Google's life-extension venture is part of a strategy to lock-in the best talent
Imagine if you had a choice: work at a company for a decent salary and benefits, or work at a company with decent salary, benefits, and the opportunity to live longer?
The latter offer is the one that Google will eventually be able to make thanks to its investment in life extending technologies venture Calico. And it has said that such a job offer is possible.
Earlier this year I attended a Commonwealth Club event focused on the strategies local tech companies use to attract top talent.
Representatives from Google, Twitter, and Cisco Systems spoke about their recruitment tactics and the perks and other incentives they use to get, and retain, the talent they need. Doug MacMillan, reporter for Bloomberg BusinessWeek moderated the panel: Melissa Daimler, Head of Organizational Effectiveness and Learning, at Twitter; Rowan Trollope, Senior VP and GM of Collaboration Technology Group, at Cisco Systems; and Todd Carlisle, Director of Staffing at Google.
Mr. Carlisle said, what if where you worked resulted in you being able to live a lot longer? "You might never leave the company," he said.
It is the ultimate work benefit, more valuable than free gourmet lunches, or free rides to work.
And the value of a highly talented software engineer is greater the greater your platform. Because their work is easily scaled across the entire platform.
If life extension technologies mean that Google can hire the best engineers in the world then it is worth it, because in addition to being able to scale their work the most efficiently across its global platform — the competition doesn't have them.
Google keeps a lot of engineers "on the bench" simply to deny them to competitors.
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