by Wendy Tanaka
BURLINGAME, CALIF. -
Everyone wants to work at Google. It's a money machine with a stock
price bouncing around $700. The employees are brilliant and free
organic meals are served every day.
But there is one job the search giant seems to be having a hard time
filling: chief financial officer.
Since August, the Mountain View, Calif., company has been looking for
a replacement for retiring CFO George Reyes. It had expected to
announce a successor by the end of the year. Now "we have no specific
time frame," says spokesman Matt Furman, in an e-mail to Forbes.com.
"George will stay until a successor has been chosen and there has been
time for a smooth transition." The company declined to share any more
information about the search.
Although the prestige of working at Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news -
people ) is phenomenal, top-ranked chief financial officers do not
appear to be lining up for a chance at the CFO spot. Why? Industry
experts offer a few clues.
Clearly the financial incentives for joining Google in 2008 with its
stock price in the stratosphere are less compelling than during its
pre-IPO period when Reyes joined. What's more, the disciplined
personality of most financial officers likely wouldn't fit with
Google's corporate culture, which encourages experimentation and
risk-taking and shrugs at long-term planning. Finally, industry
experts suggest that within the Googleplex, the job of chief financial
officer simply hasn't carried the weight and influence that it does at
many other large companies.
"An incoming CFO isn't going to want a secondary role. He wants a seat
at the table," says Colleen Hulce, an executive vice president and
managing director at executive search firm DHR International. "The CFO
in most companies these days is the right-hand person to the CEO."
This hasn't been the case at Google. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the frontmen and together
they make all the major decisions at the company. Reyes has always
been in the background, speaking primarily in scripted quarterly
earnings calls.
Industry watchers say Google is working with an executive recruitment
firm, possibly Spencer Stuart or Egon Zehnder, to find a new CFO
outside the company. Hulce says this is a normal strategy, but
companies also have executive succession plans and promote from
within. Google, she says, doesn't appear to have this structure in
place. "The investor community watches their every move, and they
don't have a backup CFO or someone to put in as acting CFO," she says.
"It's a signal they haven't been thinking ahead."
The time frame for Google's search also surprised recruiters. The
company hoped it could find a new CFO in a few months. Hulce says it
takes at least six months. Another recruiter says Google should not
have given a due date. "It's always dangerous for anyone to say,
'We'll have a CFO by X date,' " he says.
One tech industry CFO says that Google likely isn't for a lot of
financial officers, even though working for the company has
extraordinary cachet. "Wild and crazy stuff isn't what CFOs gravitate
to," he says. "We get to predict things and control things, and that's
hard at a place that's growing like a weed."
He also notes that the CFO has the unpopular task of being the company
disciplinarian--a particularly unsavory task in a spirited, and
indulgent, environment. "I'm going to be the corporate bad guy," he
says. "CFOs are supposed to say, 'Damn it, you have to follow the
rules.' The CFO takes away the punch bowl."
It's not clear why Reyes is leaving but there's little financial
reason for him to stay.
He saw Google through its highly anticipated IPO in 2004 and
extraordinary growth. That means he has collected stock options now
worth more than $200 million.
Prior to joining Google in 2002 as its first CFO, Reyes was interim
CFO at optical networking company ONI Systems and he had held various
finance jobs at Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ).
Schmidt, who had worked with Reyes at Sun, reportedly recruited Reyes
to Google.
Only qualified candidates need apply.