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Google Loses Another Exec - How Many Before Worry Sets In?
VentureBeat is reporting that Salman Ullah, Google’s director of corporate development, has left the company to found a venture firm called Copper River Partners. This comes after the Kevin Scott, VP Engineering moved to AdMob earlier this month. VentureBeat also adds a few other departures:
There’s former Google Health head Adam Bosworth, who left to work on his own startup, the guys behind FriendFeed (who were the first to flirt with the VC dark side), and more big guns going to Facebook: all-star engineer Benjamin Ling recently joined finance/dealmaking wizard Gideon Yu.
In my post about Mr. Scott's departure I noted, "As we see more Google/Yahoo/Microsoft employees heading for startups, it wouldn't surprise me to see trade secret claims popping up over time. This was a major issue in my past roles and if trade secret clauses are not in the employment contracts at the big co's, they soon will be."
One must also wonder about turnover rates creating growth and morale issues. Training new employees takes time and effort. Also as more executives leave for greener pastures (is that possible?!?), will that scare Wall St? Perhaps a topic for the boys at SAI to take a look at. I have seen mass departures during my agency days and morale dropped like a rock for those of us who remained questioning vision and the future of the company. Of course the public departures are few and far between as of now.
It is interesting topic and I think to some companies majors execs leaving does have a negative effect. In Google's case i don't really see the impact being that great. Lets think about this ....you have upwards of 16000 employees, the best and the brightest in the world. I am sure that there are loads of people that are just waiting chomping at the bit to jump in and fill that role. The people that fill these rolls will of course will not be carbon copies of their predecessors but will bring their own ideas and strategies.
I just think that change at the top is a natural healthy thing. It is healthy for the whole tech ecosystem actually. As these bright stars from these mega corps move to smaller startups they either sink or swim with the fate of the venture .... but they bring alot of experience, contacts and ideas with them ..... feeding the ever churning stew of valley startups.
As for people leaving Yahoo .... seems to be a steady exodus of people and I think they are leaving for very different reasons then those from Google. Looking for any life raft off of what many seem to describe as a sinking ship.
Cheers
Scott
Scott - I agree and disagree. Yes, there will be those who want to be at the exec level so they will be fine with the departures. However those in middle-management and normal workers begin to worry first. Now maybe it's not the same at a solid earnings company like Google but I have seen it in some of the largest corporations before. Worry sets in when execs take golden parachutes.
I do agree that Yahoo execs leaving and Google execs leaving mean different things.