For those you who do not live here, Kirkland is right next to Redmond, WA- where Microsoft is headquartered. This is the most exciting company in the city of Kirkland, WA- by far.
Excerpts from the article-
"Google will hold an event at its new software development office in downtown Kirkland this week to mark its recent arrival in the city. The company has leased and reserved future rights for enough space to eventually accommodate 200 employees or more on two floors of an office building a short walk from Peter Kirk Park. The company has a sales office in Seattle, but the opening of a development branch on the Eastside is fueling speculation about the possible impact on the local technology community. Much of the buzz centers on the potential for the high-flying search company to lure top talent from Microsoft and other tech companies in the region.
Several former Microsofties have been hired by Google in recent months, prior to the office opening, including veterans of the Internet Explorer and Windows teams."
The idea of working for Google will "definitely appeal to some people," said Greg Linden, a former Amazon.com software engineer who now runs a Seattle-based personalized news search site called Findory.com.
...
"I wouldn't think of it as a stick in anyone's eye," said Ed Lazowska, a UW computer science professor, about Google's decision to open a Seattle-area development office. "It's just an attempt to hire the best people, wherever they might be." Lazowska compared the situation to Microsoft's established branch offices in Silicon Valley. Amazon's A9 search-engine subsidiary is also based in the high-tech California hub. Companies consider such satellites important in part because some new hires want or need to avoid moving from their longtime homes.
Google's new Kirkland office isn't the only indication of the company's attraction to the Seattle-area talent pool. For the past several weeks, one of the company's now-famous puzzle-based recruiting billboards has been posted at Second Avenue and Stewart Street in downtown Seattle. Solving that math problem leads to successive puzzles on the Web that ultimately end up at a Google recruiting site. The Kirkland office is another way for Google "to catch and hold onto people," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, a Web site about the search business. "Of course there's the flip side, too. They might pick up some people there, and if they grew dissatisfied with Google, it would be easier for them to slip over to Microsoft."
One former Microsoft employee now in Google's Kirkland office is software developer Joe Beda, who worked on programs including Internet Explorer and Longhorn, the next version of Windows, while at Microsoft. Beda declined to be interviewed but described his reasons for going to Google in a Sept. 2 post on his weblog. "The thing that really attracted me was the fact that it was just a smaller company with smaller groups," Beda wrote, explaining that he had spent his whole career at Microsoft. "After working on such large projects for so long, I was really ready to try something on a smaller scale."
No comments:
Post a Comment