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Poor Google. Its stock has been sliding since the beginning of the year. Now key executives and engineers are trickling out and heading to the Internet's latest darling, Facebook.
The latest Google defector is Ethan Beard, who plans to leave his post as the Mountain View, Calif., company's director of social media in mid-April. He will become director of business development at Facebook.
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Google veteran Sheryl Sandberg left earlier this month to become chief operating officer at the popular social-networking company. Within the last year, other Googlers have departed for Facebook. Among them: Gideon Yu, former chief financial officer at YouTube, Google's video-sharing site, who is now chief financial officer at Facebook; and top engineers Benjamin Ling and Justin Rosenstein.
After leaving the Internet search giant last year, Rosenstein sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues, describing his new employer, Facebook, as "the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly brilliant people congregate and feed off each other's genius. That company that's doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can't pull off."
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Ouch. Indeed, it wasn't so long ago that Google was stealing top talent from Microsoft to fuel its growth spurt. Now Google is big--16,800 people at last count. Internally, a few people have been heard to grumble that the company might just be a bit too big.
Now it's Facebook, with its lofty valuation of $15 billion, that expects to double its head count by the end of the year to reach a respectable 1,000. Facebook is still at the point where it needs seasoned Internet executives to help it become a viable business.
Both Facebook and Google declined to say how many ex-Googlers now work at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, but Google said it tries to keep its employees happy and challenged. Despite its efforts, the company conceded that some turnover is inevitable. "We understand that the nature of our times is that people will do many things over the course of their careers," Google said in a statement.
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Google is still a dream employer, especially for the hundreds of students in business schools throughout the US. But at 16,800 employees worldwide--and growing--it's hard for every smart and ambitious new hire at Google to become a star. One awkward opening: Google has yet to fill the post of chief financial officer. Current CFO George Reyes has been ready to leave since August 2007.
"You hire that kind of talent, they're going to move" if they are not satisfied, says Colleen Hulce, a managing director at executive recruiter DHR International. "There's only so much room at the top, and Facebook is on fire."
Besides, Hulce points out, turnover is par for the course in the tech world. Workers who don't move around risk getting labeled as stagnant. "If you stay too long, it's not necessarily a good thing. You become too Googlized," she says.
Despite defections to Facebook, Hulce said Google is still attracting top talent. "Google is in a class by itself," she says. "They're a steamroller--who knows what else they're going to come out with?"