Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Steve Vinter, site manager of the company’s new Cambridge location, met with several members of the press last week to discuss the Kendall Square location, which opened about 18 months ago and employs just over 200 engineers and sales people. In the next couple of months, Vinter told reporters, Google will be “growing aggressively.”
What jobs will be available?
Vinter: We’ll be hiring [on] both the sales side and the engineering side. … In general, Google hires generalists, we try not to hire specialists for software engineering. This site has really only been in place for two and a half years, so effectively we’re just a startup that has the good fortune of working for a much larger company.
What made Google want to come to Boston? Did you see the city as having any advantages that other cities do not?
Schmidt: Well, first place, we like cities and in the second is we like cities with extremely good technical universities. … [A] whole bunch of successful hi-tech startups have come out of Cambridge.
If you want to phrase it as a negative, why are more Googles in California than in Boston?
Schmidt: I think it’s a somewhat unfair question because if you think about it, the biotech revolution … occurred physically within a mile from here. So it may just have been just an act of randomness. But I see no reason why you couldn’t have a very large, very global company and IT headquarters here, and I would do it in Cambridge.
