites are recruiting? Zurich? Datacenters?

haasted 16y ago
Hundreds of these people will be located right here in our technology center in Munich. Apart from that, I would assume that Zurich will expand heavily. IIRC, it is the largest development center outside of Mountain View.
cdibona 16y ago
Zurich, Dublin and Paris (OR nerds, Chromium, and others) come to mind. We're always looking for solid people for our Datacenters, but they're Sekrit. Ssh!
silvajoao 16y ago
Munich is hiring, have a look at the cool possibilities: http://www.google.de/intl/en/jobs/germanylocations/munich/swe/index.html http://www.google.de/intl/en/jobs/germanylocations/munich/sw...

hammock 16y ago

"Google Will Add 1,000 New Employees In Europe " Score one for the US recovery?

hessenwolf 16y ago

9,000 interviews, at €30.00 an hour, times two interviewers, is €270,000 x 2 = €540,000. If through recruitment agencies, assuming a 10%-of-first-year's-salary fee and average salary of €40,000, €40,000 x 10% x 1000 = €4,000,000 I hear that you should multiply x two the gross salary to get the annual cost of an employee. €40,000 x 2 x 1000 = €80 million. Assuming they are permanent staff, and the risk free rate is 3%, then an additional liability of €80,000,000/.03 = €2.7 Billion Euro is created for Google. This figure makes the previous two immaterial so I am going to forget about them. Current market capital of Google is 144.079573 billion Euro. (and somebody should tell Google's search calculator folks that it's Euro, not Euros, as 's' does not pluralise in all languages) 2.7 divided by 144 = 1.8% of market capital (or overall current share value based on most recent market price) that this should cost them. Says nothing about what this could or could not earn them. Just thinking out loud. I probably made a mistake somewhere.