An great employee is a valuable asset to a company, more so if you're a great software engineer at Google. According to Tom Foremski of Memeburn, "Competition for software engineers is incredibly intense and Silicon Valley firms are pulling out all the stops to recruit and retain top talent."

Because of this tough competition, Google came up with an idea of recruiting and retaining its software engineers. "What if a perk of working at a company was that it extended your life?" teased Todd Carlisle, Google's director of staffing, at a recent Commonwealth Club Inforum event. He added that people would likely never leave the company and be incredibly loyal.

From the looks of things, Google was really planning on heading to that direction. Ray Kurzweil was hired by the company last year. Kurzweil was a proponent of Singularity. Singularity was an idea that predicted life extension technologies will extend lives indefinitely. In fact, Google's recruitment slogan said, "Come work at Google and live longer. It's a Singular Experience!"

Google pays its software engineers big bucks. According to Business Insider, its senior software engineer has a salary of US$139,084, its software research engineer US$116,593, and its software engineer US$103,436.