HEY, it's not rocket science. And it's not brain surgery. But if your background is in either, you're welcome to take a shot and apply at Google. The company's employees include a former rocket scientist and a former brain surgeon.
Mostly, Google has concentrated on recruiting those with a background in what you would expect: computer science. Founded by two near-Ph.D.'s who have purposely placed Ph.D.'s throughout the company, Google encourages all employees to act as researchers, by spending 20 percent of their time on new projects of their own choosing.
As we take our seats in the Coliseum to watch the latest challenger go up against mighty Microsoft, handicappers will see that Google has two advantages, one of which it has disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission: washing machines are provided at the company for employee use. The other, it has not: with a Ph.D.-centered culture, Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have assembled the industry's most unorthodox portfolio of human capital since Microsoft began intense recruiting of computer science majors at top undergraduate schools in the 1980's.
Microsoft has 56,000 employees, but its research group, with 700, is separate. Google has 1,900 employees, and no separate research group, so all 1,900, effectively, are charged to "boldly go where no one has gone before" (its words). You have to like Google's chances.
Employee motivation is tied to sundry conveniences and happy stomachs, or so it would seem. When Google filed its initial public offering plans in April, it enumerated employee benefits like those washing machines, free meals and doctor visits at company offices. It warned prospective investors to "expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time."
Moving in the opposite direction, Microsoft said last month that it was making some minor cuts in benefits, rankling employees, who are as aware as anyone of the $50 billion sitting in the corporate treasury.
It's no contest: Google is going to win a battle of benefits, what with its on-site gym, on-site dentist and on-site celebrity chef who previously served the Grateful Dead.
Yet none of that matters, really. What trumps all else is Google's willingness to organize the entire company around the insight that top talent likes to work with other top talent, tackling interesting problems of their own choice. It's the same reason that some computer science students complete a master's degree and then persevere for three to five more years for a doctorate. It entails deep original research for a dissertation, while subsisting on a meager fellowship that allows for a celebrity chef only like Colonel Sanders.
Rajeev Motwani, a computer science professor at Stanford, says: "Good Ph.D. students are extreme in their creativity and self-motivation. Master's students are equally smart but do not have the same drive to create something new." The master's takes you where others have been; the doctorate, where no one has gone before.
Until recently, when computer science students completed their long Ph.D. training and stepped into daylight, they were treated warily by industry employers. American business has had to overcome its longtime suspicion of intellect. "Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men," an article published in the 1920's in the American magazine, is a typical specimen of an earlier era. In modern times, computer scientists are hired, but a doctorate can still be viewed as the sign of a character defect, its holder best isolated in an aerie.
Xerox famously put together a dream team of computer scientists in the 1970's, placed it on a hill in Palo Alto, Calif., and received, in short order, the modern easy-to-use personal computer and the laser printer. Unfortunately, neither the researchers nor Xerox corporate had any idea how to bring these creations to market, and the experiment was a business failure.
全球半导体行业下半年增长减缓
较早时间，韩国的三星股票出现了近4周以来的最大跌幅，日本的东京电子(Tokyo Electron )也出现下滑。德意志银行分析师Fumiaki Sato认为，今年下半年全球对半导体和液晶显示器的需求会下降。
Semiconductor-related shares slid worldwide amid expectations that rising interest rates in the United States would slow economic growth and as two brokerage firms advised investors to trim their holdings of chip shares.
STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies and ASML Holding declined in Europe after UBS lowered its rating on the chip industry to neutral from overweight. UBS forecast lower demand for chips.
Earlier, Samsung Electronics in South Korea had its biggest decline in four weeks and Tokyo Electron slid in Japan as a Deutsche Bank analyst, Fumiaki Sato, said he expected demand for chips and liquid-crystal displays to slow in the second half.
The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index in Europe fell 0.1 percent. The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific index, which tracks more than 900 stocks, slid 1 percent.
Standard & Poor's/TSX composite index, in Canada, added 0.1 percent, with technology shares limiting gains.
Concern that economic growth will slow heightened after the Federal Reserve Bank presidents, Jack Guynn and William Poole, joined the chairman, Alan Greenspan, this week in signaling that central bankers are ready to raise interest rates faster than investors expect to quell inflation.
In Europe, benchmark indexes fell in 9 of the 17 Western European markets. The DAX index, in Germany, slipped 0.2 percent. The CAC 40, in France, dropped 0.3 percent. The FTSE 100, in Britain, lost 0.1 percent.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 stock average shed 0.4 percent, while the Taiex index, in Taiwan, dropped 2.3 percent. The Kospi index, in South Korea, slipped 3.9 percent. The benchmarks slipped after government reports showed consumer and manufacturers' confidence declining.
United States exchanges were closed yesterday for the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan.
