of mice and men
Several of you have asked, that seeing as I spent a lifetime recruiting for technology start-ups, whether or not I’ve noticed any changes of late within the IT arena? Broadly speaking and in a nut shell, there aren’t as many start-ups as the West Coast heartland just isn’t spawning as many as it did but following the Nasdaq/dot.com crash of 2001/2002 that’s no bad thing. Hopefully we’ll never again be faced with the premise of any idea being a good idea.
More interesting though has been recent speculation that Google, now one of the industry’s stalwarts are now allegedly haemorrhaging staff, with most of them crossing the road (boulevard?) to Facebook. Google, which only 12 years ago was itself the stereotypical garage-based start-up, now finds itself viewed in Silicon Valley as the big, lumbering behemoth. The figures appear to justify this belief: in five years it has grown to 23,000 employees from 5,000 and revenues from £3.2 billion to £23.7 billion. Wow.
The downside is that the organisation’s early staff, and some of its most talented, are understandably not overly enamoured to the subsequent, and necessary, process and bureaucracy. It’s obviously the way of this world and these people will always vote with their feet and go seek out the next big thing. The perpetual brain-drain no less.
As a result, Google is taking steps to retain and further develop these employees. Keep your friends close, and your (potential) enemies closer still. Google has given several staff members who were threatening to fly the nest the opportunity to start their own companies within the company structure. They work independently in a quasi start-up manner but are able to draw upon Google’s vast technical expertise and business resource when they require. Google is acting as its own incubator in terms of funding, resource and expertise. An interesting way of allowing the individual to ultimately benefit from the potential reward of their own endeavours but with all of the risk removed. A further interesting and innovative initiative the company developed several years ago was the ‘20% Time’ where employees are actively encouraged to work on their own products and ideas within company-paid time. The popular Google product, Gmail grew out of 20% Time.
Irrespective of the pros and cons of such ‘empowering’ moves there will always be individuals who will follow the start-up dream. It’s the technical equivalent of Jack Black’s ‘stick it to THE MAN’ and start-ups will always, correctly or otherwise, represent the ultimate in independence and freedom. For the rest of us, Google has always been generous with salary, stock options and ‘new wave’ benefits such a free massage, dry cleaning and food along with the ubiquitous table football and PS3 decked chill-out spaces. Last month the company gave every employee a minimum raise of 10% and rumour has it, that counteroffer bonuses have run into seven figures…with no decimal places!
Of Facebook, Google could be no more dismissive “we hire more people in a week than go to Facebook in its life-time.” Ouch, that’s gotta sting!
