Google has been taking some big hits recently, stock fell 37% from the peak last November, a handful of high-profile departures, ComScore reported that click-throughs were down 0.3 per cent year-on-year in the US, and a shift in how the company works may be costing Google just what made it great.
The potentially damaging loss of talent has been sparked by the departures of Sheryl Sandberg, who ran its AdWords programme, to Facebook, and Doug Merrill, the chief information officer, to EMI. As well as other long-time executives, such as Ethan Beard, head of social media, and Chris Sacca, who led its wireless initiatives. Is this a symptom of the new mindset at Google? Google has lost its anything-goes approach of a start-up environment in favor of the large corporate organizational structure that may be stifling the very thing that helped Google build such a power-house company.
Not helping is the acquisition of Doubleclick, some 300 of DoubleClick’s workers are understood to have been either laid off or put into “transitional” jobs that will eventually go. This can’t be good for moral or for Google’s image. When I hear Google and layoffs in the same sentence it makes me nervous…even if it is in a newly acquired company.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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DCLK hiring filter
Getting a job at Google is hard, and Google gets to pick the best of the best, kind of like Microsoft used to. Getting a job at Doubleclick has been easier. It would be worse for morale for Jane Googler to find out that some Doubleclick bozo made it into Google without facing the brutal hiring process that she did.
layoffs usually indicate to
layoffs usually indicate to outsiders that there is something wrong with a company or division. Yes Google tries to explain the Doubleclick layoffs away with normal merger pains but it is the perception more then reality that can hurt Google in the long run.
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