What is the Zelcast alumni map?

A public map of where engineers go next, company by company: for each of 515 companies it shows where people came from, where they went, how long they stayed, how many went on to found something or join a startup, and the median Eng Scorer caliber of its people. It is built from 144,786 jobs across 26,572 engineers.

Does the alumni map show individual people?

No. Every number is an aggregate over at least twenty people, destinations with fewer than three people are folded into totals, and no names appear anywhere on the map.

How is a move counted?

A move from company A to company B is counted when a person's next role at a different company starts within 24 months of their role at A ending. Overlapping advisory or board roles are not counted as moves.

Where do the people actually go?

144,786 jobs across 26,572 engineers, drawn company to company. Pick a company and see who came and who went.

Not the whole industry: this is the engineers in the Zelcast network and the profiles that have been run through the Eng Scorer. Every count comes from those careers, and the map grows as more are read. Updated August 20, 2026.

Put two companies side by side, or look up any of the 515 on the map in one sortable table.

The biggest moves

The single most traveled paths between two companies, counted in people. Moves between a company and a part of itself the map keeps apart, Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) among them, are left out here: they are transfers inside one company, not moves to another employer. They are still counted everywhere else on the map.

The mafias

Companies whose people leave and found. Counted in people whose next role was a founding one; the bars count those founders by the year they left, over the last twelve leave-year classes.

561 founders across the twelve, every one counted from a real career, none of them named. The full shares are in the founder factories list below.

Founder factories

Of those who moved on, the share whose next role was a founding one.

Feeders into startups

Of those who moved on, the share whose next company had 200 or fewer people.

Highest caliber

Median Eng Scorer caliber of the people who worked there.

Longest tenure

Where the median person stays longest.

Shortest tenure

Where the median person leaves soonest.

Two-way streets

Pairs that trade people in both directions. One pair is left out: a company and a part of itself the map keeps apart is one employer moving its own people, not two trading.

Google194 →← 117Meta
Google82 →← 69Palantir Technologies
Microsoft121 →← 55Google
Amazon64 →← 48Microsoft
Amazon157 →← 41Google
Meta59 →← 41Palantir Technologies
Microsoft127 →← 40Meta
Meta70 →← 39Instagram

Schools on the map

Engineers on the map who list each school, counted in people.

1UC Berkeley2,481
2Stanford1,179
3Carnegie Mellon915
4Georgia Tech832
5MIT721
6UIUC637
7Columbia582
8UCLA573
9Cornell545
10NYU501

UC Berkeley is in the top eight at 314 companies and NYU at 54: a school can be large here because it is everywhere, or because a few employers hire most of it. Share is of everyone on the map with a school on file, and a person can list more than one, so these overlap rather than add up.

Metros on the map

SF Bay Area and New York together are 80% of everyone on the map who lists a location.

47%SF Bay Area10,266 · biggest metro at 300 companies
33%New York7,364 · biggest metro at 166 companies
7%Washington DC1,559 · biggest metro at 36 companies
6%Los Angeles1,297 · biggest metro at 12 companies
3%Seattle609 · biggest metro at 1 company
0.4%Boston76
0.3%Baltimore71
0.2%Denver42
0.1%Austin34
0.1%San Diego31
3%Everywhere else

Counts are people, shares are over everyone on the map who lists a location.

Where people live now, from the profile as it reads today, not the offices they work in. Almost every located profile on the map is in the United States, so no metro outside it has enough people to name. Read a company against these shares: at 47% of the map, the San Francisco Bay Area is the baseline, not a finding.

What the map says

The single most traveled path between two companies is Google to Meta (194 people), then Amazon to Meta (161).
The biggest mafias, counted in people whose next role after leaving was a founding one, are Google (97 founders), Meta (80 founders), Palantir Technologies (74 founders).
The companies where those who moved on most often went to a founder title next are OpenAI (20%), Brex (17%), Affirm (17%).
The companies where those who moved on most often joined a startup next are Plaid (37%), Groupon (34%), Blend (29%).
The highest median Eng Scorer caliber belongs to people who have worked at OpenAI (95), Anthropic (95), Google DeepMind (92).
People stay longest at Workday (4y 1m), Square (4y), Two Sigma (3y 10m) and shortest at Fidelity Investments (1y 3m), Wish (1y 4m), General Motors (1y 5m).
Where they live now: 10,266 of the engineers on the map who list a location are in SF Bay Area and 7,364 in New York, together 80% of them. That is the current home on a profile, not an office.
The schools most listed by the engineers on the map are UC Berkeley (2,481 people), Stanford (1,179 people), Carnegie Mellon (915 people). A person can list more than one school, so these overlap rather than add up.
The map covers 515 companies with at least twenty people, built from 144,786 jobs across 26,572 engineers, updated August 20, 2026. Every figure is a count over people, never a name.

Every company on the map

515 companies with at least twenty people. The more people, the bigger the name.

All 515 companies