14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been growing at a fast rate for more than a decade, adding more people in the process. But 2011 will be the biggest year in hires yet, according to Google itself. This indicates that Google plans to add more than 6,000 new jobs, for a total of over 30,000 people by 2012.
"In 2010 we added more than 4,500 Googlers, primarily in engineering and sales: second only to 2007 when we added over 6,000 people to Google," Alan Eustace, SVP Engineering and Research at Google, wrote.
"I love Google because of our people. It's inspiring to be part of the team. And that's why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history," he announced.
Google is not giving an actual figure, it would be hard even if it wanted to, but since 2007 was the biggest year to date, you can expect at least 6,000 new employees this year.
Google finished the year with 24,400, according to its Q4 financial report, so it plans to go over the 30,000 by the end of the year. Of course, Google is always adding new people, so it's not really a surprise.
The real message behind the post is that Google is still a great place to work, despite plenty of more or less anecdotal reports to the contrary. Google boasts that the average number of people per project is 3.5, to highlight the fact that it can still be nimble even with tens of thousands of employees.
"That’s why the vast majority of our people stay with us, building their careers and taking on new challenges within the company," Eustace underlines.
Google also listed some of its big successes of 2010, nothing new, but impressive nonetheless. Chrome now has over 120 million users and there are over 100 million Android devices out there, Google says.