craschworks

http://opal.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/google-secret-weapon.html

“….The problem is: Google's not doing it a little at a time. They're using marketing tactics that make our approach look nickel-and-dime by comparison.

That might sound harsh, but when's the last time you took a serious look at everything you know about Google's recruiting tactics, without even doing any research on it? Just off the top of my head, let's look at some of the things they're doing.

Some people may take a dim view of my posting this information here, but it's all publicly available info; Google's practically forcing it down our throats. I'm not telling people anything they don't already know; I'm just saying it all at once, in the hopes that folks wake up and realize the dire seriousness of the threat Google poses.

I'll stick with stuff we're not doing:

Programming Competitions — every year for at last the past 3 years, they've held a TopCoder coding competition that's attracted thousands of contestants. Not only does this make them seem cool, it gets them lots of resumes, and the applicants are already nicely stack-ranked.

Billboards — everyone knows about the famous billboard that had a puzzle on it. Didn't have Google's name on it, just a URL with a math puzzle. If you happened to drive by, realize what it was, solve the puzzle, and visit the website, you were awarded with… another puzzle. Solve that one and you got an interview with Google. Again: lots of hype, and also some pretty good candidates came directly to you, without any recruiting on your part.

Poaching — you've all heard of the design center they're opening up in Kirkland. Rumors abound; they're hiring 300 engineers, they're hiring 2000 engineers; no, it's 600; I heard it's 1200. One thing is clear: their motive. They announced they're going to be hiring primarily from the University of Washington, from Microsoft, and from Amazon.

Job Marketing — have you ever visited Google's job site? I have. They have the “Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google”, or something like that. While we can match several of the 10, some of them we simply don't compete with. We don't have on-site doctors and yoga and free day care. We don't have free lunches; heck, we don't even have free parking. Maybe perks are expensive, but to candidates who are doing an honest appraisal, the perks add up, and can make the difference in their final decision.

Gimmicks — see the GLAT yet? It's the Google Aptitude Test; something they circulated recently (was it in the IEEE? I'm forcing myself to generate this list off the top of my head, so I can't go look) that looks like a tough version of the GRE or GMAT for computer scientists. It's non-trivial. I don't know whether it's real, and you have to take it to get an interview there, or if it's just a gimmick. Either way, it's getting them a lot of press, and it's one more thing that's elevating their status as “company that only hires smart people”. Another example is the rumor that circulated about a supposed announcement that their IT staff is 1/4 Ph.Ds. I don't know if it's true, but does it really matter? PR is all about buzz.

Compensation — Google's got a reputation for paying well. Their pre-IPO stock, of course, has been a big draw, but they also reputedly have unusually high salary and great benefits. Now that their market cap is soaring, it's hard to say whether the stock will still be the huge draw. And now that they've got an office in Kirkland opening, we may be able to get better information on whether their compensation packages have really just been cost-of-living adjusted for Mountain View. Regardless, it doesn't hurt to have a reputation as a company that pays well.

Free Targeted Advertising — have you ever visited a Google search-results page and found an ad for… Google? That's right, they do targeted job ads on their own pages. Everyone uses Google, including smart, qualified candidates, and Google's been using this fact to recruit selectively with their own site.
When I say “selectively”, I mean it. You won't see a Google job ad if you type in “C++”. Try typing in some of the fanciest stuff you know and see if you can get a hit for a Google job ad. No? Guess you'd better hit the books!

Technology — as I mentioned before, people naturally think of Google as a technology company. And not just any technology, either. Search is central to computing and computer science; it's in some sense the foundation of artificial intelligence, and has applications in a wide variety of problem domains that have nothing to do with “web search” per se.
If you were a candidate assessing the long-term potential of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, and you were speculating as to which company would first create practical artifical intelligence, or find cures for cancer, aids, and aging? The retailer isn't going to leap to mind, nor is the operating-systems company. Google's technology is going to make a huge difference. So is Amazon's, but it's not as clear to people how, and this puts us at a natural disadvantage when we're selling people.

Culture — when people make the decision to accept a job offer, they're accepting a culture. They'll spend more time with the people at work than with any other group, including their spouses. Culture matters.
Google has a fabulous reputation for being a great culture. Their website marketing is top-notch, and stories abound of soccer games on building rooftops and other crazy fun stuff. But what really gets people is the “work on whatever you want for one day a week”. As long as it's an approved project, you can spend a day a week working on anything you want. It's your own little R&D laboratory. You can't fake a culture like that. Google knows how to treat engineers.

Training — Google's got a huge reputation for training, because it's one of their selling points in their interview process. Candidates tell me Google gives people a ton of training: weeks of it (at least). I'm not clear on the exact amount, but it's more in line with Microsoft's ongoing career and technical training than it is with our 2 days of developer boot camp. This is a huge cultural difference; Amazon has traditionally said “learn stuff on your own time” (as if we have any time.) This year is the first year we've had an actual training budget or any formal training at all. Again, this is something candidates care a lot about, and it's something you can't fake — you either have it or you don't. And they have a lot more than we do.

Focus — Google's corporate motto is “Do No Evil”. Microsoft's is only slightly different: “Do Evil”. At least they're honest about it. The bad guy really does sometimes win. When Microsoft combats Google's recruiting network-effect by simply buying a great engineer, everyone including the engineer knows what's going on. But Evil has a lot of money, and that's kind of hard to ignore. So Microsoft has managed to staff up a lot of great minds in their .NET and CLR groups, and plenty of other groups as well.
Amazon's motto along these lines is somewhere in the middle, something like: “Do Stuff.” It might have been “Just Do It” if that weren't already taken. We don't think much about good or evil; we focus on revenue and customer experience, which pulls us in both directions a bit. Certainly we've realized that “Get it Done” (at all costs) has gotten us into a bit of code-base trouble.”