4 ms·

Has Google Hired Too Many People? The Food Line at the Googleplex Did Seem Rather Long

staunch 19y ago
The vast majority of the developers at Google don't produce anything great. Lots more of them could, but not inside a huge bureaucratic company. Holding 90% of the best engineers in the world "hostage" with six figure salaries and great perks is a good way to slow them down. I think they're scared of being blindsided, since that's what they did to Yahoo & co. Google should be more brave and set them free. They can easily stay the best at snapping up early-stage startups. They already do this, but it should be their only strategy. Google should almost completely stop hiring direct. I guess this is really just "Hiring is Obsolete" from a slightly different perspective. That it might be evil of Google to jealously "horde" hackers out of fear.
- geebee 19y ago
  I agree. It may seem funny to think that google is better off paying them 100M for their company instead of 150K in salary - but presumably, google pays that much for startups because they're worth it. Hard to believe that a 150K house plant does all that much direct damage to google (wall street expectations aside, their numbers were pretty excellent) - but the opportunity cost of keeping an office fern from growing into a redwood may be very high. assuming google gets to buy them out...
  - menloparkbum 19y ago
    FYI Google doesn't pay incoming engineers anywhere near 150K.
    - geebee 19y ago
      Yeah, it was just a guess. But I figure that after someone has had enough time to get complacent, he/she's probably at a pretty senior level and is making more dough.
- schoudha 19y ago
  "The vast majority of the developers at Google don't produce anything great. Lots more of them could, but not inside a huge bureaucratic company." I'm not sure what qualifies you to make that statement. Do you work at Google?
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    Let me answer that for him. Google has X great products and Y employees. (...etc)
daniel-cussen 19y ago
Why hire so many people? How much value could a 10,000th hire add to a company? Google won't tank, but it may have to lay off a lot of people. It stands to reason that may contradict their "don't be evil" philosophy.
menloparkbum 19y ago
If you live in SF or Silicon Valley, it is obvious that Google's hiring was out of control last year. I'm sure everyone living here, and working with a startup here can give an example of at least 1 person Google has hired recently whom they would never call in for an interview at their startup. Since I do a lot of the hiring work at my startup, I've seen 20+ such people get hired by Google last year.
- hello_moto 19y ago
  Isn't that people in Silicon Valley (especially those who work at Internet companies) never stick with their companies more than 3-5 years? (except the execs)
  - icky 19y ago
    That's 'cause execs get pay raises by staying (regardless of their impact on the company), whereas nerds get pay raises by leaving (regardless of their impact on the company).
amichail 19y ago
Maybe the idea is to keep excellent people away from their competitors, even if they don't really need all those people in the near future.
- zach 19y ago
  Sure, if you accept that there are engineers that are 5, 10, 20 times as valuable as their salary requirements, then that makes sense. You might as well scoop up those under-priced assets, even knowing that you can't necessarily measure them perfectly. Since engineers love the product more than the marketplace, you keep them happy by paying them well and letting products flourish on their own technical merits. You do that and you don't have to worry too much about driven engineers leaving for startups. And you have to provide them with a stimulating and rewarding environment, like, some kind of... super-college. That's all pretty much conventional wisdom, but they're executing well on it. It worked for Bell Labs and Xerox in a simpler time. Of course, their underlying companies had too limited a mandate to take the technologies their "radical researchers"[1] created and bring them into the marketplace. But as we know, Google's mission statement is a less succinct but more exacting restatement of "do computer science," so they're good there. I don't know, it still seems fundamentally sound to me. Maybe Google is bound for the "eternal September" effect, or maybe they're getting better at teasing out the engineers out there who are a better fit for the company. Mere hiring numbers don't really tell the whole story, I think. [1] - http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/2006/04/what_spaceward_.html http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/2006/04/what_spaceward_....
- steve 19y ago
  well that's rather "evil".
abhijit 19y ago
check out this one at swivel. http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8977818 http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8977818 very interesting. :-)

The vast majority of the developers at Google don't produce anything great. Lots more of them could, but not inside a huge bureaucratic company. Holding 90% of the best engineers in the world "hostage" with six figure salaries and great perks is a good way to slow them down. I think they're scared of being blindsided, since that's what they did to Yahoo & co. Google should be more brave and set them free. They can easily stay the best at snapping up early-stage startups. They already do this, but it should be their only strategy. Google should almost completely stop hiring direct. I guess this is really just "Hiring is Obsolete" from a slightly different perspective. That it might be evil of Google to jealously "horde" hackers out of fear.

geebee 19y ago
I agree. It may seem funny to think that google is better off paying them 100M for their company instead of 150K in salary - but presumably, google pays that much for startups because they're worth it. Hard to believe that a 150K house plant does all that much direct damage to google (wall street expectations aside, their numbers were pretty excellent) - but the opportunity cost of keeping an office fern from growing into a redwood may be very high. assuming google gets to buy them out...
- menloparkbum 19y ago
  FYI Google doesn't pay incoming engineers anywhere near 150K.
  - geebee 19y ago
    Yeah, it was just a guess. But I figure that after someone has had enough time to get complacent, he/she's probably at a pretty senior level and is making more dough.
schoudha 19y ago
"The vast majority of the developers at Google don't produce anything great. Lots more of them could, but not inside a huge bureaucratic company." I'm not sure what qualifies you to make that statement. Do you work at Google?
- mynameishere 19y ago
  Let me answer that for him. Google has X great products and Y employees. (...etc)

daniel-cussen 19y ago

Why hire so many people? How much value could a 10,000th hire add to a company? Google won't tank, but it may have to lay off a lot of people. It stands to reason that may contradict their "don't be evil" philosophy.

menloparkbum 19y ago

If you live in SF or Silicon Valley, it is obvious that Google's hiring was out of control last year. I'm sure everyone living here, and working with a startup here can give an example of at least 1 person Google has hired recently whom they would never call in for an interview at their startup. Since I do a lot of the hiring work at my startup, I've seen 20+ such people get hired by Google last year.

hello_moto 19y ago
Isn't that people in Silicon Valley (especially those who work at Internet companies) never stick with their companies more than 3-5 years? (except the execs)
- icky 19y ago
  That's 'cause execs get pay raises by staying (regardless of their impact on the company), whereas nerds get pay raises by leaving (regardless of their impact on the company).

amichail 19y ago

Maybe the idea is to keep excellent people away from their competitors, even if they don't really need all those people in the near future.

zach 19y ago
Sure, if you accept that there are engineers that are 5, 10, 20 times as valuable as their salary requirements, then that makes sense. You might as well scoop up those under-priced assets, even knowing that you can't necessarily measure them perfectly. Since engineers love the product more than the marketplace, you keep them happy by paying them well and letting products flourish on their own technical merits. You do that and you don't have to worry too much about driven engineers leaving for startups. And you have to provide them with a stimulating and rewarding environment, like, some kind of... super-college. That's all pretty much conventional wisdom, but they're executing well on it. It worked for Bell Labs and Xerox in a simpler time. Of course, their underlying companies had too limited a mandate to take the technologies their "radical researchers"[1] created and bring them into the marketplace. But as we know, Google's mission statement is a less succinct but more exacting restatement of "do computer science," so they're good there. I don't know, it still seems fundamentally sound to me. Maybe Google is bound for the "eternal September" effect, or maybe they're getting better at teasing out the engineers out there who are a better fit for the company. Mere hiring numbers don't really tell the whole story, I think. [1] - http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/2006/04/what_spaceward_.html http://equityprivate.typepad.com/ep/2006/04/what_spaceward_....
steve 19y ago
well that's rather "evil".

abhijit 19y ago

check out this one at swivel. http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8977818 http://www.swivel.com/graphs/show/8977818 very interesting. :-)