Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has snapped up Bay Area talent for years, first as an executive at Sun Microsystems Inc., then as CEO of computer maker Novell Inc. and now as the 54-year-old boss at Google.
The hiring has been particularly fast and furious at the Internet search giant, which has grown to more than 19,600 employees world-wide. Roughly a third of those workers live in the Bay Area, according to Google.
Google recruits from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, among other places, and has set off hiring wars with rivals such as Microsoft Corp. Now Google is poised to beef up its work force again as the tech industry comes out of a recession and workers remain plentiful amid high unemployment rates in Silicon Valley.
WSJ: Google's Schmidt on What Sets Silicon Valley Apart
