What is the Zelcast alumni map?

A public map of where engineers go next, employer by employer: for each of 1,345 employers 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. Built from 352,028 jobs across 67,181 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?

352,028 jobs across 67,181 engineers, drawn employer to employer. Pick an employer and see who came and who went.

Not the whole industry: these are the engineers in the Zelcast network and the profiles run through the Eng Scorer. Every count comes from those careers, and the map grows as more get read. Updated September 30, 2026.

Put two employers side by side, or look up any of the 1,345 on the map in one sortable table.

The biggest moves

The busiest paths between two companies, counted in people. Moves inside one company are left out here, Google and DeepMind among them. They still count 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 group those founders by the year they left, last twelve classes.

1,066 founders across the twelve, none of them named. Full shares are in the founder factories list below.

Founder factories

Of those with a recorded next move, the share who founded something next.

Feeders into startups

Of those with a recorded next move, the share who joined a company of 200 or fewer.

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, where the two sides are really one company moving its own people.

Google535 →← 387Meta
Microsoft459 →← 174Google
Amazon226 →← 151Microsoft
Amazon479 →← 103Google
Apple145 →← 103Google
Microsoft355 →← 96Meta
Palantir91 →← 90Google
Amazon395 →← 82Meta

Schools on the map

Counted in people who list each school, over the whole map.

1Georgia Tech4,568
2UC Berkeley4,493
3Stanford3,213
4Carnegie Mellon3,130
5MIT2,093
6University of Maryland1,658
7UIUC1,516
8USC1,425
9UCLA1,360
10Columbia1,273

Georgia Tech is in the top eight at 649 companies and Columbia at 136: a school can be big here because it's 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 and don't add up.

Metros on the map

SF Bay Area and New York together are 60% of everyone on the map who lists a location.

41%SF Bay Area24,763 · biggest metro at 811 companies
18%New York10,985 · biggest metro at 251 companies
13%Washington DC7,623 · biggest metro at 220 companies
5%Seattle3,166 · biggest metro at 12 companies
5%Los Angeles2,757 · biggest metro at 23 companies
2%Boston909 · biggest metro at 5 companies
1%Atlanta672 · biggest metro at 9 companies
0.9%Dallas-Fort Worth566 · biggest metro at 4 companies
0.8%Austin492
0.8%Denver468 · biggest metro at 4 companies
12%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 is in the United States, so no metro outside it has enough people to name. At 41% of the map, the San Francisco Bay Area is the baseline every company gets read against.

What the map says

Busiest path between two companies: Google to Meta, 535 people. Then Amazon to Google, 479.
Biggest mafias: Google (226 founders), Meta (156 founders), Amazon (129 founders). That counts people whose next role after leaving was a founding one.
Most likely to leave and found something: Opendoor (19%), Benchling (16%), Brex (16%).
Most likely to leave for a startup: Maxar Technologies (40%), Headstarter (37%), Makani (36%).
Highest median Eng Scorer caliber: OpenAI (94), Anthropic (94), DeepMind (91).
Longest stays: United States Army Reserve (6y), Army National Guard (5y 10m), Marine Corps Recruiting (4y 9m). Shortest: Google Summer of Code (3m), Air Force Research Laboratory (10m), TD (10m).
Where they live now: 24,763 in SF Bay Area, 10,985 in New York, together 60% of everyone on the map who lists a location. That's the home on the profile, not the office.
Most listed schools: Georgia Tech (4,568 people), UC Berkeley (4,493 people), Stanford (3,213 people). A person can list more than one, so these counts overlap.
The map covers 1,345 employers with at least twenty people each, built from 352,028 jobs across 67,181 engineers. Updated September 30, 2026. Every figure counts people, and nobody is named.

Every employer on the map

1,345 employers with at least twenty people. The more people, the bigger the name.

All 1,345 employers