Google's search for talent

Date: Monday, July 23, 2007 11:29 PM

<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1732 -- 7/23/2007 >>>>>

Google has been very outspoken about their difficulty finding enough
programmers and engineers and they have used that as an excuse to vociferously
advocate raising the H-1B and green card caps. This Congressional testimony by
Google's director of "People Operations" is a typical example of Google's
nonsensical claims:

http://64.233.179.110/blog_resources/Laszlo_Bock_immigration_testimony.pdf

Testimony of Laszlo Bock
Vice President, People Operations, Google, Inc.
House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship,
June 6, 2007

We believe that it is in the best interests of the United States to
welcome into our workforce talented individuals who happen to have
been born elsewhere, rather than send them back to their countries
of origin. But this doesn't mean we don't recruit here in the U.S.,
or that American workers are being left behind. To the contrary,
we are creating jobs here in the U.S. every day.

Simply put, if U.S. employers are unable to hire those who are
graduating from our universities, foreign competitors will.

I was wondering where Google thinks the talent is, so I started doing some
Googling. Looks like Google can't find talent in India either! Even with a
billion people India just doesn't have enough talent for Google.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15212647/

There may be more than a billion people in India, but even an
Internet superstar like Google Inc. has trouble recruiting talented
locals in its South Asian operations, a board member said Tuesday.

Google can't find eunough talent in Australia either, but lookie here --
Google claims that they are having to go to the U.S. to get talent to bring to
Australia:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/skill-shortage-forces-search-offshore/2007/05/02/1177788202848.html

Google is having to search the United States for IT workers to staff
the search engine's growing operations in Australia.

Did you catch that 360 degrees that Google has did with the shortage shouting?
If not, go back and reread the quotes above, because it's a doozy!

Since the USA seems to be the only place with talent, at least according to
Google when they are being interviewed in India or Australia, let's discuss
what they are doing to hire talent in the USA.

Google is constantly in the news with blabber about how hard it is to find
people with talent -- they even resort to sending pizza to students!

http://www.motivationstrategies.com/Labor_Pains__Talent_Shortage_Drives_New_Approach_to_Management.639.0.html

For instance, Google sows the seeds early, sending pizzas at
midnight to computer science labs at universities they want to draw
employees from. The company secures a student volunteer at each
school for the academic year to ensure pizza deliveries are made at
peak study periods. The idea is if someone is dedicated enough to
be in the computer lab at midnight, that s the type of employee
Google wants. In turn, the free pizza creates a positive impression
about Google on a new batch of computer grads.

Despite Google's claims to the contrary, they don't have much trouble finding
qualified applicants. Their main problem seems to be how to dump resumes.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/18/GOOGLE.TMP

Every month, aspiring workers deluge the popular Mountain View
search engine with up to 150,000 resumes, equivalent to a stack
of paper at least 50 feet high. And the firm claims to read
each and every one.

Google hires nine new workers a day. In less than two years, the
number of employees has more than tripled to 4,989.

OK, now that we have heard all the hype and hoopla about the enormous numbers
of people who want to work at Google, and of course Google's incessant whining
that they can't find enough workers, this little news blip from the article
below calls into question everything Google has said about shortages --
especially considering that they have been over-hiring.

Schmidt indicated the drop was due in part to the company hiring
more people during the quarter than it had anticipated, and it
seems that it will keep a closer eye on hiring in the coming
months.

HARUMPH! HARUMPH!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/20/google_second_quarter_earnings/

Google earnings less astronomical than expected By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Friday 20th July 2007 01:07 GMT How much does Wall Street expect
from Google? Two days after Yahoo!
announced a quarterly earnings drop, Google said its revenue was up 58 per
cent, and financial analysts wanted to know what went wrong.

Thanks once again to strong search advertising sales, Google's revenue reached
$3.87bn in the second quarter, up from $2.46bn in the same quarter last year,
while net profits hit $925m, up from $721m. "We've delivered strong revenue
performance, particularly on core Google.com search, and strong cash flow in
our seasonally weak quarter," said CEO Eric Schmidt, during a conference all
with analysts. "Traffic is stronger at Google.com, both domestically and
internationally, with annual traffic growth actually increasing over time."

Revenue from Google.com alone hit $2.5bn, representing year-after-year growth
of 74 per cent. Meanwhile, revenue from AdSense - the ad network that spans
third-party web sites - grew 36 per cent from last year, to $1.35bn.

As Schmidt mentioned, the second quarter usually shows a drop off from the
first - evidently, people have better things to do during the summer than
search the web - but the drop wasn't quite as large this time around, and the
company continues to rake in more dollars for each search. "The summer
seasonality that we always talk about does appear to be milder than we
expected," Schmidt said, "and we're improving our ability to monetize
searches, as we do every quarter."

This so-called summer seasonality didn't affect the company's expanding
international properties, with international revenues reaching $1.84bn.
That's 48 per cent of total revenue, and a 46 per cent increase over the same
quarter last year. It even tops first quarter performance - by 47 per cent.
"Spain, Italy, and France in particular outperformed in Q2," said CFO George
Reyes, "while Germany, along with the UK, were significant drivers of revenue
growth." UK revenue was $600m, representing a four per cent increase.

But analysts have gotten used to Google exceeding earnings expectations, and
with its latest earnings announcement, that just didn't happen.

Operating income dropped to $1.10bn, and when the company took questions at
the end of its earnings call, the first analyst to jump in wanted to know why
Schmidt hadn't reached his goal of growing operating profit every quarter.
Schmidt indicated the drop was due in part to the company hiring more people
during the quarter than it had anticipated, and it seems that it will keep a
closer eye on hiring in the coming months.

Are you a new Google employee? You might be to blame for the 7.12 per cent
drop in Google's stock price in after hours trading..

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