{"id":180651,"date":"2017-02-15T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/02\/15\/it-appears-that-google-is-no-longer-the-job-mecca-it-once-was\/"},"modified":"2017-02-15T21:20:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T02:20:00","slug":"it-appears-that-google-is-no-longer-the-job-mecca-it-once-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/02\/15\/it-appears-that-google-is-no-longer-the-job-mecca-it-once-was\/","title":{"rendered":"It Appears that Google is No Longer the Job Mecca it Once Was"},"content":{"rendered":"
It used to be that people would crawl over broken glass to get a job at Google.<\/div>\n

Now, employees at Google’s Waymo division bailed as soon as they got f%$#-you money<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Google has spent a lot of money on its self-driving car project, now spun off into a new entity called Waymo<\/a>. Much of that money has gone to engineers and other staff, according to a new report<\/a> from Bloomberg. In order to keep self-driving staffers happy \u2014 and, presumably, from leaving the company for other firms doing similar work \u2014 Google backed the proverbial Brinks truck up to the self-driving department and unloaded. <\/p>\n

Bloomberg says that early staffers \u201chad an unusual compensation system\u201d that multiplied staffers’ salaries and bonuses based on the performance of the self-driving project. The payments accumulated as milestones were reached, even though Waymo remains years away from generating revenue. One staffer eventually \u201chad a multiplier of 16 applied to bonuses and equity amassed over four years.\u201d The huge amounts of compensation worked \u2014 for a while. But eventually, it gave many staffers such financial security that they were willing to leave the cuddly confines of Google. <\/p>\n

Two staffers that Bloomberg spoke to called it \u201cF-you money,\u201d and the accumulated cash allowed them to depart Google for other firms, including Chris Urmson<\/a> who co-founded a startup<\/a> with ex-Tesla employee Sterling Anderson, and others who founded a self-driving truck company called Otto which was purchased by Uber<\/a> last year, and another who founded Argo AI which received a $1 billion investment<\/a> from Ford last week.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These were people who were eager to leave, and as soon as they were secure, they left.<\/p>\n

This does not say positive things about the workplace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It used to be that people would crawl over broken glass to get a job at Google. Now, employees at Google’s Waymo division bailed as soon as they got f%$#-you money: Google has spent a lot of money on its self-driving car project, now spun off into a new entity called Waymo. Much of that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[450,588],"class_list":["post-180651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-employment","tag-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}