« Barney speaking at U. Washington | Main | Information Week on The Ultimate Search Engine »

May 28, 2007

Powerset's Nitay Joffe in New York Times today

In Fierce Competition, Google Finds Novel Ways to Feed Hiring Machine - New York Times

The New York Times today features an article about the fierce competition for talent in the high-tech industry. Powerset engineer Nitay Joffe (see photo) is quoted in the article as having turned down Google to join Powerset:

All three companies say their toughest recruiting challenges come from start-ups, who snap up people like Nitay Joffe.

Mr. Joffe, who had summer internships at Google for the last two years, expected to go to work there. But before Mr. Joffe, a recent computer engineering graduate of the University of California, San Diego, accepted a job, a friend suggested he check out a San Francisco start-up, Powerset, which is trying to build a rival search engine.

“Powerset had everything that Google had in terms of what I was looking for — smart people, interesting projects, great amenities,” Mr. Joffe said. Powerset also had one thing Google could not offer: the potential to strike it rich with the Internet equivalent of a lottery ticket.

“When you get a stock option at 5 cents and it goes to $50 ...,” Mr. Joffe said, before his voice trailed off. With Google’s shares hovering around $480, it no longer offers the same potential. “Google isn’t going to $4,000,” said Mr. Joffe, who began working at Powerset recently.

The article omitted one of Nitay's key reasons for join Powerset, in addition to the potential startup stock value. He was really excited about making a huge difference to the company, as opposed to being one of 10,000 people at a big company like Google. And this has certainly come true -- he is working on the very core of our system and is now central to the company!


Posted by barney at May 28, 2007 1:35 PM

This entry was posted in the following categories: Powerset

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.barneypell.com/blog/mt-tb.cgi/90

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?