Google Closes Offices in in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/changes-to-engineering.html

by Anon84 • 18 years ago

34 9 18 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

"However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions."

Uh, wow. If they're cutting by 100, how many did they have to start with?

dotpavan• 18 years ago

the post says "However, we do recognize the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100% of these exceptional employees."

So that is <i>some</i> of the 70 employees might be let go.. there is a difference

edit- gotcha, the 100 that you were referring to was the Hiring dept., a separate HN item: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434522

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

400 total according to what I just heard on cnbc.

tienshiao• 18 years ago

I think you replied to the wrong link.

I was confused because I was reading about the office closing and couldn't figure out where the 100 positions came from.

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

I think you're right. Not sure how that happened.

wmf• 18 years ago

Didn't Google hire something like 10,000 employees in one year? Imagine how many recruiters it would take to do that.

okeumeni• 18 years ago

I always wonder as an engineer myself what kind of project these guys in overseas Google offices do; how do Google keep them happy? Is it just the fact that it is Google? That won’t be enough for me.

In my 12 years career so far I have always worked in startup or small companies where I have actual work to do. I have been to interview with big companies, they could not tell me what would the job bring me in terms of real work; I had always turned down offers from Google like folks.

lacker• 18 years ago

Well there is certainly "actual work" done in overseas Google offices... ;-)

Sometimes many groups from different places work together on a larger project. E.g. there are teams working on "search engine algorithms" in many different countries. Or sometimes you have a smaller project that is just handled in one office. Like the javascript engine for Chrome was done out of Denmark I believe.

I'm not sure about other big companies but Google at least doesn't interview on a group-by-group basis. So during the interview itself, they wouldn't know yet what group you would be working in. That discussion comes later.

madmanslitany• 18 years ago

I've always thought that that was pretty cool--helps keep organization standards high overall and prevents poor managers from building their own little kingdoms.

Even if a group ends up with a new hire who lacks some domain knowledge, I'd bet that as long as they're generally smart, which the hiring process should guarantee to some extent, they'll adapt quickly.

Google Closes Offices in in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden.

Related Stories