Jul 19, 2005

Talent wars in the Techdom

Om Malik writes in his blog about Yahoo's people problems

the company has been trying to hire like mad crazy. Someone recently told me that Yahoo might have as many as 600 open positions. The problem however is their pesky stock price. It currently lacks the sizzle of Google, and consequently long timers are finding its well time to go do something else.


And there was this earlier Fortune story that said that Bill Gates is scared of Google and one of the reasons was:

Dozens of current and former Microsofties say that Google's success is causing a corporate identity crisis. Gates basically created the notion that success in software is a function of the IQ of your team, and for years Microsoft has prided itself on having the smartest employees on the planet. Now many of those overachievers feel as though they've gotten their first B. Google, not Microsoft, is the hot place to work for young engineers. Every month it seems as if Google hires away one of Microsoft's top developers. Before Google's IPO last fall, Microsoft executives dismissed this brain drain as a function of greed. But when the exodus continued after the IPO—especially when Marc Lucovsky, one of the chief architects of Windows, bolted for Google—it was clear that Microsoft had a bigger problem on its hands. As of March, roughly 100 Microsofties had left for its search nemesis.


Hmm, I wonder when Google India will start hitting the other tech players in India ?

And what do you do as an employer if your brand identity to future employees gets taken over by someone else?

Update: Microsoft sues Google and a former employee who has been tapped by Google to run its China operations.

1 comment:

  1. In india, it does not make a difference. Most of the companies are desparate for people and hire anyone walking in. And people are jumping from one place to another based only on salary, and not job content. So in the end, the highest paymaster wins it, irrespective of the kind of work.

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