Google Hiring in Austin
In a June 6th job posting, Google says it is looking for a highly technical engineering director who can drive technical projects and provide leadership for a group of 100+ engineers in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
No this is not my April 1 posting.
Google spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger confirms that Austin offers an incredible lifestyle merging Texas and technology. There’s no question that Google could probably have their pick of talented engineers in Austin. There is a definite lack of high profile web players in Austin (leaders like Google, eBay, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc just don’t seem to get founded in lil’ ole Austin Texas). If I were a technology manager I’d be worried about retention if Google opens up a 100 person office here.
The burning question is what area of technology would such a group focus on? Could it be the next Google Docs and Spreadsheets development team? Is there an acquisition in the making somewhere in town that they would like to expand with rapid hiring? Or is this ad just a technique to lure a handful of Austin engineers to the silicon valley?
Only time will tell.
Filed under: News
Austin is not a web town, and it’s not even really much of a software town. Probably Google wants a branch here because there’s plenty of smart people who want to live here (or who are already here and don’t want to move). They seem to be hiring the same way they’re gathering other kinds of organizable data: just hoover it all up and figure out what to do with it eventually.