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Every employee they add also takes potential talent away from adding value to a start-up or competitor trying to catch-up. It's one way to protect your monopoly

Every employee they add also takes potential talent away from adding value to a start-up or competitor trying to catch-up. It's one way to protect your monopoly when there is a shortage of skilled labor.

londons_explore 4y ago
A common route for people is to join a big tech company for a few years, then quit and do a startup using the skills + cash gained...
gigatexal 4y ago
This is how I think as well.
- jmathai 4y ago
  The suggestion here being that hiring is a strategic play by Google to prevent startups from forming? I think a much better play is to let the startups form at no cost to you and buy them if/when they show signs of success.
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    Sure that’s viable but also hiring top talent means that talent can’t join Meta (sic) or Microsoft or Apple etc. keep the brain trust full and add to your advantage.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    The feds surely won’t allow it for ever though. There’s already so much scrutiny.
SilverBirch 4y ago
I think this is basically wrong. One thing lots of companies do during a recession is they try to get rid of the worst 10% of their employees. Instead they lose the top 8% and the bottom 1% and a random 1%- the top 8% see the bad news, have options and leave, the bottom 1% are obviously bad and get let go, and the other 1% are just unlucky becuase the company doesn't really have a clue who is good. This the same thing for trying to corner the smartest engineers in the market. You're not going to corner the smartest engineers, the smartest are going to go off and work on interesting meaningful projects. But what you will get is a lot of employees who are smart, not that effective but very happy for you to pay them not to work anywhere else. So even if the intention is to corner the top talent, they're not going to succeed because that's not what motivates most decent engineers. But also, the pool of talent is so vast that they'd bankrupt the company with that pay roll. Oh and the non-compete situation in California means even if you do manage to hire someone, if they do have a good idea they're just going to quit and build it - safe with a nest egg you helped them build.

londons_explore 4y ago

A common route for people is to join a big tech company for a few years, then quit and do a startup using the skills + cash gained...

gigatexal 4y ago

This is how I think as well.

jmathai 4y ago
The suggestion here being that hiring is a strategic play by Google to prevent startups from forming? I think a much better play is to let the startups form at no cost to you and buy them if/when they show signs of success.
- gigatexal 4y ago
  Sure that’s viable but also hiring top talent means that talent can’t join Meta (sic) or Microsoft or Apple etc. keep the brain trust full and add to your advantage.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  The feds surely won’t allow it for ever though. There’s already so much scrutiny.

SilverBirch 4y ago

I think this is basically wrong. One thing lots of companies do during a recession is they try to get rid of the worst 10% of their employees. Instead they lose the top 8% and the bottom 1% and a random 1%- the top 8% see the bad news, have options and leave, the bottom 1% are obviously bad and get let go, and the other 1% are just unlucky becuase the company doesn't really have a clue who is good. This the same thing for trying to corner the smartest engineers in the market. You're not going to corner the smartest engineers, the smartest are going to go off and work on interesting meaningful projects. But what you will get is a lot of employees who are smart, not that effective but very happy for you to pay them not to work anywhere else. So even if the intention is to corner the top talent, they're not going to succeed because that's not what motivates most decent engineers. But also, the pool of talent is so vast that they'd bankrupt the company with that pay roll. Oh and the non-compete situation in California means even if you do manage to hire someone, if they do have a good idea they're just going to quit and build it - safe with a nest egg you helped them build.