The Google Brain Drain Goes On
From rock star engineers like Mark Lucovsky to whiz entrepreneurs like Dick Costolo, Google (GOOG) seems to lose a top tier employee every week.
Why are so many talented people fleeing such a successful company?
After speaking with a few of former Googlers, we can say it basically boils down to four reasons.
Google doesn't feel as entrepreneurial as it used to. It wasn't so long ago that Google was a startup and it took every employee's full resources to keep the thing thriving. Now Google is a company that knows what it's good at -- search advertising -- and is focused on making that business more efficient. For a lot of employees who joined Google at the beginning or through acquisitions -- among others, we're thinking of early Googler Tim Armstrong and former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt here -- solving a big company's problems of efficiency is kind of boring.
There are only so many top spots at Google. Through its own recruiting and through the acquisition of hot startups, Google hires only the best -- lots and lots of "type-a" achievement-focused people. But there's only so many top jobs at any company. Talented people like Dick Costolo, the former CEO of FeedBurner, who came over when Google bought his company, sometimes have to leave to get a title that suits their ambitions. Dick is now Twitter's chief operating officer. He wasn't going to get that job at Google.
Other companies try really hard to hire Googlers, so they offer them lots of money and great titles. Former VP of ad sales Tim Armstrong had a great, comfortable gig at Google. But then Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes asked him to become CEO of AOL, and offered up to $50 million in stock options. He had to jump at it.
Google is a huge company now, so turnover could be very light percentage-wise, but it will still look like a lot of people are quitting. Once a tiny startup, Google now has almost 30,000 employees. The company with smallest turnover in Fortune's "100 best companies to work for" loses 2% of its employees every year. At Google, that would be almost 600 people a year -- about the same size as Facebook's entire headcount at the end of 2008.
Still, it's always shocking to hear that a company so successful and so famously pleasant to work for has lost top-tier employees like the following 17 that quit over the past few years:
- Kai-Fu Lee, President of Google Inc.'s China operations
- Michael Rubenstein, General Manager of Google Ad Exchange
- Dick Costolo, CEO of Google-acquired FeedBurner
- Mark Lucovsky, Engineering director
- Alexander Macgillivray, Deputy general counsel
- Jeff Levick, Vice president of sales
- Erin Clift, Director of agency relations
- Greg Badros, Senior Director of Engineering
- David Rosenblatt, President of display advertising
- Tim Armstrong, VP of ad sales
- Larry Brilliant, Director of Google.org
- Suhkinder Singh Cassidy, President for Asia-Pacific & Latin America operations
- Steve Horowitz, Engineering Director, Android
- Elliot Schrage, VP, global communications and public affairs
- Sheryl Sandberg, Vice president, Global Online Sales and Operations
- Gonzalo Alonso, Latin America director
- Doug Merrill, Chief information officer, VP of engineering
Click here to scroll through the Google Brain Drain →
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You forgot one: everyone who was going to get crazy rich from the ever-soaring GOOG stock price has already gotten crazy rich. That diminishes the appeal.
There are, at most, 3 people on that list that were actual losses to Google. The rest were either vesting-in-peace, or completely fungible and replaceable.
Google Brain Drain. Google brain drain? Google brain drain!
Damn. Just keeps getting funnier every time you say it.
I like to thing that the engineers are the most important part of the company. I used to be one until I retired.
However, Microsoft did not get where it is by its engineers. In many ways, Microsoft products are inferior to most of the competition. Microsoft got where it is by extremely predatory business practices.
I wonder how much farther advanced the industry could be were it not for Microsoft forcing out most of the innovation.
Microsoft has made more millionaires out of plain ole secretaries than any other company in history !!
ponder that for a moment !!
That's what organized crime does best.
Ponder, indeed. How about the wealthy hedge fund managers on Wall Street who are laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts while we cry over our banks?
So cry over all those innovative software companies that were pushed out or frightened out of business by offers they couldn't refuse from Microsoft.
google is not cool now
I turned in my Google badge because it was time to retire. At the ripe old age of 31.
hopefully those who leave are ambitious enough, clever enough and connected enough to start up new successful and innovative businesses
hopefully, businesses which produce products/services which can be sold to foreign countries
hopefully, they won't outsource either
Well, Google could have me as a consultant for a cognitive infusion from the sole proprietor of Disruptech!
I executive-class ego could off-set the loss of all those IT brainiacs.
You gotta have someone who isn't afraid of Steve Ballmer. He's one big reason why Microsoft has been able to psyche out so many competitors.
Ballmer may be one of the most intimidating CEOs in the game, and you've got to give him credit for it, because he's still funny and personable.
Ballmer is the Dick Chaney of Microsoft
I think they are just bailing to enjoy all of the money they've made. Can't blame them...
Jeeze, I really thought they were talking about the US...
At the end of the day, the people who make a company great (and ultimately successful) are its innovators, engineers, software developers, the grunts of our industry. Unfortunately, it's when a company starts becoming successful that all these highly-paid, MBA types come in. Google and many other (now) large companies became successful at the start thanks to their innovators, not their managers. As soon as one's only gratification is next quarter's bottom line, innovation takes a serious blow, and innovators leave for another try at innovation somewhere else. I guess it's a natural cycle. Google has not really innovated in quite a while. Search and advertising can only go so far.
Some people are "starters" who like to build new programs and projects. Some are "maintainers" who are better suited to keeping them running.
In this industry, a company of "maintainers" will soon be out of business. If you're not moving, you're dying.
You are saying the same thing but using indirection to abstract the truth.
People who can start something can also maintain it. But those who maintain cannot start something. The problem is that the "maintainers" are better organized and there are far more of them. They overwhelm the "starters" like a disease.
That being said I'm more of a maintainer. :)
Wow, I'd like to meet a maintainer that was looking for work. I'm a starter that has started several successful business', but I totally suck at taking it nationwide. Honestly everything I've ever started worked well. I'm great at solving technical problems that have stumped others. I just don't have what it takes to handle expansion, financing, hiring, revenue projections, business plans & such.
The anti Bill Gates.
Build great stuff, live in poverty.
Good move goog...makin room at the top. Up and out. I would suggest that one sign of sclerosis in the management of any company is seen when the decision makers become obsessed about consistency over reality. One reality is that organizations are born, grow and die. To un-naturally try to extend its life span is expected but ultimately delays the transformation. As to what Google's trajectory will be, we cannot say, but as long as the top remains connected to the bottom (and you can't get any more bottom than me) there is the possibility of controlling the direction one is travelling, and in Google's case I hope it's toward truth. Cheers.
PS..it's rainging soup; space is the place.
Or when they start to hire "titles" from boring companies. Microsoft likes to hire Wall Mart and Sam's Club executives. Imagine how that works out.
Wow, explains a lot.
So?
It sounds like the law of the corporate jungle at work. Google's perfected search for now. Other tools are needed. Their top people see opportunities and go for them. Vacuum means that some vacant positions get filled by their other talented people. They have plenty of them.
No harm no foul.
Meh. Management talent is all well and good, but it's the technical developers that make a company like Google what it is.
"Made" it what it is. Once a company reaches a certain level of maturity, it takes managers to maintain the business that they're in.
Sure, innovation will always be central to their business but it's not a startup anymore.
Good management is important, no doubt. But oftentimes too much is made of whether some particular "star" executive is going to come or go. Except for a few cases (and those usually involve the founders) they can be replaced by other good managers, who will be less diva because self-proclaimed Sillicon Valley insiders don't know their names. The day-to-day influence of execs on the business are much overblown too. The best place to focus on management talent is the lower-level managers, who lead the development teams that actually produce things.
The real brains behind Google's continuing business remains the designers, developers and tinkerers who are, for the most part, individual contributors, plus the team leaders who organize and support them. This, I believe.
We need to offshore management.
MSN is not much better. Every time one logs in-a tracking cookie jumps onto your computer. You can test the truth by logging in to MSN, then immediately running your spy ware whereby a spy thingy is deleted. Advertisers and others want to know what sites you visit and payola is money earned.
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