Comments on: Google Loses Top Engineer

By: Weekly Bits & Bytes [8-14 october 2007] | ThinKlear

Weekly Bits & Bytes [8-14 october 2007] | ThinKlear — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:04:21 +0000

[...] “Google Big Man” went to FaceBook – read abou it at netly news, Google Blogoscoped, Marketing Pilgrim and Google Operating [...]

By: Water Portal

Water Portal — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:40:08 +0000

wow, it looks like Facebook is becoming the coolest place to work:)
the engineer must be dissapointed that his baby could not beat paypal:) and went to facebook, may be there he can make a new baby that will beat ald paypal:)

By: Mike Tekula

Mike Tekula — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:28:10 +0000

Correction on my comment above: the interview I was thinking of was actually with Justin Rosenstein, who left Google for Facebook in July of 2007. It's interesting to get a Google insider's opinion, and he talks about the focus on hiring "smart people" as superior to hiring to fill specific procedural roles in a web startup. For those interested, here's the interview.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:03:20 +0000

Agreed, the real news would be if they covered the mass attrition out of Google instead of the attrition of a random employee (who isnt even an enginer) who just joined a couple years ago. But mikes point is true, who needs process or procedures, if you hire smart people, everything works itself out, and that is reflected in just how many sources of revenue google has acquired so rapidly by letting thousands of engineers just do whatever they want.

By: Mike Tekula

Mike Tekula — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:14:12 +0000

The thing is, Google the “big corporation” started out by hiring the smartest minds they could find. That’s what Facebook is doing now. If you read the interview with Ling it’s clear that he sees that as what really makes the difference with web-based business. You can have all of the procedures in place that you want, but unless you hire smart people and give them the power and opportunity to develop their own unique ideas you won’t go anywhere. There are different kinds of “big corporations” – what works for McDonald’s certainly doesn’t work for Facebook. You need smart engineers across the board at Facebook. You don’t need an engineer to manage a McDonald’s.

By: Music Software

Music Software — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:34:01 +0000

Why is this news? For big corporations, no body is indispensable. It happens all the time. What will be news is the severance package and the sweetener from the new employer!

By: Google Engineers jumping to Facebook | YugaTech | Philippine Technology News & Reviews

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:58:58 +0000

[...] leaving the search giant for Facebook today. Ling created Google Checkout and Google SMS and is said to be one of “Larry and Sergey’s golden [...]

By: Chris [TK]

Chris [TK] — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:39:22 +0000

it seems that Facebook is getting bigger each day…

interesting

By: Perde

Perde — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:28:17 +0000

Hope next one will be Matt Cutts.

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:34:22 +0000

top engineer? give me a break. anyway, media needs attention.