Google Talk Aftermath
I’m confused. I’m not sure what I just attended. Don’t get me wrong, it was an interesting talk by Vint Cert (which I’ll write up tomorrow), but I thought I was walking into a recruitment event. I even have the pad of paper with www.google.com/jobs printed along the bottom. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by the investment banking recruiting events I went to during university, but this just seemed like a missed opportunity for Google. You’re struggling to fill your London R&D centre, you get a hundred or more smart computing people in one room, why aren’t we being told about the great place Google is to work at, and all the interesting things we will be working on?
There were between five and ten Google employees there, I didn’t get a chance to speak to one of them but from what I overheard they were talking about Google in general rather than what is actually planned for the London office. I think part of the reason why I’m so disappointed was that I wanted to be tempted from my current job. I wanted to see this great office (it is very nice), with excited people, working on interesting problems, but I didn’t. From what I’ve read in the press and their job listings, Google plans to focus on mobile Internet in London but nothing tonight confirmed that.
On the bright side I did catch up with several people from my old department. The other reason I went along was to see if I could find any potential hires for the positions at Runtime, but that was a no go. There were some other people scouting too, and I found out from them that after the dot-com crash the number of computing graduates has fallen and a lot of them (from Imperial at least) are getting hovered up by banks. I guess that is the problem Google is having too. Straight after university people join an investment bank, get paid a lot of money, then decide they don’t like the work and quit but aren’t willing to take the pay cut to join a software company. Annoying but the way it is in London.
Well, that’s enough ranting for one night.
Update: I was wondering why there weren’t any Imperial undergraduates at the talk (just postgraduates). It turns out Vint Cerf gave the same talk a few hours earlier at IC.
March 8th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Hi Miles, I saw the talk at Imperial yesterday. I think the Google factor was more “value add” then anything else, I didn’t expect to meet any Googlers or hear anything about jobs but there were a few people around to talk to and some job adverts being handed out, I got a similar thing when I visited the Victoria office for their Open House earlier this year. I think most people at IC came to listen to the father of TCP/IP rather than hear much about Google recruitment (though there was the standard “we’re hiring” bit).
I was chatting to a few friends on IRC and they said they’ve been to very similar talks by Vint and it is more his classic seminar talk then anything else.
I did enjoy the talk once he moved onto more annecdotal content and information about the interplanetary internet but he had to cut things short and cherry pick the best slides towards the end of the presentation.
March 8th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I fully expect most of the people who go to these talks go to hear Vint talk, that’s why I went. But the reason Google hosted the talk (and one of the reasons they hired Vint) was to get a bunch of potential hires in the room and convert some of them into employees. They just didn’t do that. I wouldn’t expect the hard sell at a university talk but I would for an event they host, especially since most of the people who go along aren’t interested in working for them.
Since you’re at Imperial you’re invariably get invites to evenings hosted by the various investment banks, go along to one of them and you’ll see the difference. You might get an interesting talk, probably not, but they’ll convince you why they’re a great company to work, then as you mill around the impressive room with free booze and food you’ll chat with various people who get you exciting about working there. None of it’s true but it’ll make you think about applying.
From what I’m reading in the press, they are having a hard time hiring people in the UK, so I’m surprised that last night was done so poorly from a recruitment stand point. Maybe they just haven’t fully adjusted to not being flooded with applicants like they are in America. It also makes me curious why they’re having a problem hiring, like the guy in the article says, one has to wonder if they’re offering the salaries necessary to get the calibre of people they want.