Google has been rated the #1 place to work for graduating MBA's for the past 5 years. Magazines like Forbes and Fortune talk about how great it is to work at Google. I always hear about their supposedly super perks - free lunches, 20% free time, etc. Yet, people seem in a rush to get out of there. There was a recent stat on HN that said 20% of Facebook employees are former Google employees.
What am I missing?
First of all, I think all the "perks" Google talks about are really just HR marketing. They have good benefits, but so do Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and any other large company. But the others don't seem to have to talk about it all the time.
The 20% thing is s sham. Believe me, no one is working 32 hours per week on Google stuff and 8 hours per week on personal ideas. Everyone works to the bone and rarely do people actually have time to work on something outside of that.
The perks like free lunches, car washes, laundry, etc are less interesting as people get older. These are all designed to keep you in the office longer. Maybe it's cool to have your social life revolve around work when you are 22, fresh out of college. But at some point you realize you want to get away from work when you are done with work.
There is less upside to Google stock than there was before. With a $600 stock price, you really need to think if you're better off staying at Google or going elsewhere. For people who are fully vested, I'm sure Facebook looks like a great option with more upside potential.
Personal opinion: Google doesn't build great products. They are a technology company. If you are working on search or ads, that's exciting. But otherwise there are few products at Google where I would feel proud to work on.
In general I find it odd that magazines and newspapers are constantly writing about how cool it is to work at Google. I'd much rather hear this from the employees themselves, in blogs or just word of mouth.
I worked at Apple for six years and I can't stop talking about how great the experience was all around. I am modeling Posterous around what I learned there. I'm not sure I've heard the same from ex Google employees.
Personal opinion: Google doesn't build great products. They are a technology company
I'd be interested in hearing more about why Apple is an awesome place to work. I've heard some anecdotes but never as much gushing as Google.
The perks like free lunches, car washes, laundry, etc are less interesting as people get older. These are all designed to keep you in the office longer. Maybe it's cool to have your social life revolve around work when you are 22, fresh out of college. But at some point you realize you want to get away from work when you are done with work.
Along the same lines a lot of people at Google have worked “enough” and want to take their money and relax / go do something else. Since many folks there are financial secure it is really up to them when they want to take a break. It seems in the technology space anything beyond about a two year term is considered a long time to work at a company.
Overall I believe Google is still very attractive, however if you want to hit if big financially there are a lot of other places nearly as appealing with that large financial incentive still out there.
Meanwhile, the same thing is happening to other companies. It's completely normal for employees to 'graduate' from a company and move on to another.
Both google and their employees are reaching different stages in their life cycle where the expectations of each party on the other are no longer optimal. Think of senior and accomplished devs leaving as opportunity to train the next generation of great devs. If they've handled their life cycle well there should be many proteges ready to fill the now empty shoes.
Developers like to build things. Developers like control. Developers like autonomy. Why do you think a tool like emacs exists?
In a lot of departments are Google, they can do just that. However, I imagine for those that have been around a long time now feel that they can't get as much done as they did before.
In fact a lot of those perks were even added to allow developers to save time and get more done. Free car washes, car pools, 24 hour food, onsite daycare, etc. Those may have a monetary value, but it's their time-saving value that matters. It's possible time that all those perks have saved is now being eroded away by the sheer size of the company and the policies and bureaucracies that come with that size.
This makes it a perception issue. Google might still be a lot better than everywhere else, but it may be perceived as worse than it once was. That's the kicker. Once you've been in a stellar place for getting things done, it can be demotivating to see that environment ossify.
Startups are the logical place to go for those that want to get things done. On the other hand, others may just want to work on the next big thing, which is generally considered to be social stuff like at Facebook. Facebook with more than half a billion users is better positioned to change the World than anybody else right now.
Who cares if Google loses its MBAs, it's the loss of developers which is worrying.
my 2 cents. I don't work at Google so I don't know for sure, but that's my guess as to what's happening.
As far as I can tell from the outside, many of the well-known employees of Google are still happily with the company.
Someone might want to check this table ( http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/google_stars.html ) to evaluate whether these "Google Stars" are still with the company in order to get a feeling of whether the sentiment of top employees abandoning Google holds true.
That said, I doubt it's the case "everyone" is leaving Google.
Every manager should have a negative karma score of how many employees they drove away. A lot more companies would get rid of managers like that if they only kept count.
However, I will add a small note to say that many employees often blame their managers for decisions which the manager has no control or influence. Which is okay, managers are the 'face' of the company to employees, but I just wanted to point out that whilst the statement 'People don't leave companies, they leave managers.' is true, the possible interpretation that managers are at fault for causing people to leave a company is not necessarily always true.
Every manager, once promoted to management, needs to make a choice between:
1) Being on the side of upper management
2) Being on the side of the employees they manage
3) Being on the fence, where they neither have the trust of their bosses or their employees.
We came to the conclusion that the best place for a manager to be is on the side of the employees. The reason being is that the healthiest, most productive teams have a manager that the employees trust in. They know they have someone higher up looking out for them and shielding them so they can get things done. If the company isn't one where this is possible, a really good manager will probably leave for greener pastures.
The next best place for the manager to be is on the side of the upper management, because at least this leaves no room for confusion among their subordinates (uggg, I hate that work, but it's appropriate here).
The worst place to be is in the middle. In this position the manager sabotages his own career and therefore his department because his upper management doesn't trust him and his employees don't trust him because they don't know if he has their best interests at heart half the time.
I think Todd Jackson, GMail product manager, said it best, when he said that "[A manager] can either be a shit funnel or a shit umbrella."
ref: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/key-to-gmail/
I propose that we call this new metric a manager's "body count".
After an employee leaves, his compatriots should rate him to be an asset or liability. Those who quit voluntarily and are considered assets are added to a manager's body count. If the manager is on good terms with the employee who should know why the employee left and will have incentive to raise issues for living that are not his fault as a manager.
Not saying I agree but if you're right then shareholders should sack upper management.
Something must have become askew.
I think you've answered your own question there. Once the MBA culture takes over, engineers want out.
It's not that great of a company to work for, albeit one of the better ones.
Can you expand on that?
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ajfcdscjzbvp_976rt9c...
This is the #3 post on the front page.
I know a good number of Googlers and Xooglers, all with complaints about the things mentioned in the slides and much more.
I'm not commenting further on the matter, if you care, you can read up on it on your own time.