Uber Poaches Talent from Silicon Valley--and Wall St.

Uber’s poaching spree continues as the multibillion-dollar company has snatched away a second executive from Google Maps, Manik Gupta.

Gupta will become the popular ride-share company’s director of products for maps. He will be reunited with Brian McClendon, who previously led the development of Google Maps and Google Earth and now serves as Uber’s vice president of advanced technologies.

According to TechCrunch, Gupta made the announcement over Linkedin.

In his new position, Gupta will be a main part of the driving force behind Uber’s attempts to improve its location and mapping technology by building out its own algorithms and maps instead of relying on third-party services such as Google Maps and other companies.

Uber’s ability to lure major talent away from big-name companies is becoming legion. The New York Post reports that just last month, three Goldman Sachs technology investment bankers in San Francisco left their cushy positions at the world-renowned firm for positions at the ride share startup. They reportedly found Uber’s more flexible hours, stock options and share grants to be appealing.

Flexibility might be the key incentive for these bankers. Recruiters revealed to the Post that a vp at a Wall Street investment bank can get paid $500,000, including bonus, while a mid-level corporate development employee at a technology company like Uber might earn closer to $200,000.

TechCrunch also reports that “earlier this year, Uber also acquired assets from Microsoft Bing, including 100 employees who handle data and image collection and bought a mapping tech startup called deCarta to improve services like UberPOOL and how it calculates estimated-time-of-arrivals.”

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