The article makes the underlying assumption that the single most important factor for deciding where to work , is how exciting the new job is, compared to the old one.
I real life, people take a lot of 'other things into consideration when making such decisions. 'Boring' things like money, career advancement and job security usually rank above 'the excitement' of the opportunity.
1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#22Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's see, looking back at 1990... I'd bet on neither , but I sure wouldn't bet on the one far more easily replaced by a distributed secure system. Diaspora may seem like a joke now, but 20 years of development on Diaspora('s great grandchild)? Getting a standardized distributed social networking account will be like getting an email address is today.
If we compare whether Facebook or Google can be more easily replaced I could argue that Google has a higher chance of being replaced because some startup can come along and build a better search engine for less than 1% of what it cost Google. Whereas I don't see Diaspora really being much different than a Jabber protocol with social networking features. Jabber didn't kill any instant messager protocol, it just furthe…
You underestimate Google's own ability to take advantage of new web standards and technologies, and Google's inhouse skills of running huge data centers efficiently. In the pure search tasks, Google is likely going to be really good in the future too.
At one point, the serious future threat for Google was Facebook, because Facebook was a big walled garden, that Google couldn't crawl. If Facebook is the number one web page for a few hundred million people, businesses start to operate inside Facebook more on more, which would make Facebook a good starting point for your searches too, making Google the second choice.
Although other aspects of this scenario have happened, the search part hasn't, and it seems that Facebook has changed the strategy from walled garden to more open place, and try to become a critical infrastructure piece of the whole web with like buttons and instant personalization.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's see, looking back at 1990... I'd bet on neither , but I sure wouldn't bet on the one far more easily replaced by a distributed secure system. Diaspora may seem like a joke now, but 20 years of development on Diaspora('s great grandchild)? Getting a standardized distributed social networking account will be like getting an email address is today.
If we compare whether Facebook or Google can be more easily replaced I could argue that Google has a higher chance of being replaced because some startup can come along and build a better search engine for less than 1% of what it cost Google. Whereas I don't see Diaspora really being much different than a Jabber protocol with social networking features. Jabber didn't kill any instant messager protocol, it just furthe…
Google will be replaced but not by search engine like better Google.
There will something completely new, like visible now in mass personal computing shift from desktop (Windows) to mobile (it looks like the Android is next main OS).
The great question is what will push Google into oblivion.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#25In the modern business world, you often have to jump organizations to get more money or the position suited to you. That's how an efficient market works.
People are jumping back and forth between Google and Facebook because they are so similar, but may offer differences in the exact position and compensation offered.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#26here's a shocking revelation: facebook is pre-IPO and employees who get stock options stand to make a decent amount of money. i know it's almost taboo around here to suggest that someone could even consider switching jobs for better pay/more potential stock upside vs. considering only some sort of imaginary "passion" for their job, but that's how it works.
Just because you join a company pre-IPO doesn't mean that you automatically get rich. If Google employees are really jumping ship for Facebook IPO riches, then I sincerely hope they've been given truckloads of stock units, because joining as employee 1200-whatever at Facebook means that there isn't much upside left in the share values.
In particular, if you start at Facebook today, the stock units you get are being sold on secondary public exchanges at frothy values. The stock is as close to fully and fairly valued as it's going to get short of an IPO.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's see, looking back at 1990... I'd bet on neither , but I sure wouldn't bet on the one far more easily replaced by a distributed secure system. Diaspora may seem like a joke now, but 20 years of development on Diaspora('s great grandchild)? Getting a standardized distributed social networking account will be like getting an email address is today.
If we compare whether Facebook or Google can be more easily replaced I could argue that Google has a higher chance of being replaced because some startup can come along and build a better search engine for less than 1% of what it cost Google. Whereas I don't see Diaspora really being much different than a Jabber protocol with social networking features. Jabber didn't kill any instant messager protocol, it just furthe…
Google is harder to replace because to replace Google, you actually have to replace Google. Develop their search bots, scale up your operation to their scales, sell ads in a market Google dominated, etc. Building a "better search engine" merely gets you a better search engine, you have to monetize it all the way to actually replace Google. This is intrinsically a multi-billion-dollar effort, competing with them the whole way. Distributed internet search has not been shown to be practical, I'm not sure it is even in theory.
Facebook on the other hand can be replaced with open standards and tons of little nodes everywhere. It isn't even all that hard, coordination is the biggest problem. (Or if you prefer, yeah, it's hard, but the original timeline was 20 years. It's not 20 years worth of hard. Again, think back to 1990. Consider the history of open source software since then. Creating distributed-Facebook is not harder than KDE or the Linux Kernel, each of which is only a vanishing fraction of the open source world's output in the last 20 years.)
Semantic Web standards will make Google obsolete? You haven't noticed them leading the charge to actually get these things out into the wild? The little tables of contents, phone numbers, etc in search results? And they're the best in the world, from what I can see, at semanticizing content that wasn't semantically labeled by the originator.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really think so? Google handily passes the "actually does something useful" test. Facebook, not so much.
One way of looking at it: Facebook has changed the way people communicate and socialize with each other. I think in some ways that is more fundamental than what Google has done - change the way people search. Furthermore, Google has seemed to have trouble innovating in the past couple years, but Facebook has been accelerating the pace of its innovations.
FaceBook is 6 years old and has roughly 2000 employees. Google was 6 years old and had roughly 2000 employees in 2004. Does anyone remember what Google introduced in 2004 and early 2005, and how revolutionary they seemed at the time? GMail, Orkut, Local, Books, Scholar, Maps, and Code ring a bell?
There seems to be an inflection point in just about every major tech company's history. First they have to dominate their initial core market. Then they need to figure out how to make money off it. Then they can use the data gathered from their core, and the top-notch employees they hire with the money, to launch lots of innovative side projects. Then everybody starts taking their innovative products for granted, but they make so much money that management can't justify letting people work on further innovative side projects that will fail 90% of the time.
FaceBook is currently in stage 3. Google would be in stage 4, except that the founders still actively push through projects like Wave and Instant and self-driving cars. I predict that ten years from now, both companies will be in stage 4, and the new hotness will be some company that hasn't been started yet.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#29here's a shocking revelation: facebook is pre-IPO and employees who get stock options stand to make a decent amount of money. i know it's almost taboo around here to suggest that someone could even consider switching jobs for better pay/more potential stock upside vs. considering only some sort of imaginary "passion" for their job, but that's how it works.
Just because you join a company pre-IPO doesn't mean that you automatically get rich. If Google employees are really jumping ship for Facebook IPO riches, then I sincerely hope they've been given truckloads of stock units, because joining as employee 1200-whatever at Facebook means that there isn't much upside left in the share values. In particular, if you start at Facebook today, the stock units you get are being s…
This assumes you only get options and not restricted stock units. With the accounting changes in the way corporations have to value options many more now give out RSUs as well.
Re: 1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google
#30here's a shocking revelation: facebook is pre-IPO and employees who get stock options stand to make a decent amount of money. i know it's almost taboo around here to suggest that someone could even consider switching jobs for better pay/more potential stock upside vs. considering only some sort of imaginary "passion" for their job, but that's how it works.
Just because you join a company pre-IPO doesn't mean that you automatically get rich. If Google employees are really jumping ship for Facebook IPO riches, then I sincerely hope they've been given truckloads of stock units, because joining as employee 1200-whatever at Facebook means that there isn't much upside left in the share values. In particular, if you start at Facebook today, the stock units you get are being s…
you don't have to get rich for it to be worthwhile.
i joined a company a year before its IPO, got a modest number of shares, and it amounted to a nice little bonus every month. didn't make me rich but allowed me to build up a lot of savings while paying down my mortgage. it's totally worth trying to get into that situation if the option is available.