1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google

http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/10/one_in_five_facebook_employees_has_no_imagination_whatsoever.html

by GlennKelman • 16 years ago

62 33 16 years ago

blog.redfin.com

bretpiatt2• 16 years ago

It isn't about imagination. It is the cycle of the valley. Mature companies have employees go to found their own companies or join other pre-IPO startups. Working for Google you'll have a great career and quality of life but going to Facebook has the potential to make you quite a bit more money through equity.

joezydeco• 16 years ago

So is that the true motivation for all of these xooglers? Cash in on something before they're completely burned out?

raspie• 16 years ago

Not everyone wants to be in a startup. People running from Google to FB may be doing it for a different culture, for more money, or for a slight change in what they're doing. There's nothing wrong with that.

dstein3• 16 years ago

The bottom line is this - if you were to place a bet (as in betting your career) on which company will be dominant 20 years from now and which will become yet another dying Internet fad, I'd bet in favor of Facebook. Absolutely everyone overestimates Google's chances of continuing to dominate forever.

ct• 16 years ago

What more can Facebook do vs. Google? Seems there's more options at Google IMO. (I don't work at Google, but wish I did).

jerf2• 16 years ago

Let's see, looking back at 1990... I'd bet on neither, but I sure wouldn't bet on the one far more easily replaced by a distributed secure system. Diaspora may seem like a joke now, but 20 years of development on Diaspora('s great grandchild)? Getting a standardized distributed social networking account will be like getting an email address is today.

dstein3• 16 years ago

If we compare whether Facebook or Google can be more easily replaced I could argue that Google has a higher chance of being replaced because some startup can come along and build a better search engine for less than 1% of what it cost Google. Whereas I don't see Diaspora really being much different than a Jabber protocol with social networking features. Jabber didn't kill any instant messager protocol, it just further fragmented the instant messager market, which is now dominated by Facebook because of it's critical mass.

You're forgetting that open standards can also threaten Google's entire business model. Semantic Web standards (and related technologies being worked on) will eventually make conventional search engines like Google completely obsolete.

mfukar3• 16 years ago

Companies that will dominate 20 years from now won't exist for another 19 years, so..

mahmud3• 16 years ago

So it takes a year to go from zero to a position of global dominance?

cabalamat• 16 years ago

> The bottom line is this - if you were to place a bet (as in betting your career) on which company will be dominant 20 years from now and which will become yet another dying Internet fad, I'd bet in favor of Facebook.

You statement is ambiguous; it doesn't say whether facebook will be the former or the latter. (my take is it could easily go either way).

dstein3• 16 years ago

Ugh, I hate arguing grammar.

Technically what I said was not ambiguous.

If you quote the first sentence alone, it could only be considered ambiguous if you consider "dying internet fad" as a favorable bet. My 2nd sentence confirms my intent.

maw• 16 years ago

Do you really think so? Google handily passes the "actually does something useful" test. Facebook, not so much.

waterlesscloud• 16 years ago

Facebook has about a million times stronger lock-in though.

Changing my primary search engine requires no effort at all on my point, and I lose practically nothing by doing so.

Gmail is probably Google's most-likely-to-last product.

tlack2• 16 years ago

One way of looking at it: Facebook has changed the way people communicate and socialize with each other. I think in some ways that is more fundamental than what Google has done - change the way people search. Furthermore, Google has seemed to have trouble innovating in the past couple years, but Facebook has been accelerating the pace of its innovations.

unshift2• 16 years ago

here's a shocking revelation: facebook is pre-IPO and employees who get stock options stand to make a decent amount of money.

i know it's almost taboo around here to suggest that someone could even consider switching jobs for better pay/more potential stock upside vs. considering only some sort of imaginary "passion" for their job, but that's how it works.

timr• 16 years ago

Just because you join a company pre-IPO doesn't mean that you automatically get rich. If Google employees are really jumping ship for Facebook IPO riches, then I sincerely hope they've been given truckloads of stock units, because joining as employee 1200-whatever at Facebook means that there isn't much upside left in the share values.

In particular, if you start at Facebook today, the stock units you get are being sold on secondary public exchanges at frothy values. The stock is as close to fully and fairly valued as it's going to get short of an IPO.

bretpiatt2• 16 years ago

This assumes you only get options and not restricted stock units. With the accounting changes in the way corporations have to value options many more now give out RSUs as well.

unshift2• 16 years ago

you don't have to get rich for it to be worthwhile.

i joined a company a year before its IPO, got a modest number of shares, and it amounted to a nice little bonus every month. didn't make me rich but allowed me to build up a lot of savings while paying down my mortgage. it's totally worth trying to get into that situation if the option is available.

nanijoe• 16 years ago

The article makes the underlying assumption that the single most important factor for deciding where to work , is how exciting the new job is, compared to the old one. I real life, people take a lot of 'other things into consideration when making such decisions. 'Boring' things like money, career advancement and job security usually rank above 'the excitement' of the opportunity.

GavinB• 16 years ago

In the modern business world, you often have to jump organizations to get more money or the position suited to you. That's how an efficient market works.

People are jumping back and forth between Google and Facebook because they are so similar, but may offer differences in the exact position and compensation offered.

1 in 5 Facebook Employees Worked at Google

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