Google is granting a 10 percent raise to all 23,331 employees for 2011 as an incentive to stick around. Image: CC Rojer/Flickr
A Google raise of 10 percent for all its employees was announced last week. In addition to the raise, Google is giving its entire staff a $1,000 Christmas bonus. Tech insiders say the Google raise and bonus is an attempt to fight off employee defections to Google rivals such as Facebook.
Google’s $1-billion raise
The Google raise, effective Jan. 1, 2011, has been offered across the board to every one of the company’s 23,331 employees. Google is even paying the taxes on the $1,000 holiday bonus so employees can take home a nice round number. According to Business Insider, the raises could cost the company $1 billion a year. The holiday bonus of $1,000 will cost Google about $20 million. Fortunately, those of us who don’t work for Google can get quick cash for Christmas easily with a payday loan or personal installment loan online.
Google captains jumping ship
The Google raise is a response from the company to fight off a talent drain as rapidly growing rivals aggressively approach top Google employees. But in an ironic twist, the Google employee who leaked news about the raise was fired and may have to borrow money for the holidays. Getting fired for releasing information that prospective Google employees should probably know seems counter-intuitive for a company losing top talent. CNN reports that in the past few weeks, Google lost such top guns as YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, AdMob co-founder Omar Hamoui and Google Maps and Wave creator Lars Rasmussen.
Facebook plunders Google
Facebook has been the biggest raider among those companies seeking talent trained at Google. Mark Zuckerberg’s right hand woman at Facebook is Sheryl Sandberg, former chief of sales and operations at Google. Bret Taylor, Facebook’s chief technology officer, was a top product manager at Google. On LinkedIn — which is also competing with Google for talent — 300 of the 1,900 Facebook employees profiled on the site list Google as a past employer on their resumes. That’s about 15 percent of Facebook’s staff of about 2,000.
