Google Tries to Patch Its Talent Leak | Hacker News Reader

Google Tries to Patch Its Talent Leak

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20 pointstransburgh3 comments

Having a company full of alpha dog, intellectual talent can present unique situations. Google CEO Eric Schmidt wants to foster that young company feel as the company tries to make it possible to be "part of a start-up within Google."

I believe alpha dogs leaving to do their own thing is quite normal and should be expected. Accepting that some of your brightest talent will leave the nest to pursue their passions should be an embraced value. No hard feelings, okay?

I think Eric misses the point in saying "being part of a startup within Google". How do you stop a monoculture from creeping in and taking over your organization? Big companies have this problem and Google, I would guess, is no exception.

Maybe foster an environment where new ideas (coming from the outside) are brought into the fold (in the form of more startup acquisitions)? I'm sure this causes it's own problems where founders must now deal with the internal workings of a giant acquirer.

I would call this "organizational drag". Too many people with too many inputs into too few decisions. This provides just the right amount of friction to squeeze out anyone who truly wants to scratch their itch. Put another way, if you put up enough barriers, some will attempt to navigate your organizational obstacle course but others will simply see your barriers, and the organization itself, as the problem to solve.

I don't know if funding actual startups would be something Google should look into but I don't think Google could ever bring back that small startup feeling; that's just wishful thinking.

I worked for a famous consultancy that started doing this. They had startups within the company - them acting like a VC and the inventors owning equity.

Then times got tough at the parent so they introduced a 3month notice period, during which they charged you to the startup at full consultant rates - so all their 'investment' immediately went back to them as billable hours. Then they introduced a 'recruitment fee' where for each person leaving to go to the startup the startup was billed 1 years salary to cover the costs of replacing the person. The VC arm of the parent also managed other funds and these were invested in the startup - and immediately billed back to the parent in some way. Eventually the parent went bust before the SEC could investigate all this.

> Whenever you see the word ‘force’ used to describe a technique it looks like some of the fun may be leaving Google along with its talent. Once again, is this kind of thing avoidable when a company becomes the size, scope and influence of Google? Few have enough experience to even know this especially in a company that has gone from 0 to world leader in such a short amount of time.

Well, they used force in the sense, "Hey, let's force management to pay attention to all the crazy ideas engineering is coming up with," not, "Hey, let's force engineering to pay attention to all the crazy ideas management has."

Doesn't actually seem like there's a talent leak, but rather a talent utilization leak. See: Dodgeball.

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