Growth In High Gear: Google Hiring, Building Like Crazy

Against the backdrop of continuing gains in market share and revenue growth, which could see Google make $30 billion this year, the company is adding employees and physical space at a perhaps unprecedented rate. Reuters reports that Google has more than 2,000 open positions around the world.

The world’s largest Internet search engine, whose finance chief told investors in September that the Internet industry was waging a “war for talent,” has job openings listed for 2,076 positions on its website, according to a Reuters tally on Thursday.

Filling these roles would boost Google headcount to more than 25,000. By contrast, Microsoft employs more than 88,000 people around the globe.

Recently internal Google documents indicated that the company is giving its employees 10 percent raises this year as part of a retention and satisfaction initiative. The company has been trying to prevent high profile defections to rival Facebook. Many of Facebook’s key personnel were at Google in the past. Most recently the company saw the loss of Google Wave co-founder Lars Rasmussen to Facebook (his picture and bio are still up on the Google site).

I was told by a former Google employee that the 10 percent raise figure, leaked to the press, doesn’t reflect higher percentage increases (of perhaps up to 40 percent) that are going to some senior employees (except the leadership trinity). However this is hearsay and unconfirmed.

A separate report in the Mercury News details Google’s ambitious expansion plans around its headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google currently owns or leases office space that covers more than 4 million square feet in the immediate area. And now Google is planning to build another major campus on a NASA/federal air base about five miles to the south.

The new facility would apparently add more than 1 million more square feet to Google’s real estate holdings. It will come with a gym, day car facility — and employee housing:

At Ames, a 2008 lease between Planetary Ventures and NASA says the company plans to build sports, fitness and day care facilities as well as housing that would comprise up to 15 percent of the new campus, or 180,000 square feet.

While the rest of California and the US struggle with high unemployment and a very sluggish economy, Silicon Valley companies face a new “war for talent” (in the words of Google’s CFO) regarding the most desired engineers and tech executives.