Google Building Tech Center Near Portland

jdray writes "It seems that everyone's favorite search powerhouse, Google, is building a tech center in The Dalles, Oregon. About 45 minutes by interstate highway from Portland, The Dalles is a small, economically depressed city near the world-famous Columbia River Gorge. The $60,000 average annual salary of Google employees is about double the average for Wasco county. With all the outdoor sports (windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing) in the area, sports-minded geeks should be flocking to apply for a job at the new facility."

Welcome to GoogleRecruiting.com

[HarryCaul]

Formerly known as slashdot.

Seriously guys, it's getting to be a bit much.

Google is a company with a nice product. That's about it.

Re:$60,000 isn't that much

[mtrichardson]

It is in a place like The Dalles...

Tired: Outsourcing Wired: Insourcing

[imperious_rex]

This is just more proof of an under-reported trend in IT: insourcing. Google gets cheap(er) labor AND avoids bad PR from outsourcing to some foreign locale known for cheap labor. $60k annual for IT work is almost a joke in the Bay Area, but it's Big Bux in rural areas like the Dalles (Hell, even I don't make that much. Hmmmmmm...maybe I should consider getting a job there, despite my aversion to rural living)

Re:Expect more of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if investing in The Dalles area would really qualify as Rural Outsourcing. In any case though, $60K is probably still a lot of money if you compare to places like India and China. Is it not a little weird that companies like Google and Skype are not moving all their operations overseas? The nature of their businesses makes it really easy to operate from any location in the globe. It should be much harder for a manufacturing shop to move overseas because of all the logistics involved. If this is indeed the case though, why do we still see companies like Google and Skype operating from Europe an USA when it would be much cheaper to do so from elsewhere? Maybe their decisions could point to some pitfalls of the outsourcing model.

Re:Ideal location for geeks

[ergo98]

Moving to some remote location to work for one specific employer, with no other viable employment in the region, sounds like a crazy plan. Once you're there, have a family and some roots, Google has the capability of turning the screws until you bleed [google.ca].

There will come a time, possibly in the not so distant future, when Google is Just Another Employee, and they're battling for survival amongst a wide range of contenders [msn.com] to the throne. Suddenly they're not giving out raises, or asking for salary concessions, and the game room and free gym membership are closed down...

Re:why?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Those jobs won't be doing sexy things. The only reason you put a facility in the middle of nowhere is because it's cheap in terms of space. Skilled labor is virtually nonexistant and relocation expensive... ... Nevermind the locals are going to hate you because you're making twice what they are and you're "some city kid", etc.

Portland is full of skilled labor, and from the Portland burbs, The Dalles is very commutable. The quality of life in The Dalles is quite high as more and more yuppies bail out of Portland for more rural and livable areas. The Dalles is not the same town it was 20 years ago. Also, Oregonians are much more progressive than you seem to imply. You've never been here, I cam tell.

Re:$60,000 isn't that much

[goober1473]

Anyone considered that the move is to reduce costs? In the UK anywhere near London carries a huge cost to employees in housing etc, where as the north of England is much cheaper. With these kind of underlying cost cuts google could be looking to cut the staffing budget.

Re:What about Texas? (Re:the south)

[1lus10n]

Texas is considered to be in the midwest. I know this because I live in South Carolina, which is part of the south, ask a southerner about texas. They react nearly has appaled as they do about california.

There are no major tech companies in the south because of two things:

1. There are no major tech schools, as such there is no major talent pool to draw from.

2. There is no need. Since there are no major tech schools or major tech companies the need for tech people and tech companies is minimal. Hence the market demand isnt there and there is not company that will move into an area where it is likely to fail.

Its getting better in some places. North Carolina has a fairly large amount of tech people and tech companies and atlanta is coming along nicely as well (do believe they have a google center IIRC) but generally places like Myrtle Beach, Wilmington, Savannah, Nashville, Mobile etc etc just dont have the market to support it. Not size really ... consumer demand combined with available resources like major bandwidth and tech people to fill needs.

Re:Hopefully desks, not servers

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Columbia river flood plain

And it's flooded how many times in the last 50 years? The dams to more than gennerate power.

In an earthquake zone

Much less then LA or the Bay area.

Not far from the Umatilla chemical weapons depot

Ummm.. yea. Like 120 miles from it. This is quite a stretch.

And the big one: we're overdue for the every-300-year Cascadian subduction zone tsunami event, which will roll right up the Columbia river. And there are dams both West and East of the Dalles...

I highly doubt that any tsunami, even one 10 times the strength of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami could go that far up the Columbia. The Dalles is 160-180 miles up river from the Pacific Ocean. It'd have to make a right angle turn to the south at Longview, a right angle turn to the east at Portland, and then funnel up the fairly narrow gorge past Cascade Locks and Hood River. This is fiction. I'd imagine that Salem would be at a greater risk of tsunami then The Dalles.

Re:I grew up in The Dalles

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Most high school kids would describe where they live as 'a depressing shitholes'. That's the way teenagers are. It does not say much about the town, since most teenagers wish to flee their depressing lives for the "excitement" of The City.

Re:$60,000 isn't that much

[Peter Cooper]

The other cool thing about England is that some cheaper towns can almost rival London in terms of culture and will offer a better quality of life. Manchester is my favourite example, I know a few people (myself included) who call it "London Up North". Newcastle is also getting better, though I don't think it's quite there yet.

Re:$60,000 isn't that much

[plalonde2]

This idea that rural sourcing is good for employees is a fallacy.

An anectode: a friend of mine was offered two faculty positions, one in a rural setting and one in a large city. The salary was a little higher in the large city. When the rural school argued "but homes here cost only $100k, but they cost $300k in the city" my friend answered: "then it's clear, I must accept the position in the city". "But why?" "Because in 20 years I'll have a $300k home, while in your town I'll be worth $100k plus some gadgets".

If you can, spend your young years paying into a more expensive home, even (especially?) at some hardship to yourself. Your future self will have a substantially higher net worth in 10 years when comes time to relocate. Then you can go either to the country, or to an expensive city. But you can pretty much *never* move to the city from the country without starting another deep mortgage later in life.

Re:$$$: Motivation for The Dalles, Oregon

[burns210]

Well Oregon, though some don't know it, is extremely well engineered for anything networking related. We have a lot of fiber laid down, designed for redundant links to the 'major' cities throughout the state, so for Google, there is a lot of bandwidth they can tap into, without having to worry about digging holes.

Re:Expect more of this

[0ptimus]

I think the benefit of companies operating in major urban areas is fairly obvious: their employees want things to do besides work [gasp]. I'm not sure about you, but if all I had to do after work and on the weekends is stare at some cows wandering by, I'd get pretty bored and my work would certainly suffer because of it.

Urban areas attract better talent because the employee actually likes being there. Also, because there is a larger pool of talent in urban areas, it is significantly easier to recruit new talent to your company. If one person decides to leave, there is a whole pool of people in the area with similar talents and skills.

Could be much worse

[SleepyHappyDoc]

I'll take Oregon over Mumbai, India. At least they're staying domestic.

Re:Welcome to GoogleRecruiting.com

[Brockeolus]

I wouldn't dispute the fact that they get a disproportionate amount of coverage on slashdot, but to be fair I think Google is more than just a company with a "nice product." They have shown that it is possible to make money with innovative products while adhering to a code of ethics [google.com]. Whatever may underlie this appearance, they at least seem to be a model of good-faith business practices.

Re:Welcome to GoogleRecruiting.com

[ergo98]

If you think Google is mainly about "web apps that do typeahead", you know very little about them.

I realize that some people are blinded by their Google-awe, and in this case it led you to skip over the clear fact that my post actually said "Search and...". Hey, let's not let facts get in the way of our zealotry, right? If you don't think that Google is 99% about search, then you're beyond the point of any hope.

Google is not a special snowflake. The only reason Google rose to the ranks of low-level geek herodom is because they entered a market that many others were doing pretty well (when Google entered the market Excite was easily as competent at search, albeit their massive clutterfactory of an interface didn't make them the kiddy fans. OMG EXCITE@HOME! ), but Google brought a new, minimalist interface, and a business model to go along with it, as opposed to the massive cost-sinks of AltaVista/Excite. Wow. Sign me up.

Re:Welcome to GoogleRecruiting.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Far from it. This guy [russellbeattie.com] ended up passing on a Google interview. I have to admit the google hype is getting to me too. Desktop Search -- does anyone really use? It's not for linux for one, so that rules me out.

And what was with Google jerking around that blogger guy? First they told him to take down his blog, so he did. A few days, after the blogsphere freaked out, Eric & Larry where worried about "looking evil" (never mind acting) and told him it put it back up after being edit by Google, which, again, he did. Then a few days latter, the freakin' fired him anyway!

And why? Because he leaked company information in the form of "we've got some great products coming out & are going to have a great year!" Either that or they didn't like him pointing out that every "perk" they provide is targeted at keeping people at work. ANd when it came to things outside work -- such as healthcare -- they're mediocre at best. (Also with they claim to hire the top 1% but only offer salaries at the 50% range.)

Now they've taken over the Firefox homepage and, oh, and then teased the world with gmail, making it look like some exclusive frat, then the fucked up dejanews (which they had "rebranded" to google groups), and all along the way refusing to discuss blocks of "uncompliant information" in China.

So work there for what? To watch the people lucky enough to have signed on before the IPO buy their BMWs and new houses while I continue to drive a piece of shit? Because when I type a few words into an text input field it's show me a couple of webpages and a bunch of ads?

Pardon my french, but fuck that.

Re:$60,000 isn't that much

[ahdeoz]

In 20 years your $300K home will be worth $150K (and you'll still have $150K to pay for it. So you'll end up having to pay the bank when the government reclaims your property as part of some urban renewal scheme to give a billionaire a new parking lot. My $100K home will be worth $2M and so will the the second home I bought with the extra money I had. I'll have another $300K in the bank from the money I've saved by not paying interest, but by then it'll just barely be enough to put my kids through college.