
Twitter, Box, and Dropbox attracting hordes of employees away from tech giants - linux_devil
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/24/twitter-box-dropbox-attracting-hordes-of-employees-away-from-tech-giants/
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sown
All I have is an anecdote.

I'm a former Cisco Systems employee. Since they started laying people off,
from what I understand, this complicates green card application issues, so
employees there, while not at risk of getting laid off, have their residency
status put into jeopardy.

So, they need to go somewhere they can get the clock started again.

Also, there's a sentiment that places like the big tech giants have had their
day and there's no bright future days ahead.

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rtpg
Something that wasn't really covered here but I think might be important is
culture. If we were to jump back 6 or 8 years ago, most of us would want to
work for google because of their whole "not being evil" schtick, as well as
the amazing campus and all the money. But with every little thing that
happens, when you realise that Google (like a lot of companies, granted) is in
it for the money, one might become a bit less excited.

I think a decent amount of good software engineers has a fairly strong ethical
code, and would rather not make deals with the devil. Some companies (Google
was one of them) seemed to make their deal about making the best services in
the long term, and not about making things about money.

I remember watching a talk about the history of OpenSolaris. Including the
absolutely mythical phrase "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphising Larry
Ellison."([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=2298](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=2298))
But after that comment he goes into the very sad details of how OpenSolaris
ended up becoming closed source by Oracle. After this , many many very
competent engineers left Oracle almost immediately(within 90 days). The talk
is worth listening to (it's about 3 minutes after the Ellison jab), and the
guy giving the talk gets extremely emotional about it. The power of the social
contract with the OSS community was extremely strong.

No matter how much money you can give, a lot of people end up following
ethical and moral rules. I'd think Corporate culture is about 75% of software
engineer's decision of where to work.

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nostrademons
As usual the media is about 3-4 years late in reporting. Startups have been
the primary draw from Google since at least 2010, and the trend seems to be
waning now. At the time the media was reporting that all Googlers were leaving
for Facebook, which presumably is where they were all going in 2007. Among
folks I know, the biggest exodus toward Dropbox was in late 2011 and early
2012.

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choult
While an interesting observation, and good to be backed up with fact/analysis,
it's not particularly surprising - as companies grow and mature, their
character changes and attract a different sort of employee. Gone, perhaps, are
the younger, more risk-taking employees and in come the older, more risk-
averse employees.

I doubt that "start-up culture" is what is required - I'm sure that the
variety of work that comes with a smaller number of employees is a huge
factor. Maybe they employ too many workers, or perhaps there isn't the ability
to cross teams/functions.

What would be more interesting would be if those "tech giants" dropped in
average talent as a result (though good luck in measuring that!) or even in
total employee terms.

~~~
tlogan
Actually, it is also goes other way too.

In a stagnant company which is laying off people, probability that you will be
laid off increases with seniority (and your salary). And decision to be laid
off is completely outside your control: the entire project can be just closed.
So if you are less risk-averse you better move to growing company from
stagnant one.

But I would love to see some facts numbers behind this.

~~~
morganherlocker
This is logical, but I doubt risk averse people often think this way.

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GauntletWizard
Headline: Growing Tech Giants participate in employment ecosystem with
existing Tech Giants.

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tommoor
Can any of the companies in this article really be called startups anymore?

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morgante
Dropbox and Box are, for the moment, still startups.

Twitter isn't since they've IPOed.

~~~
_delirium
Dropbox may have been a startup 5 years ago, but it seems like just a tech
company to me nowadays. One that may stay independent, might sell to someone
else later, who knows, but not really a "startup".

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tootie
Side note, my company had to drop jobvite recently because they are actually
terrible. Their job search interface is just as hard to use as taleo or
brassring with a slightly nicer stylesheet.

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GuiA
There's a wonderful book that an HN'er recommended a while back on a thread
similar to this one called "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" which is in essence
precisely about this: what makes members of an organization (be it a company,
country, or other) leave or stay.

Highly recommended reading.

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hristov
Lets hope so, because IBM and Intel are actually laying off people again.

~~~
VLM
That over-localizes the issue. IBM only downsizes in the USA, but for every
American they fire, they hire about three from India and two from China.
Obviously those numbers vary from quarter to quarter. From what I've heard,
ditto Intel.

They're pulling out of the US while expanding dramatically overseas. Rats
abandoning a sinking ship or whatever.

