
Google Leads List of Desired Employers - woan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703512404576208702115862760.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews#
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dasil003
It's interesting that Google is the most desirable employer for the general
professional population (which doesn't have the skills to work there) while
simultaneously being perceived as suffering from a (no doubt exaggerated)
brain drain by their desired employee demographic.

My guess is that this is largely a trickle down effect of the legendary
stories about life as a Google employee that circulated in tech circles 7-8
years ago.

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ChuckMcM
The story makes the point that Google spends a lot of time and effort making
itself appear to be a great place to work, whether or not it actually is. This
is important because it means more people will apply there first before
applying elsewhere and that gives Google a first mover advantage.

That being said, any company looks better on the outside than on the inside. I
don't know if it is universal but many, perhaps even the majority, of folks
I've worked with where they were at their 'second' job, have remarked that
some of the problems they thought they left behind, were where they arrived.
The grass 'appears' greener but its still grass :-)

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nostrademons
I actually found that Google looked better from the inside than the
outside...I was pretty ambivalent about applying at first, but started warming
up to it after talking to people that worked there, and found I loved it once
I actually started work. I suspect that this is largely because my past
exposure had been through the Hacker News crowd, which tend to distrust
anything that's big and secretive.

Past expectations form a big part of whether you like anything. I've read
IAmAs from Xooglers who joined straight out of college and were bitterly
disappointed when they found the cubes weren't lined with gold and you
couldn't do absolutely anything you wanted. My own expectation was that I'd
get lost in the big company morass, and found it wasn't like that either. As
usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle...if you expect paradise, you'll
be disappointed, but if you expect hell, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

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rdl
Within Silicon Valley, I think the most desired employers are Your Own
Startup, Your Close Friends' Startups, Quora, Square, Palantir, Facebook, and
Google, in order of increasing size.

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netmau5
This quote is interesting, perhaps why so many are looking for a tech
cofounder?

According to the Education Department, the top majors for the class of 2008
were business, health sciences and social sciences and history. About nine
times as many people majored in business in the class of 2008 as majored in
computer science.

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nostrademons
Yeah, I remember an old boss of mine (then teaching robotics at WPI)
complaining about how the number of "sports medicine" majors was 3-4x the
number of CS & Robotics majors. The world does not need that many sports
physiologists!

I suspect a lot of it is because very few high school students have an
understanding of how the real economy works. A lot of them want money as an
adult, and they hear that business is about making money, and so they major in
business, not realizing that an undergraduate business degree is virtually
useless in actually doing things that will make you lots of money. Heck, I
went to a liberal arts college, thinking that I wanted to learn things from
lots of different skillsets because that's what an entrepreneur needs, and not
realizing that basically all those skillsets are useless for entrepreneurship.
(Well, except the scientific method. And math. And computer programming. And
writing. Hmm, maybe I didn't do too badly.)

I wonder what it'd take to better educate children about how the working world
_actually_ operates, so that they can make informed decisions in the future.
Ones with high-powered professional parents probably get it at home, but this
just increases the income divide. People whose parents work at middle-class,
unionized jobs - the ones who really _need_ the guidance to compete in today's
economy - are way behind the 8-ball in terms of cultural capital.

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yannickmahe
I believe there is a strong cultural bias to where people go when they
graduate. In France, the situation seems to be the exact opposite to the one
in the US: there are 6 times more engineering schools as there are business
schools.

France being a country where business is something regarded with suspicion
while in the US it has such an aura, which explains this state of affairs
quite well.

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mrlyc
I'm astonished that Nokia made the list as it was by far the worst company
I've ever worked at. They did no code reviews at all and buggy software was
released so managers' bonuses would not be affected.

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icefox
Nokia is really huge with a lot of groups spread all over the place (world?).
The group I worked for/with at Nokia (Qt) did code reviews.

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mrlyc
Wasn't Qt originally from Trolltech?

I think Nokia's problem with software quality was company wide. After I left
to work somewhere else, the CEO of Korea Telecom told our sales team that
"Nokia is finished in Asia" and went on to complain about "Nokia's crappy
software."

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icefox
Yes, I was part of Trolltech which was acquired by Nokia. Suffice it to say we
were 'Nokia' and did code reviews.

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totalforge
The perks are a lovely set of golden handcuffs designed to keep workers at
work as much as possible. Some of the ones I know work so much they use their
badge to go in to the bank.

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gersh
Google doesn't have all that many low-level employees. They are mostly only
hiring engineers, who are likely get more money and perks than Apple's retail
employees, or the people, who load trucks for Amazon.

It is also worth a lot more for Google to recruit the top employees than many
other employers. Hence, they can spend more money on PR and perks to make
themselves a more desirable employer. If Google spends 5% of their employment
costs on perks, it will go a lot further than Walmart.

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protomyth
I get the feeling some of these companies listed are cool for certain
professions but not others. I hear from friends at one of the MN based
companies that it truly is awful for IT, but cool for other jobs.

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fijall
It's incredible that L'OrÃ©al placed 40. I wouldn't want to work for a company
that has non-printable name apparently.

