October 02, 2007 | Tuesday
To have, to hold and to vest: HR headaches in search
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft
There are quite a few threads running through the news today which put the people retention records of the search giants under intense scrutiny. Bonus: Star turns by Tom Cruise, Steve Jobs and, er, Fake Steve Jobs.
Word is that Steve Jobs’ appearance at Yahoo as a motivational speaker for 300 of the company’s top execs went down a storm. The talk from one of Silicon Valley’s brightest examples of triumph over adversity was a much more inspired choice than ex-CEO Terry Semel’s appointed speaker last year, Tom Cruise. Jobs told the Yahoo execs that, when it comes down to it, the company has spectacular assets - all that’s left is to do brilliant things with them. As Kara Swisher notes:
It’s hard to imagine another company with such amazing assets–traffic, those valuable consumer insights, a spate of terrific products–allowing itself to be written off so easily...[W]hile ups and downs are certainly part of the business cycle, Yahoo has been wallowing in the down for longer than it needs to be without articulating both outwardly and inwardly what is needs to do and, more importantly, to be. The Friday meeting seems to have solved that internally at least, with VPs going back to their jobs feeling jazzed up and ready to rumble.
Good thing, too, as holding on to employees is tough in the incestuous, wealthy world of Silicon Valley. Fake Steve Jobs - the hugely popular, often spot-on blogger recently revealed to be Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons - points out that Google is worried, too:
Not so well-kept secret in the Valley is that Google is freaking out because a lot of its folks are vesting soon and these greedy, restless b*st*rds are looking for the next Big Score and right now that’s looking like Facebook. So lots of Google talent is going to be streaming out the door to Facebook and all the free bus rides in the world aren’t going to keep them locked in.
Not to be left out, MSN is also feeling the heat on retention. Explaining how Microsoft’s internet business is currently losing almost $1 billion annually on $2.2 billion of advertising revenue - just about fifty cents for every dollar of advertising it sells - Henry Blodget quotes from the company’s latest SEC filing. This claims increases in headcount-related costs of 30 per cent, driven by a 12 per cent jump in headcount. Blodget comments:
Translation: We only grew headcount 12%, but we have to pay so much to retain and recruit people that our overall headcount expenses increased more than twice as fast.
Hmm. Think Steve Jobs would give a motivational talk at Google and MSN, too? (If not, I’m sure Fake Steve Jobs would be happy to do so.)
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