@lauren I think #Google is forgetting the old wisdom that brought about microkitchens and perks at work in the first place... You're not competing with other companies to hire and retain Googlers, you're competing with *the Googlers themselves,* the alternate lifestyle where instead of working for your conglomerate they freelance or form their own startups. Why should they come work for you when they could work from home where the snacks are in the kitchen?
This generation of Google leadership seems to be excited to test that hypothesis. We'll see how it works out for their retention numbers.
@lauren Definitely possible, but interesting to see how it will go.
A firm's ability to pull straight from colleges is directly tied to reputation. Right now, Google has great rep in spite of everything (this may be more a comment on the industry as a whole than on choices Google has made, but I digress). But rep can shift rapidly and students are fickle.
I remember when IBM started running ads that were basically "Come work for us."
@mtomczak Old folk saying: As go the perks, go the employees.
@mtomczak I assume that they will be able to keep their numbers up hiring directly from colleges and such. But the institutional knowledge of senior employees who are leaving is pretty much irreplaceable, and a signal that the firm is in trouble. I keep thinking about what happened to DEC.