Facebook Stealing Googlers At An Alarming Rate

What drivel and who the heck cares…take these same people…put them in other employment positions ( besides Facebook and Google ) and they’d likely just be good to very good but not superior players.

Facebook makes a hell of an impression on people, and right now Google is clueless on its next big product.

have to also remember that they bring along lots of google secrets.

I’m not sure he really meant ‘Entrepreneurs want to work at the hottest place on earth and right now that’s Facebook.’ I’m sure it’s true of the people who migrated to Facebook from Google, but I don’t know if it’s true of entrepreneurs.

The entrepreneurs I know don’t seem to want to work for large companies. Mostly they want to work for themselves.

Perhaps he meant ‘ambitious serial employees’.

The whole social networking thing has really passed me by. I just don’t get the Facebook/ myspace fad.

dubber - agree, although it was a quote so not our word choice.

I think entrepreneurs don’t work at large companies by definition.

There’s a certain scent of title inflation here, though. Quicker laterals by bouncing between companies…just like 1999!

Right, I’ve read about this a lot but how much further can FaceBook really go?
Are they trying to become the next Google?
What do they really want with all the Google staff?

I just wanna know what the plan is… if there is one.

Agree with #4. I don’t know of any entrepreneurs that would be content just working for a big company, especially an overvalued, overrated company like Facebook. “It’s not just about the money” because they’ve got boatloads of it thanks to GOOG. They can afford to jump on a bandwagon that’s about to lose it’s wheels, as long as they’ve got a business card with “sexy” company name on it.

if you ask me, they’re acting like ho’s jumping into bed with the coolest guy of the moment.
If i run a company i wouldn’t employ such people no matter how talented they may be. if i had to, it’d have to be on a temporary basis and not in senior positions.

The best part about this all is that facebook is actively advertising jobs to all the people who have google mailing addresses. Its great how you can use your own targeted ad system to steal employees away.

I’ve read an article once that claimed that the next big company that will dethrone Google will probably start from within Google.

This is all due to 1 fact, an employee in Google doesn’t get the attention he think he should get.

Imagine this employee get a day in a week to work on his idea, what’s the chance that his idea will mature and get allocated the resource to make his dream true? If you account all the other Googlers working on ideas as well, it might be something like 0.01%.

Feeling you cannot accomplish your dream/idea will make you unhappy and you’ll probably want to switch to another environment where they’ll see your true value and you wont go unnoticed because your company is a huge corporate.

Facebook by actively trying to recruit these engineers, gives them hope, notice them and tap a little bit on their ego, giving them the feeling they can accomplish something and get noticed again after being left aside in Google.

This is a great feeling and anyone will like to be part of a “small” startup, anyone sane at least.

Of course I am not talking about Microsoft Employee

@2: That’s like saying that BMW is clueless when it comes to building anything other than cars and bikes.

Google’s ‘big product’ is advertising; everything they do is about monetizing more Internet traffic. They may have had some missteps here and there, but not because they were trying to reinvent their core business. Anyone who thinks Facebook’s business model is better than Google’s is either out to lunch or can see into the future. I vote for the former.

Face-Who?

“The entrepreneurs I know don’t seem to want to work for large companies. Mostly they want to work for themselves.”

Exact.

I agree 100%. Geeks jump ship. Entrepreneurs build companies.

When a company get’s bigger and bigger, people want to work there so they have more opportunites to get even better positions…

I think lawyers of Justin Long will contact you guys soon for using his picture without his permission

Facebook is very reminiscent of some of the web 1.0 failures in the late 90s. Google is not.

I agree.

Facebook has to become a global phenomena to pose a challenge to Google. Horse trading happens everywhere but usually the bigger company does not get affected because there are always more people willing to work there.

they are just looking for the next big score when Facebook goes public

The people you work around and the networking that can be accomplished via working at Google or Facebook can not be matched!

Build your startup while working here and you will be better off when it’s time to jump ship for your own thing - saying you work at either of these companies in conversation peaks anyone and everyones attention (investors included).

DUH ….. unless you are already filthy rich or enjoy living with your parents

Sorry for oftopic but I have a question, which came up when I was reading this article.
Why don’t you have Google in your CrunchBase data?

anyone else see the irony in this? I bet there are some people at Microsoft laughing their asses off at this.

I really don’t understand what the fuss is about.

#4 Dubber: Perhaps he meant ‘ambitious serial employees’.

This is the best quote I read in a long time… entrepreneurs cringe at working “under” somebody unless it leads to bigger pies in the future or they have some sort of say in how things go (partnerships, leadership roles etc.).

Corporate antics and office politics aside, I think you are 100% right, they are not entrepreneurs, just ambitious serial employees following the biggest names to get another job down the line with more prestige to pad their resumes with.

Jon

NEVER USE THIS GRAPHIC!
You people have offended me, BEWARE!!!

My wife is addicted to facebook, it’s ruining our marriage, lol. Damn you facebook.

Funny, when Google was stealing engineers like Louis Monier from eBay we called it the Google problem. What goes around, comes around.

@Techcrunch:
Did you see Facebook’s newsfeed rating? How lame is that (and I’m a big facebook fan)?

I’ve seen a LOT of valley resumes in my time and they all read similarly (only the names change depending on which path their technology skills lie). Big Company Big Company Medium Company Start-up Big Company Medium company etc. They all jump around. It’s almost strange to see someone staying at one job for 3+ years in the valley.

“Facebook just seems a hell of a lot “sexier””

Can the word “sexy” really be used to describe anything computer/web related?

Cool, hip, whatever. But not sexy.

More to the point, can “sexy” be used to described anything that doesn’t have some kind of limited access?

If Google gets rid of a few employees who use words like “entrepreneur” without having a clue what they mean, won’t the company be stronger for it? Perhaps Facebook will be their equivalent of the B-Ark in Hitchhiker’s Guide (with “entrepreneurs” instead of telephone sanitizers).

Got to love it that Google is getting a taste of being the bitch instead of being the daddy! LMAO

Are you kidding? Next big thing ? How? Are these the same bunch of engineers who designed all failed products at Google which haven’t make any dent to AOL/Yahoo except for Search? If these are not engineers who worked on a google search than; they are hardly going to make a big difference. For all its hype google IS a search engine and advertising company only. Facebook is just a hype and nothing more.

I still don’t get the value proposition of facebook. Why should I use it? Until I can answer that, I really don’t see the point in working there.

The genius of Sean Parker, getting Facebook to move to Palo Alto where it could do all this cool poaching. That guy earned his 5% !!!!

-s

“Our sources are also saying that Google has been aggressively countering Facebook offers with offers of stock units (GSUs).”

How does this work? Why would you tell your current employer that you’re looking around? Haven’t there been studies that show that employees who threaten to leave & then take financial incentives to stay are then quickly marginalized?

Who wouldn’t want to work there… look what they get:

- Medical, dental and vision plans with no premium for employees
- 401(k) plan
- 21 vacation days per year, plus 8 company holidays
- Day care subsidy for parents
- Complimentary catered breakfast, lunch and dinner daily
- Dry cleaning and laundry service onsite
- Free downtown parking permit
- Subsidized gym membership
- $600/month housing subsidy if you live within one mile of the office
- Your option of 15″ Apple MacBook Pro or IBM ThinkPad with large screen LCD monitor
- Worldwide notoriety by having your face on sample Facebook Flyers

this is good for both companies

facebook gets top-grade talent

google gets to learn not to lean too heavily on certain individuals because invariably they leave. most companies learn this lesson in hard times. google gets to learn it while still on top. it is sad, but one key task for a large company is to machine things out so talent is interchangeable…because it is

goes to show you what googlers really think about open social….

what a freakin joke.

Facebook is really kicking butt. By the way, has anyone noticed that Facebook has overtaken MySpace, according to Alexa?

From the Facebook blog about their new social advertising initiative:

1. You now have a way to connect with products, businesses, bands, celebrities and more on Facebook.
2. Ads should be getting more relevant and more meaningful to you.
3. You now have the option to share actions you take on other sites with your friends on Facebook.

#1 above is neat for the stuff that matters to the teen/early 20’s set. Bands, hip fashion houses, skateboard culture. But for the really big money - P&G, Gap, Ford, Coke, etc. - this concept seems to be a stretch. What Gen Y-er is going associate himself to the big money advertisers?

#2 clearly makes sense. Behavioral targeting is smart and will only get better and more pervasive. Facebook does face a question of whether its users’ intent matches the goal of advertisers - clicks and sales. Facebook ads perform worse than general ads. But it does make sense for general branding. The hidden gem here will be extending the user profiles out to its own ad network.

#3 is pretty interesting. This is the idea that your friends’ interests are the best source of new ideas for you. Potential is definitely here. Discovery via the wisdom of your “own” crowds.

Yeah, there’s some interesting stuff here. I can see #2 and #3 getting potential employees jazzed. #1 seems to be limited to niche businesses.

@13
Advertising and monetizing as much web traffic as possible is the common business model of the web, but what happens if consumers start leaving Google as their provider of search results? What happens if consumers decide that they would rather see what their friends are buying to “keep up with the Jones’” versus what new product Robert Scoble is touting on his blog? Google’s success relies on continued traffic but their current success does not equal future results. I think Google did great things with creating a simple search engine which has caused its current level of success as well as ancillary products like Gmail, Gcal, and Google Earth, but the growth that they have realized cannot continue at its current pace for an extended period of time.

Google’s core competency is advertising which starts at home through adwords on their search pages. These adwords rely on Google remaining the top search engine because the more people who are using Google search, the higher the price that they can charge their customers to advertise on the site. They give away ad-supported products like Gmail because if it is successful — which it is, it will bring more people to their site. It is similar to how magazine publishers will give away cheap or free subscriptions so that they can improve their subscriber base for more advertising revenue. This has worked in Google’s short, nine (9) year history but as we have seen in the past with Alta Vista, Yahoo!, and the other search engines, traffic today != traffic tomorrow. Eventually, Google will be unseated by a company that comes up with the next innovative way search. Consumers will use the product that is most popular and unfortunately for Google, what they do doesn’t have the scarcity power that will make them stay on the top forever. Microsoft has that scarcity power with Windows and Office, and with competition from Apple and Open Source products, still have not been unseated from the position that they have held for decades. In my humble opinion, I believe that Facebook is the company that will unseat Google from their perch.

With Facebook, they are disruptive because they are redefining search by making it people centric versus keyword centric. Instead of searching for “new cars” in Google, a Facebook user will search for “Jim Smith”, a friend they know who has been an auto enthusiast for fifteen (15) years. They will go to Jim’s Facebook page, see if he has blogged about new models, see if he has a website discussing the year’s new cars, or even see if he is a fan of any particular automaker. This is an oversimplified example but the possibilities are endless as more users sign up for the service, particularly the older consumers that have been hesitant to adopt it. Outside of its search feature, Facebook has a simple mail program that allows you to view your messages in a threaded format, they have a heavily used photo application which allows you to accurately and easily tag the people you know, and they have a Video application which is rising in popularity that also allows you to accurately and easily tag the people you know. These applications in addition to the diverse catalog from independent developers, are small details that enhance the value of Facebook’s service.

With 50+ million worldwide users, that is a lot of data that Google would love to get its hands on but Facebook data (outside of your name if you so choose) doesn’t come up in Google search. That being said, Google will need to find a way to monetize on Facebook’s content and/or diversify their product offerings in order to remain a top contender in the web game.

- the bootstrap economist.

who cares?

@45 “With Facebook, they are disruptive because they are redefining search by making it people centric versus keyword centric. Instead of searching for “new cars” in Google, a Facebook user will search for “Jim Smith”, a friend they know who has been an auto enthusiast for fifteen (15) years. They will go to Jim’s Facebook page, see if he has blogged about new models, see if he has a website discussing the year’s new cars, or even see if he is a fan of any particular automaker. This is an oversimplified example but the possibilities are endless as more users sign up for the service, particularly the older consumers that have been hesitant to adopt it.”

An oversimplified example? I would really hate to see a complicated example. Normal, sane people simply don’t behave in the way you are describing, or at least not in the kind of deliberate, focused manner that users engage with Google. If I want to ask Jim which car to buy then I’ll probably just ask him.

But hey, it’s web 2.0, so why take one step to achieve something that can be done with 10.

@45 that is a lot of what ifs and frankly these are all hypothetical and remains to be proven.

The fact remains that Google is no sitting lame duck. And if you ask me, facebook better prove they can monetize in ad revenues or they’ll be in big crap.

I do believe that social networking in itself is still unevolved. Frankly, in the connected pc+internet alone. Social networks are just but a waste of otherwise productive time.

Now, if someone builds a killer social app for the wireless handset, unobtrusive and does not hog your time. THAT is something else. I think social networks built with mobility and wireless in mind will be something Google needs to worry about rather than facebook or myspace.

Handsets outnumber pcs easily. You dont need to know how to use a mouse or type on a keyboard. The handset is “very personal”, sometimes we treat is as an extension of our personality.

No, I’m sorry facebook is simply not the next big thing after Google or Wikipedia. its something else.

it seems like a neat scenario to discuss in theory, but it’s not played out enough to warrant a story. plus, these people being discussed are all drones abs wannabes, not the real entrepreneurs. duh.

“If I want to ask Jim which car to buy then I’ll probably just ask him.”
Send him a message through Facebook, Facebook Mobile, or SMS.

The example is to highlight how search philosophy will change in the future. Why use Google and sort through advertisements, targeted SEO results, and general spam when you can search the personal knowledge base of someone whose opinion you trust?

Google is mass media, Facebook is niche communities.

I never “got” Google, but I think I “get” FB.

What’s new, Google filled its ranks with greedy defectors and it seems like that culture has come around to bite them in the ass.

Big deal. Assholes in, assholes out.

@48
Well put. Your handy-phone will be your ID in 5 years. With your handy-phone you will send and receive XMPP or SMTP messages in a non-browser interface, make payments, browse, socialize and make and receive calls. Your phone number will ultimately be the same as your web ID, which will be intimately connected to your handy-phone. Facebook can work on the social component, but they are at a disadvantage because Google is already working very hard in that space.

If facebook figured out local search for mobile devices with a social angle, or something of that nature, they would really be competing with Google. Right now I consider them to be carving a new market without actually taking much revenue from Google.

@50. If I want to know what Jim thinks, when Jim is someone I know, why wouldn’t I just IM him or email him? And even if I did use Facebook to message him, how exactly is that really monetized? Or right, the dismal ‘fan’ concept. Think about what you’re suggesting: that people will participate in unnatural behaviors just because they fit with Facebook’s advertising model; by contrast Google’s ads complement natural behaviors, which is why their model is so successful.

Like I said, people just don’t behave in the way you’re suggesting, and I’m deeply glad that they don’t. The last people I want to be friends with are those who say they are ‘fans’ of Starbucks, for example.

Facebook’s advertising model fundamentally misunderstands how recommendations work and their failure to monetize their traffic in any way that begins to approach Google is pretty telling.

Recommendations work when they’re part of the natural flow of conversation, not as a contrived insertion of a few words into a news feed, but Facebook seems to be suggesting that marketers can shortcut all the hard work that’s required to create a brand people want to recommend.

What is the difference between Facebook and MySpace? I’ve had brief look on Facebook and to my mind it seems like a newer version of MySpace. I don’t care for MySpace at all so I haven’t bothered looking into Facebook too much though I’ve had a couple of “invites” and checked them out and there was anything on them. So now people are saying Facebook is better than Google. I don’t see the comparison. I have GMail, I use Google Earth, there’s Google maps, and a ton of other stuff. I know Facebook is allowing outside apps to be developed and stuff, but isn’t it just another web 2.0 ’social site’? How does Facebook compare with MySpace and Google? What is it that I am completely missing here, because my guess is that neither MySpace nor Facebook will be around as long as Google.

“Entrepreneurs want to work at the hottest place on earth and right now that’s Facebook.”

The distinguishing characteristic of an entrepreneur is taking significant personal risk to peruse a concept about which he/she is passionate. I don’t think any Google or Facebook employee is taking out a second mortgage to fund the project that he is working on for his employer. He may (or may not) be worth every penny of his regular paycheck, benefits and bonuses, but he’s not an entrepreneur.

Perhaps I’m off base but when I think of Facebook, I’m still think “myspace for college students”. Are they going to start hiring marketing talent anytime soon?

Ah, so Google needs to fear a brain drain of people who don’t know the definition of the word “entrepreneur”?

Sorry, don’t understand this FB hype. So far, Facebook hasn’t been of any use for me for one single minute. Maybe it’s good to kill time if you have too much of it.

Google on the other side is useful every single time I use it.

@ Carsten Reinke:

Right on.

Could facebook be working on a search engine, it woud seem to make sense?

The interesting bit is that the focus on the top 10% of talent who may or may not leave to go to facebook might end up making the other 90% of talent in a company a bit more likely to go as well. The over the last 7 years focus on just the top 10% has been interesting to watch, the dependency on this model that companies have (not just google) means more pain when one of them goes.

As comment number 12 said, there is a need for hope, taking a look at the total organization might just do some good here. While we all love super stars, not everyone is going to be one, or given the chance to be one.

I hope they do well on their move to Facebok, however, I think Facebook doesn’t add any real value to my everyday life, it’s just a time-wasting site, whereas google creates real value (search, gmail, maps, mobile services, android, webbased office applications, and ecommerce with google checkout which helps me make a good 5k every month on the side with no commisions until dec 31st 07), products and services that I actually use to survive everyday.

Facebook might look hot in terms of the IPO opportunity, but in terms of the “hottest” place to work… err, I’d say that’s google hands down.

Facebook is nothing but a CMS with plugins, they happen to let you install plugins there, that’s it, it not a “Social Operating System”, that’s just PR, but it seems to work.

There’s no real technological advance to it, nothing guarantees that some real innovaction will come out, with the same opportunities, or even better to develop for all social networking sites.

If it was for me and it came to choose cause of what place is the hottest right now, I’d totally stay in google, no company in history has had the growth of google, I think comparing facebook to google is comparing apples and oranges.

I bet they’ll get bored when they go there, they’ll just be sitting there for the IPO and will come back crawling to google unless they are REAL entrepeneurs. Real Entrepeneurs open their own startups and make things happen on their own.

Facebook makes no real money, it just burns, I’ve yet to click on my first ad, nothing is really targeted to me, and they got everything about me and social circle, what are they waiting? for the googlers?

Google and Facebook most likely pick fist fight at stage.

Seperation church and the state:
Evolution vs. creation
Boston Redsox vs. Yankees
Donald Trump vs. Rosie O Donnell

If Google top executives and employees hated facebook soo much. Why won’t Google just delisted Facebook?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=facebook

and replace “ConnectU.com”

@63 Gubatron, totally agree with you. Facebook is a social network site with widgets, nice widgets.

Their growth is impressive, but in simple terms, it’s just a nicer myspace or friendster (remember theglobe.com?). They just executed better, with a good marketing strategy.

As for working for FB or Google, the employees that are jumping from Google to Facebook will be the same that will jump from Facebook to another hot startup. They are there for the money. If they were interested in the technological aspect of the company, they would have stayed at Google.

Regarding, “entrepreneur” employees, that doesn’t exists. Entrepreneurs start, found companies, while employees work for the founders. It’s just a way to attract people saying that you will work crazy hours waiting for the founders to find an exit strategy (IPO, sell). It’s always more fun to work at a place that is making headlines. But it’s hard for a company to stay the SF Bay’s love affair.

Lots of employees left Msft for Google, THAT was achange for advanced technology reasons. But leaving Google for Facebook, that’s for the $$$ only. No matter what Zuck and his team want to call Facebook, it’s a (big) social network.

Nick your parallel (by the use of the photo above) is rather intriguing. The natural course of business requires that people gravitate to where they feel will be most beneficial to them. Whether that is financial, social or emotional (feel passionate about).

If I remember correctly a year or so ago, there was a huge exodus from Microsoft to Google. As to why that is, is either here nor there. I am sure this will continue to be a problem for google and any other company that looses good employees. I can clearly see how someone would say “FB is the hottest place on earth”, they are obviously getting the most press, their product works very well (for what it was designed to do).

Another thing you must remember, for someone who has been with Google (when they were getting all the press), you have made your mark within the company, then you begin to ask yourself, what is left to do. Take note of the people who will leave, the ones that have already made it big (financially) (top 10%). At the end of the day it is about personal satisfaction.

Prime example, I left the company I worked for 17 years to work with a friend on a new start-up, http://www.reviewmyplace.com why because finance is not a problem anymore and more so, I was Bored..

#67 What does reviewmyplace.com do? Looks like just a
list of urls. Do you get bore doing that?

This has always been the way. Its kind of Darwin

it is not fair to compare google with FB. google is helping us in our daily life, FB is killing our productivity.

it is like someone leaves an utility company to an tobacco company and says it is the sexier thing to do.

@70 - Google is a front end for a big database (the web) while Facebook is a tool to use your existing friends to find bits and pieces of the web that are recommended to you. Google itself is no better than Yahoo or Ask for scouring the web, it is just the most popular at this time. Honestly, I think Mahalo will ultimately be the search portal that unseats Google because they are putting together top notch SeRPs and with their new “No Results” page limits ones need to go to the other search portals.

As for your comment about FB killing productivity, that will change once the applications for the FB platform become more advanced. Facebook has only been around for about 3.5 years, and we have yet to see its full potential. There is a reason why everyone has started to copy their open platform model.

hahaha. good for google. serves them for being “evil”. if its goodle vc facebook, im behind facebook all the way. and i was a google fanboy until i learned that they are the most evil company. and i think you guys know what i mean.

Overblown debate. I’m sure companies are also luring talent away from Facebook. The benefits are ok, but I know of a lot of other companies with more vacation time and a lot more money to pay big salaries.

Let me guess… Michael asked Nick to write this because his nose is already so brown from being too close to Zuck’s behind people are starting to smell it.

So according to this non factual advertising for Facebook, engineers are just lining up to get hired by a company that is primarily based on hype and has no real products. Let’s be honest, all they have is profile pages and a badly hacked up “developer API”. Experienced architects, and design gurus can only dream to get into a startup that is based on hacked PHP scripts and ruled by teenage VPs.

One good thing this post does however is disclose how sleazy some people can be. Rosenstein’s exit email is a good example of a what can happen to a spoiled disgruntled employee gone back stabber. I think no company with some integrity will ever want to hire this guy following his exit letter.

Now thats too funny. I love the amount of competition in this industry I was head hunted earlier this year…

It’s a shame that TechCrunch goes Faux style for this piece and fails to do simple math followed by an over reaching and untrue title. Sleazy journalism pays though-I’m the 76th comment on this POS reporting.

GOOG employee base nearly 17k? They just hired over 1k right out of school.

FB= 300 total plus 400 in next year = 400/17000 = 2.35% and you call that alarming?

Maybe you should do some homework.

@45-
If i didn’t know better I’d say you were Nick O’Neill. He likes to make massive unsubstantiated leaps of logic just like you.

Anyway, the only thing I can add to the flame is that 50m users does not equal 60% of all global searches. Not even close.

I deactivated my Facebook account because of all this hype.

However, I could not go 1 day with gmail + google calendar + talk. Why not just build a Google social network with the info they already have. They know my contacts and appointments. Let FB come out with an email/calendar/im client that is as good as gmail and then we can have this conversation.

Google works by leveraging raw links. That worked well before the web went to crap. Facebook works by leveraging people and their relationships. This has the potential to work better since it involves less data and less crunching: if the X-expert in your social network is good at telling you quality(X,Y) is high then you don’t need an ungodly number of machines scrounging around computing eigenvalues. The system is also a little more resistant to link scam as long as people regularly keep their pages up to date.

Facebook will never overtake Google because their advertising is not nearly as targeted as Google. Facebook could get more traffic than any site(though I doubt it), but Google’s traffic will always be worth exponentially more.

FB the next google, is that a joke!

Well honestly google is taking the web where MS forced people to go, and Steve Jobs only sulked why MC / Apple / Jobs could not!

Whoever is the big next gun, is just a matter of a good business strategy. FB focuses on people who want gimmicks, which does not last a long time, the next company will have to add value to people’s lives, value, not a cartoon strip!

I like Facebook although have been turned off by them lately. I also never use MySpace anymore and begin to think that this social networking - while great - is also a big waste of time. Ultimately, for all the hours spent updating a profile what do I get from it? And how quickly (yes search is the same) can I change from one site to another? A year ago we’d be arguing about how amazing MySpace is…amazing what can happen in a year. Google remains at the top and continues to expand and increase growth. Facebook has become a dominant force but lately has ran into a number of hurdles - I for one, see them as a fad; call me a skeptic, call me ignorant, but I feel they will fly high and slowly fade away.

#74 - I couldn’t agree more.

Signing yearbooks in middle school teaches this lesson, keep it short, simple and sweet.

“Dude, this year ruled. I’ll miss you. Keep in touch”