Comments on: When Google gets into a bidding war for its own talent

By: tropicalgringo

tropicalgringo — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 04:47:41 +0000

Man, if I ever needed confirmation that my idea to offer up “startup worthy” developers from Latam had legs, this was it. http://ow.ly/399qw

By: Danny_Black

Danny_Black — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:26:01 +0000

In a business where individuals regularly make a major difference to the bottomline, it pays to cave to these sort of demands. It is unlikely to become a widely spread principle because, by definition, these sort of people are a small percentage.

Of course, it would be better to try and pay them appropriately in the first place.

By: BarryKelly

BarryKelly — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:05:57 +0000

Software engineers are often undercompensated according to their value. Google’s revenue per employee is in the $1.5 million range, and it’s generally accepted that a top performing engineer can be worth over 10x an average engineer; $3.5 million spread out over a few years may be cheap.

By: wcw

wcw — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:33:03 +0000

Me, I can’t get exercised about Google in the slightest. The only thing that distinguishes this from two decades of comp committees backing up dump trucks full of money up the manicured driveways of completely fungible C-suite fodder is that the beneficiary in question was an engineer for a change. That’s it.

Should shareholders and the boards who supposedly represent them be dumping cash and free gamma positions on their executives? Probably not. Have they been doing so for decades now? Yes.

By: EpicureanDeal

EpicureanDeal — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:37:59 +0000

FifthDecade & q_is_too_short — Well, yes, actually, you can run a business with prima donnas who threaten to leave for a better offer. It’s called investment banking.

Please note that I did not say you can run a business *well*.

By: patrickinmaine

patrickinmaine — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:16:44 +0000

The term loyalty brings a moral aspect into this that is really inappropriate. “loyal” employees are asked to defer raises that the market will bear today but the company will not compensate them if they defer that opportunity to thelater “in-cycle” date and the market no longer offers that kind of opportunity. It’s asymmetric.

By: q_is_too_short

q_is_too_short — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:41:01 +0000

as for structural unemployment this doesn’t say anything about that. of course there are some niches that can’t be filled, and people who can’t find a niche. but i would defy you to find a google engineer who couldn’t, if they were fired from google, find a pretty good job elsewhere.

By: q_is_too_short

q_is_too_short — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:38:19 +0000

yes, there will always be niches, and there will always be a shortage of the highest skilled and most up-to-date and most brilliant people. that’s almost a tautology. they are few in number and in competition almost completely with each other. if you somehow were able to produce more of them, they would *poof* differentiate and compete among each other, and after a short time some few would end up being more qualified than the others. some of that would just be their luck as they would have picked the ‘hot’ area to focus on.

i agree with 5th decade. you can’t run a business with prima donnas. google should know this by now.

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:34:49 +0000

@Fifth: Many economists claim that our unemployment/ underemployment is simply cyclical, and employment will return as soon as demand does. Others are saying that this unemployment is structural, and will stay with us even after demand returns. This anecdote seems to support the latter argument. You might make former case if Google were rewarding very specific skills, but that’s not the case here. Technical computer and software skills in general don’t seem to be in critically short supply.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:14:06 +0000

In a world of dynamically developing new technology there will surely always be a mismatch between skills and jobs because of the lag between the introduction of a new idea and getting enough people trained to meet its market needs.

As for the Google Blackmail incident, they should’ve just let the guy go. You can’t run a business with Prima Donnas.

By: swyx

swyx — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:59:27 +0000

would it be a stretch to say that facebook is on its way to becoming worth more than google? once it launches a search engine informed by your friends’ choices, google loses the fight on having any hope of delivering more relevant results. game over google. maybe this is why facebook is poaching googlers.

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:56:55 +0000

I’d like to abstract this incident in a slightly different direction. In a time of 10 percent unemployment, with underemployment adding several more points to that, what is the larger story with Google offering significant across-the-board raises, presumably to keep employees from jumping ship to more potentially lucrative opportunities?

Is it that our economy does, in fact, have a mismatch between skills and jobs (that’s pretty much my take)? Or is mobility the issue (that seems less likely in high-unemployment CA)? Or is it simply that we’re not all lucky enough to work for Google (I think that’s a possibility too)? Any thoughts?