former Google staff occupy key posts in areas essential to Google’s
People with expertise in an area continue to work in that area. Amazing.
There's absolutely nothing mind-boggling in any way here, since all the information completely lacks context. OK, 22 people who used to work for the White House now work for Google. How many government staff are there in total? How many now work for other companies? What time scale are we looking at anyway? Without some idea of both the scale and how this compares to other companies this is just a meaningless jumble of numbers.
Of course, some of those numbers are easily available. For example, Google has in the region of 50,000 employees. Over the last decade that means they must have had something like 70-100k in total, depending on churn. And we're supposed to worry that just 60 of them now work in government roles? The government being one of the largest employers in the country, with an obvious need for the same skills and knowledge that tech companies need. I wouldn't be in any way surprised or concerned if that number was an order of magnitude higher.
Or what about those 5 ex-Google employees who now work at the state department. That would be the state department with 69,000 employees? And only 5 used to work at Google? And we're supposed to be somehow shocked and worried about this? Oh, sorry, that's not actually 5 ex-Google staff anyway, but 5 people who might have had some association with Google at some point including maybe having worked for a law firm used by Google in some capacity.
And that "associated in some capacity" is even more relevant for the other direction. 171 staff haven't actually left the government to join Google. Since they're including lobbyists, that presumably includes the 81 out of 102 lobbyists hired by Google in 2014 who previously worked for the government. Assuming the trend holds for other years, that means that pretty much the whole category consists of lobbyists and not Google employees at all. And anyone surprised that people with knowledge of government workings are favoured as lobbyists is simply an idiot, since that's the whole bloody point.
This really is one of the most pathetic attempts at smearing I've ever had the misfortune to see. There are plenty of entirely sensible things Google can be criticised for, such as being one of the biggest spenders on lobbying in the US. But having less than 100 people out of tens of thousands of employees and even more "associates" who happen to get some kind of government job after leaving Google? And hiring lobbyists who actually know what they're doing? With no indication of how it compares to any other company? How can anyone possibly think this is any kind of meaningful "revelation"?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
