Google will lose awesome talent because not everyone will want to stay and work with a large company. The bigger they get the harder it will be for them to stay agile. A lot of employees don’t mind working in that type of environment, but many of them dislike it and they will end up leaving.
Wayne Rosing, an early vice president for engineering, has left to pursue his love of astronomy. Paul Buchheit, the celebrated engineer who dreamed up Gmail, "retired" recently. (He's 30.) Evan Williams, the highly regarded founder of Blogger, a Google acquisition, has left to launch another startup.
- Great Place to Work
No company can retain every employee. People’s desires change. What made them happy three years ago is different than today. Google understands this and does their best to retain as many employees as possible. They retain about 95% of their employees and that’s way above the standard for a technology company.
Google hired the human resources pro Laszlo Bock because they are losing some of their best talent. They are starting their own companies (Friendfeed), or leaving for other companies that offer them a different environment (Facebook), or to pursue their passions such as their old VP Wayne Rosing who left to pursue astronomy. Whatever it is that forces them or entices them to leave, Google is taking an active role in minimizing these loses.
You need to do everything you can to keep the superstars with your company, but as long as you recognize that you will lose some of them then it makes it easier. You don’t have to be perfect. You can only try your best, measure results, and keep on improving.
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Karl, this is fantastic. It's so nice to see a company trying to keep their best talent. My company does nothing like this. 🙁
I know what you mean, I worked for company about 10 years ago that was very small but growing rapidly, 3 years later it was a completely different situation and I left. It's tragic really, it just lost it's homely family feel, I guess that's what happens.
Google culture is rare, that's for sure.
I appreciate your posting their example on your blog because it lets people (like me) who thought these kinds of companies existed only in Work Fantasyland are actually real - and their work culture is possible and profitable.
I think it is cool that Google is home to so many innovative and eager minds. Masterminding at Google would be a great experience.
It's a good reminder to think of your people pool as a river not a lake and continuously flow good talent in. Life's not static.
Hi Karl: When you hire the best people they're likely to leave. Talented people want their own thing, they want to apply their abilities to growing a business that's theirs . . .