Out of curiosity, what reasons did come up?
(And also, is there a possibility that reported reasons are not actual reasons?)
(And also, is there a possibility that reported reasons are not actual reasons?)
"We're having to worry about money. We never had to do that before." (Router wrangler, left in 2008. One of the earlier casualties of the great shrinking.)
The whole China thing. (The office there, not the Christmas/Aurora attacks.)
The real names thing. (G+)
Hostile environment / "My boss was a dick" (This one was in a news story linked from HN not too long ago... and happens to have been said by one of my friends).
Bozos, bozos, everywhere. Plus, the new focus on the relentless pursuit of evil, and more. (Me, covered in my writing: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ )
Tired of being stuck as a go-nowhere sysadmin job with no hope of upward mobility. (Bailed out to go back to school to learn web stuff.)
Acqi-non-hired. (They bought a company and then put one of their dev relations people in a one-year fixed term because they didn't like her approach to tech.)
Really bad manager. Incompetent, unable to have a meaningful conversation, goes in circles. (Wound up being PIPped. Probably would have quit anyway.)
Sorry, I can't come up with any more right now. But that should be a start.
Do women leave Google in disproportionately higher numbers?
This means I can't really answer your question about proportions with hard data. I can tell you that the ratio in engineering, and particularly in the kernel team / cluster management area (where I was at the end) was seriously lopsided just by looking at things. This meant when a woman did leave, it was pretty obvious.
I know this isn't much to go on, so I started digging around. Lucky for you, I found a short video I shot when there was some kind of release celebration in September 2009. I counted 25 people in my shot (so I'm not including myself), all standing around in front of what used to be my office. Of those 25 people, there was one woman. So, add me behind the camera, and that's 8%.
That's the best I can do for now. Hope that helps.
Men and women, not all that different.
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/04/21/empires/
That talks about Collabra eating Netscape from within by destroying its culture. You might argue that Doubleclick has been steadily doing that to Google.
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/04/20/screw/
There's the whole antitrust lawsuit about no-poach agreements among valley companies.
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/04/19/leave/
There's the five year leave program evaporating.
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/10/17/badging/
If your company starts doing this, worry.
Reports on wages and working conditions are fair game.
Plug: my 2011 posts are organized in meaningful categories in my book (link in profile). You might give it a shot if you prefer that arrangement.
Also, re acquired company "eating [acquirer] from within" and
"You might argue that Doubleclick has been steadily doing that to Google"
... that's pretty interesting. I remember thinking "weird cultural mismatch" when Google acquired Doubleclick. Could you expand on this?
As for Doubleclick, well, that one's harder to explain. It sure seems like the company ate something it couldn't handle. "Ugh, bad pie."