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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

(Disclaimer: not a Googler)

Like it or not, Google is consistently ranked near the top or #1 on all of those "Best places to work" lists that get published from time to time. Everyone I know who has managed to get hired there sings its praises, and none of them have left (yet). I think it's unlikely that each one of their opinions is fueled by Kool-aid. There's something to it.

I don't think this guy is sad at all. I really admire what he did. It's pretty inspiring/motivating actually.

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I'd say most of the people who drank the koolaid before even working there self-selected to be at Google because they hadn't tried a job anywhere else in the Bay Area (specifically SF).

What makes Google better than, say, Dropbox? Github? Facebook? Etc?

Disclaimer: former Googler. Currently FB.

> What makes Google better than, say, Dropbox? Github? Facebook? Etc?

Nothing, but they all pay well and are extremely rigorous in interviews.

The median employee tenure at Google is only 1.1 years, so clearly lots of people are leaving. [0] They are right in line with much-derided Amazon.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/07/28/turno...

Median employee tenure is almost entirely dominated by things other than employees leaving. A company that is not hiring will not have any new employees and as a result have a really high median tenure.

The question you really want to ask is: what's the percentage of people leaving each year?

~40% which is a really bad sign.

PS: Median tenure of 1.1 years + company sizes this and last year gives you a good estimate of turnover.

That's also heavily impacted by hiring patterns, though: a company that just hired a lot of people is going to have fewer people leaving (proportionately) after that, since people probably get more likely to leave the longer they've been at the company (though perhaps this is a wrong assumption -- would be interesting to see some data).

You can look at cohorts: of all the people who joined Google in 2013 (eg), what percentage left within one year, what percentage within two years, etc.

Or it just means they're hiring lots of people.

You seriously think they doubled or more their engineering team in the last year?

Yes. They're hiring at a remarkable pace to the point that they're having trouble scaling the process. They're in the same position that Amazon was a few years ago.

You might want to quote hiring velocity along with that statistic. Interesting that the companies with the lowest turnover are non-growth companies. Should I post the quote about statistics and lies, or does everyone know it?

as an ex-Amzn (but goog exp from friends only so possibly hearsay) I can definitely say the reasons to leave amazon & google are very different. one is push other is pull :-)

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