Google Plans to Hire 2,000+ Worldwide; Salaries Revealed

Earlier this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that “people are dying to come and work here,” and that media reports of people abandoning the company for Facebook and other start-ups were “fundamentally wrong.”

Need proof? Google is currently looking to hire 2,076 people to its 23,300 employees globally as of yesterday. Most of the positions are in engineering and sales, with half in the U.S.

“We’ve been ramping up our hiring and the number of open jobs over the course of the last year,” Google spokesman Jordan Newman told Reuters.

In the war for talent, Google interestingly is still considered the favorite among college students, especially among engineering majors, according to Brian Heifferon, COO of Aftercollege, which tries to help connect students with companies they hope to work for after graduation.

“We’re seeing some pretty clear sentiments when it comes to who students would prefer to work for,” he told TechCrunch. “Google is #1, by a wide margin. Facebook is currently ranked #7.”

Google is also trying hard to keep its talent in-house, recently giving all Googlers a 10 percent raise.

A report on CNBC has revealed that the average pay for engineers at Google is $98,800. Facebook engineers on average made $110,500, and Yahoo engineers made $102,000 per year. However, Google also handed out bigger bonuses:

According to Glassdoor.com, Facebook employees rated their company the highest (4.6 out of 5); while Google employees rated their satisfaction level at 3.9 (Yahoo was at 3.3).

Another interesting note about the ongoing Silicon Valley talent war: back in September, to avoid a Justice Department antitrust suit, Google agreed to end so-called “no-poaching” agreements, which held down wages because tech companies had secretly agreed not to lure way each other’s employees. So perhaps, in part, Google workers can thank the Justice Department for their raises.