It takes more than an army of trained chefs and free lunch to keep Googlers happy. As a new wave of web darlings (such as Facebook) beef up recruiting efforts, high-level Googlers are blowing the joint. Sheryl Sandberg, Ethan Beard (right) and Justin Rosenstein are just a few big name defectors -- and recruiters say there is little Google can do to stop the exodus.
"Googlers may as well have targets on their foreheads," says Eric Jaquith, an Atlanta-based recruiter who has done some contract work for Google. "The nature of recruiting is that you go after the big companies that have been successful. So any company that wants Google-like success is going to try to hire away from Google."
And although Google has earned the reputation for paying fairly stingy salaries, Jaquith argues that the exodus was inevitable, regardless of pay scale. He says most Googlers' options vest under four- or five-year plans, after which point it makes sense for employees to seek new challenges.
"Most people who went to Google were bright, curious and wanted to solve interesting problems. Nobody went to Google for a salary," Jaquith says.
Of course, the stock options probably didn't hurt. And the proceeds from those options have probably given Googlepreneurs the financial wiggle room to launch their own startups. A cursory search for "ex-Googler" turns up volumes of info about former employees who are quietly working on their own businesses. To name just a few:
- Gokul Rajaram, the "Godfather of AdSense," is working on a stealth startup. Can't talk about it now, but he says he can in the third quarter.
- Louis Monier, Anna Patterson, Russell Power are working on a search service called Cuill (pronounced "cool") -- it's said to index the web more economically than Google. Uses a web crawler called "twiceler."
- Jason Liebman, Sanjay Raman and Daniel Blackman co-founded HowCast, a network of "how to" videos. The pair company has apparently raised $8 million in funding.
- Steffen Mueller started a "search engine community" called Topicle.
- Vanessa Fox left Google for real estate search site Zillow.
- Dan Daugherty is heading RentBits, a real estate rental site. He's got support from fellow ex-Googler Tim Moynihan, who is COO of the site.
Have we left any out? Fill us in.
UPDATE: So we missed quite a few. Thanks to everyone who wrote in -- keep 'em coming!
- Veteran user experience designer Kevin "Fury" Fox joined FriendFeed, a company entirely composed of ex-Googlers.
- Also at FriendFeed: Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul "Don't be evil" Buchheit, Sanjeev Singh and Ana Yang.
- Brian Dick, a biz dev exec in New York who helped found Google TV Ads, is now at LimeWire.
- Jess Lee, a Google Maps product manager, quit Google this month to join Polyvore.
- Nathan Stoll "broke up" with Google in December. Still not clear what he's up to.
- Sean Knapp, Belsasar Lepe and Bismarck Lepe founded Ooyala, a video delivery platform, in early 2007. So far, they've raised about $10 million.
- Jason Shellen left Google in August 2007. Started incubator The Secret Agency.
- Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Jason Goldman are twittering.
- Rob Radez, Gabor Cselle are working at email startup Xobni. Radez just left Google a couple weeks ago; Cselle fled about a year ago.
- Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives at Google, is now an angel investor and private equity principal.
- Clint Guerrero is now a consultant and traveler.
Photo: Jarda Brych/Wired.com
