Talent Neuron Weekly Digest

May 9th 2013

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TIER-II LOCATIONS ASSESSMENT IN CHINA

China - New Visa To Lure Tech Talent

China plans to issue multiple-entry five year visas to attract foreign talent to the country. The country will grant two new types of visa i.e. R1 and R2 to foreign professionals. A R1 visa will ensure residency rights whereas R2 will allow multiple entry and exits to the country allowing the professional to stay for a maximum of 6 months. Through this new visa program, China intends to attract highly skilled mid-level technical talent.

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City Spotlight - Berlin

Berlin is emerging as a startup hotspot in Europe. In 2012, more than 100 internet startups in Berlin received VC funding. This vibrant startup ecosystem has led to the availability of highly skilled talent for Software Product Development. Cloud & Web Technologies, Java and Automation Testing are some of the key skills available in the city. Universities in Berlin produce over 7,500 fresh graduates annually capable of working in the software domain. Recently, Amazon has setup its cloud development center in Berlin and Dresden. The center will focus on supporting the AWS cloud services including operating systems, management tools and machine learning technologies. The center is expected to hire over 70 engineers in the next 12 months.

Key Acquisitions
Yahoo acquired Astrid, a mobile based social productivity app. This acquisition is expected to strengthen Yahoos mobile platform for personalized applications. Box of Awesome acquired Swapit, a site which allows children to trade items, to form a new company SuperAwesome. Swapit also has an ad network with a target audience of 7.3 million users. With this acquisition the newly formed company SuperAwesome is expected to become the largest discovery platform for kids and teens in UK.

Organization Restructuring - Talent Opportunities

In the first quarter of 2013 Cisco reduced its workforce by 500 employees. These layoffs are a part of the organization wide global restructuring plan to save USD 1 billon. In 2012, Cisco reduced about 2% (or 1,300

jobs) of its workforce. HP closed its site in Russelsheim, Germany, laying off 850 employees. This comes as a part of its service business restructuring plan. The laid off employees have been provided with an opportunity to apply for jobs at other company sites in Germany.

Employee Benefits Taxable?

The US government (IRS) is considering taxing employee perks such as free meals provided by technology companies such as Google, Facebook and others. If the policy is implemented then free meals could be considered as part of an employees taxable income. Companies have been offering benefits like free meals, haircuts, massages and yoga classes to attract top talent.

Executive Talent Pool Movement

Google hired Mr. Noah Falstein, a veteran games designer, as its Chief Game Designer. Mr. Falstein has previously worked with 3DO, LucasArts and DreamWorks Interactive. Prior to Google, he was managing his own consulting firm, The Inspiracy. Quora hired Mr. John Hegeman, Director of Engineering for Ads at Facebook. In his new role, Mr.Hegeman will lead the development of Quoras next wave of features such as reviews and blogging platform. Intels COO Mr. Brian Krzanich has been appointed as the companys new CEO. As, Intels COO, he was responsible for worldwide manufacturing, IT and HR functions.

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University Trends
Rackspace Hosting partnered with The University of Texas, San Antonio to design and deploy a hybrid cloud platform based on Open Stack technologies. The new cloud platform will enable students to run advanced Big Data computations in areas such as energy exploration, aircraft design and bioinformatics. Three of Kenyas top universities Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Riara University and Strathmore University have entered into collaboration with IBM to create new advanced training programs. Through these programs, students will receive training in key skills such as analytics, big data, cloud and cyber security.