A first for everything: Google shrunk in 2009
If you thought that Google (GOOG) was immune to the sluggish economy in 2009, think again. Buried deep in the 10-K that the company filed late Friday was an interesting disclosure: Google’s headcount actually shrunk in 2009 for the first time since the company has been public (and most likely for the first time ever, given Google’s growth spurt).
In the filing, the company disclosed that it had 19,835 employees at the end of 2009, compared with 20,222 at the end of 2008. That’s a modest drop of just under 2%, but a drop all the same. Digging into the numbers a bit more, it looks like the bulk of the cuts were made in sales and marketing, which makes sense, given the current economy. Just to put this into more perspective, the number of research and development employees actually rose slightly in 2009 to 7,443 from 7,254 in 2008.
Of course, in 2009 Google had a number of high-profile executive departures, including Tim Armstrong, who left to become CEO of AOL (AOL) and Dick Costolo, the former Feedburner executive who left to join Twitter as Chief Operating Officer.
It’s hard to tell from the filing whether these losses were voluntary — people leaving for start-ups, for example — or part of some organized downsizing on Google’s part. But last spring, the WSJ reported that Google executives were so concerned about a brain drain that they had designed an algorithm to figure out which of its 20,000 employees were most likely to leave. In the WSJ article, Google Human Resources manager Laszlo Block told the paper that the algorithm can “get inside people’s heads even before they know they might leave.”
Image source: Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
|
Posted in Tags: 10Ks, Google, new disclosures |
 7 Comments » |
RSS
February 17th, 2010 at 7:49 am
“Buried deep in the 10-K…” LOL, the layoffs were widely announced, including by Google themselves. You make it sound like this is news.
February 17th, 2010 at 8:01 am
@perry: I’ve seen stories like this one about the 200 layoffs in sales and marketing, but those same stories talked about hiring in other places. Maybe I’ve missed it in my search, but I haven’t seen a story that says total headcount for 2009 fell. Send me the link if I did.
February 17th, 2010 at 11:27 am
Merrill could use that algorithm.
After Mandala produced fake pay stubs and tax forms to substantiate his bogus claims about his Maxim work, Merrill hired him on April 24, the DA said.
On the same day, Merrill loaned him $780,000 as an incentive — an amount that would have been forgiven on a prorated basis if he stayed there for eight years.
After depositing the money into his parents’ bank account, Mandala went hog wild.
A week later, he withdrew $245,580 to buy a red 2006 Ferrari in the name of his dad, the indictment charges. “Over the next two months, Mandala frequently did not show up at his new job and brought in only two or three clients with assets of about $20,000,” the DA said.
On June 29, Mandala resigned via e-mail and asked Merrill Lynch to throw out his personal effects, the DA said. Among them were credit cards obtained in the name of Carlos Gomes — the dad of Mandala’s girlfriend — which the broker had allegedly used to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/liar_conned_firm_peeled_out_with_Bv0mEwO8Dn9LdCRCUhH8MM#ixzz0foM4COYd
February 17th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
What about the contractors? Google, like most tech companies, is notorious for hiring contractors and not reporting them in their “employee” count. Given how much companies are moving to temporary labor these days, it would be more interesting to see how Google’s total employees+contractors number has changed over the years.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:31 am
They need to hire someone who knows how to make their search engine malware-resistant.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:27 am
http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/market/23223-more-job-cuts-ahead-at-google
February 18th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Thanks, Perry, for the link.