Google to give 10 pct raises to entire work force

[RamboLiberal]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle/AP

Google Inc. is showing it still knows how to make its employees feel special: It is giving all 23,300 of them 10 percent raises next year.

The Internet search leader also is shifting part of workers' annual bonuses into their regular paychecks, according to an internal memo sent Tuesday by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Those bonuses won't count toward the 10 percent.

The planned raises, earlier reported by the technology blog Silicon Alley Insider, were confirmed Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Google has long been known for feeding its workers free food and pampering them with other perquisites that would be considered luxuries by most employees.





Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/11/10/state/n094356S11.DTL

[Xithras]

1. I got to visit the Googleplex once.

It's probably the coolest workplace in America. Beach volleyball pits, a giant T-Rex skeleton, lap pools for the employees to take breaks in, slides instead of stairs, and some of the best food you can eat.

It's one of the hardest places in America to land a job though.

[truedelphi]

3. And nigh unto impossible if you are older than thirty five. n/t

[Xithras]

8. I don't know that it's actually ageism.

The real problem is that they require an absolute mastery of technology, and generally want that mastery to be in the latest and greatest technologies.

I've had two students end up at Google. That's actually how I got my tour of the Googleplex...one of my former students invited me. Both were beyond brilliant. The one who invited me was hired because they needed a programmer with a mastery of Apache Hive, which is a very specific skillset (it's basically a data warehouse infrastructure built on Hadoop). The odds of finding a programmer over 35 with those skills were small. He was in his early 20's, and had actually spent a chunk of his dorm years contributing to OS projects...including Hive.

There simply aren't that many older programmers who are into "the latest and greatest" technologies, and Google is heavily focused on the bleeding edge. I've done a half dozen startups over the years, teach CompSci, and still felt like the dumbest guy in the room when I was getting my tour.

[bettyellen]

20. wow, you really don't think older people can be more skilled or keep up with technology?

I think it has a lot moe to do with a persons mindset, some of us are constantly learning, ding things smarter all the time and many - including the young- can not be bothered if they feel it is not required or they manage to get over.
my line of work hires a lot of young people these days purely for the bottom line- and only because they are cheaper, and the quality overall has plummeted directly because of it. these kids don;t know how to keep standards up because they don;t know what to look for, or what the pitfalls are.. don;t know how to handle negotiations, and cannot figure out what went wrong. they have to hire expensive consultants to show them how to do their job, but the lack of experience really hampers their creativity and cheapens the products unnecessarily. and we have young QA managers who don;t address any issues because they wouln;y know how, so they stuggle to cover up and ignore issues as best they can while we lose business.
and google has fired very competent managers, not tech people, after they were publicly ridiculed for being older, it;s definitely got some serious ageist issues.

[tinrobot]

4. All created so that the employees never go home.

[Xithras]

6. Very true.

The Googleplex also contains beds, showers, and a self service laundromat, for that very reason.

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. wow. I heard they get 1000s of resumes daily

[Selatius]

16. Post-Tech Bubble, Post-Housing Bubble, middle of the Great Recession, you better believe it. nt

[truedelphi]

2. I am glad to hear that about the raise. Oneof my favorite people works there. However

GOOGLE employs very very few people over the age of fifty.

Every so often you read of someone getting older there, and how they are "let go" and then they sue.

Ironically, Eric Schmidt has gone on the record as saying that in this "New Economy" older people will have to remain part of the work force longer. I guess he think we can all just "retire" our graduate degrees and go work for McDonald's.

Oh and BTW, Eric is one of the handful of Big Business people on President Obama's advice list, when it comes to work place and "retirement" advice.

[Tx4obama]

5. The person that leaked the news regarding the raise reportedly FIRED. n/t

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101110/some-news-is-bad-news-google-reportedly-fires-raise-leaker/

[Vehl]

7. google also gave extra pay to LGBT couples

in order to offset the loss of tax breaks they have to face due to their marriages not being recognized by the state.

it has always been a progressive company!.
Kudos to you Google! :)

[savalez]

9. No wonder pubtards want them investigated!!!

They're giving raises when they should be firing people and outsourcing jobs.... I get it. :sarcasm:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4609265&mesg_id=4609265

[groundloop]

10. "annual bonuses" - what's that?

I'm not familiar with an "annual bonus", not part of my employee handbook vocabulary.

I guess I never realized how well google treats it's people, I'm sure they have no problem with turnover.

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. that's when an employer gives an employee extra $$ once a year... lol

[KillCapitalism]

11. My son's turning one year old next month.

I'm trying to teach him some computer skills while I feed him his bottle & trying to get him to check into positions at Google before he gets too old here within the next couple of years.

[Thor_MN]

14. Entire work force, except for the guy that leaked the news... He got shown the door.

From 10% raise to unemployed in one little memo...

[PeaceNikki]

15. It was the best day, it was the worst day...

[Freddie Stubbs]

17. They must have a really good union

[DBoon]

18. I think they just realize that having a really skilled workforce is their life

they know if their best employees leave they are done.

[xor]

19. Ohh soooo many thanks, Google. Now the slave labor pigeons make a whole 3 cents more

worth of bird seed an hour.

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html