Google Competing With Other Companies Over Employees

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In a previous article I’ve mentioned that multiple Google employees eventually ended up at Facebook. Some of them preferred to move at other companies in the field. Even though most people believe Google is one of the best employers, its employees will still be tempted to move to other companies for extra benefits. Nowadays the search engine giant seems to be trying to secure its team of people and is reportedly fighting off several fast-growing Internet companies that are interested in new “talent”.

We’ve gone through all the Google employees that moved to Facebook but didn’t really cover the ones that left for other companies. 41-year old Cedric Beust was employed with Google for six years, according to the Wall Street Journal. He worked on various projects most of which had something to do with the company’s mobile operating system Android. This year, however, he felt like he had to move on. “I was ready for something different and more challenging,” he said. Beust started scouting for jobs at various companies including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and went on several interviews. In May he finally joined LinedIn as a principal software engineer.

The thing with Google’s employees is that they obviously have experience and know-how. For short, those are qualities several other companies would love to have. That’s why competition for such employees is exceptionally high. A recruiter in Sillicon Valley, Valerie Frederickson mentioned that there’s a huge shortage of engineers and that a client of hers who has recently received a masters in engineering from Stanford University was fought over by Google, Facebook and several other companies. He finally got hired with a $125,000 salary and the companies that lost are now offering him $175,000.

Now that we’ve established just how valuable some of these people are in the Silicon Valley area, it’s worth noting that both Facebook and Twitter are interested in growing. Facebook has roughly 1,700 employees at this point compared to 1000 from the same period about a year ago. Twitter jumped from a team of 99 last year to 300 employees this year while LinkedIn went into 2010 with 450 employees and should end 2010 with about 900 of them. Zynga, the creator of several popular games, out of which it’s easiest to mention the immensely popular Farmville, is doing even better than the social networking sites.

Some of the best employers in the field, image : Wall Street Journal

It entered 2010 with 500 employees and now has more than double (1,250). Naturally, Google may be a bit worried now that some of its valuable employees might consider migrating to any of these companies. That’s possibly why the search engine giant decided to give a 10 percent raise to all of its employees (over 23,000 of them) as well as a holiday bonus of $1000. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned in an internal e-mail that the company wants to continue to attract the best people.

Moreover, Google is acquiring as many people as it is companies. The team at Google has increased by 19 percent over the past year and is now 3,600 people larger. Some of those people actually joined through the acquisitions of start-ups such as Slide. But as Google now finds itself having to protect its employees from other companies and at the same time trying to attract other valuable people, when it started out the company was just as Facebook and Twitter are today. It convinced multiple Yahoo and Microsoft workers to move.

Some of today’s job seekers seem to believe that Facebook’s technology and the smaller size of the company are a good thing. Murali Vajapeyam, a software engineer left Oracle and he’s been through interviews with Google and Facebook. According to him, Facebook is more interesting. Regardless of his opinion, Vajapeyam didn’t manage to get a job offer with the largest social networking site in the world and ended up working for a software start-up in San Francisco. So, at the end of the day, which of these companies sounds better for you assuming you were interested in getting hired in that field? While Facebook sounds pretty good, I must admit Google’s offices are quite appealing and possibly every employee’s dream.11