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Google Faces Employee Retention Challenge
prakslash writes "60% of Google's 1900 employees now hold stock options worth at least one million dollars. According to experts in this Reuters article, it is now imperative for Google to maintain its sense of mission. If it fails to do so, a whole slew of employees facing post-IPO burnout and boredom will leave the company to go back to school, start a new company, or join the ranks of high-tech early retirees. Such a mass cashing-out could lead to a decline in Google stock price and intellectual brain-drain. Oh how I wish I worked for Google."
Google has the challenge of building a whole new mission. With billions in the bank and way more employees than are needed to operate a search engine, there is no way they can keep going if they just maintain their current mission. They need to get a whole new mission.
Another challenge they need to get a grip on is a release culture. Up to now, most of their products and services have been in perpetual beta. If they want to expand, they need to get a mentality that sets targets, and makes releases. Right now they look like Netscape did. Their most visible product, the Google search engine, has way more features, many of which are useful, than any competitor. In terms of search quality, though, I think they already fall behind the new MSN search. If all they do is tack more features on and add new beta products they will fall behind. Granted, they have a long time to make it work, with that mountain of cash, but that won't sustain them forever.
Google needs to decide on a new vision that is grand, but reachable with the money they have now. Then they need to execute their new plan successfully. Neither staying where they are, or growing at their current rate, is a viable option. They need big changes. They may well be up to it, but we won't know for certain for a few more years.
"It seems public opinion is a bit fickle."
/.ers will be sure to point out that it is now their obligation to maximize ROI. That's not quite correct. The board of Google is responsible for doing whatever the prospectus said they would do.
Right, we must not waffle or send mexed missages even if presented with new facts.
Google is now a public company. Many
Let's hope that Google continues to change the way things are done. If they become myopic about short-term profits, they will be screwed in the long run.
I've really never understood this difference, usually cited by Americans, between CVs and resumes.
Yeah, I can look in a dictionary for a difference, but this is one of those cases where 'one language, two meanings' really comes into play for the English language. Both words, of course, are not English, but French (resume - OK I can't be bothered to get acutes into slashcode) and Latin (CV ). Both words have been adopted by English common usage, but English does not have an acute on 'e' in its scope so 'resume' [raesumae] cannot be an 'English' word, and CV is just a couple of letters, not a word.
Curriculum Vitae: Loosely translated, this means "course of one's life" [Latin does not translate directly].
Resume: Summary [more or less]
BTW I'm not a great one for direct translation of languages as nuances and subtleties are often lost
But lanaguage is functional. A CV could be a one page document, if one were succinct, a resume could be a summary, but a summary of what (resume with no context means nothing), a document entitled 'John Doe - Resume' surely means a summary of John Doe (if one were to interpret in English), so what is the difference of 'John Doe - CV'?! Defining the difference between the terms is looking for a difference for a difference's sake.
A CV refers to what someone would submit for a job application, as would a resume. Someone would be mad to write a 10 page essay about their life [common interpretation of 'CV'] equally someone would be mad to submit a 2 line summary of their skills and previous position titles [possible interpretation of 'resume']. Drawing a distinction between the two, or saying one is better than the other is folly. I would be interested in what others think, but in the US a resume seems to be a 1-2 page document, a CV a long document, in the UK a CV is a 1-2 page document, the term resume is rarely used, what about Canada, Australia, countries for which English ios a second language?
Basically, adapt your resume/CV/description to what you apply for: list in descending chronological order (with some potential variation of importance), add some 'summary paragraph' that sells yourself near the top, stay relevant. Always include a covering letter.