GOOGLE said on Tuesday it will hire a record number of people this year, taking on more than 6,000 workers ‘across the board and around the globe.’
The Internet giant added more than 4,500 ‘Googlers’ to its employee ranks in 2010 and plans to easily eclipse that figure this year, Google senior vice-president of engineering and research Alan Eustace said in a blog post.
‘It will be our biggest hiring year in company history,’ he said. ‘We’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science.’ Google’s top hiring year to date was 2007, when the company added 6,000 employees, according to Mr Eustace.
The list of Google projects set to challenge new workers included building a Web-based computer operating system, instantly searching more than 100 million gigabytes of data, and ‘even developing cars that drive themselves.’
‘Google is still the same entrepreneurial company it was when I started, encouraging Googlers to take on big ideas,’ Mr Eustace said, noting that he was hired eight years ago when the firm had barely 500 employees.
Word of the Google hiring blitz and talk of maintaining a startup spark came as co-founder Larry Page prepared to return to the company’s helm in April. While more profitable than ever – with nearly US$30 billion (S$38.4 billion) in revenue last year – Google is under pressure from new rivals such as Facebook and Twitter for the attention of Web surfers, advertising dollars and engineering talent.