The battle for talent in the tech industry has taken a strategic turn in 2025. According to data revealed by CNBC, Google is strengthening its artificial intelligence (AI) teams by bringing back familiar faces. Roughly 20% of the software engineers hired this year to work in AI are “boomerang employees” — a term used to describe workers who left the company in the past and have now decided to return.
A company spokesperson confirmed these figures, also noting a significant increase in the number of researchers joining from direct competitors compared to last year. The main reason behind this trend appears to be the unmatched technical capacity of the Mountain View giant.
John Casey, Google’s head of compensation, explained internally that engineers are drawn by the company’s strong financial resources and, most importantly, its massive computing infrastructure — essential for training and deploying today’s cutting-edge AI models.
From Mass Layoffs to a Talent Comeback
Ironically, the same pool of talent Google is now benefiting from partly emerged after the company’s historic layoffs in early 2023, when Alphabet dismissed 12,000 employees.
In a competitive job market driven by rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta — all fighting for top hires — Google is playing its strongest cards: stability and virtually unlimited resources. While smaller startups may offer excitement, they often lack the technical depth and infrastructure that Google provides.
The company’s aggressive hiring strategy has reached its highest corporate levels. According to sources close to the matter, co-founder Sergey Brin has personally contacted key candidates to persuade them to rejoin the team — a tactic similar to the one used by Mark Zuckerberg at Meta.
This wave of returns includes high-profile cases such as Noam Shazeer, who came back to DeepMind after his time at Character.AI. While competitors continue to offer huge signing bonuses, Google is betting on renewed momentum with products like Gemini 3, hoping to attract the best engineers back “home.”
