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Google Paid This Man $100 Million

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Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#71

Post by InclinedPlane »

bjourne wrote: post #68
nikcub wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is safe offering him $100M without offending the other employees, because the other employees at that level at Google already earn that much, if not more. Giving him $100M was more of a correction because he arrived at the company later than the other equiv execs. Most of the top tiers of employees at Google, which is where he would be, are worth hundreds or millions and more through vested stock, new options,…

I find that very hard to believe. I'm ok with the talk about hackers being 10x more productive than regular developers. But a $100m bonus would mean that guy is about 1000 times more valuable than the average. It defies common sense in every way. And it's not just because I'm jealous and resentful I'm thinking that, no ones time is that valuable.

Why?

Seems perfectly sensible to me. Are you telling me that there aren't developers out there who have thousands or even millions of times greater impact than an average coder? Some people write code that impacts literally millions of people (or even billions), code that generates literally billions or even trillions of dollars in value.

This isn't about productivity, it's about impact.

Google started out as a very small company and yet had many cornerstones of their core technology stack laid early. And the technology of pagerank, treating data centers as giant computers, massively automating IT operations, etc. is what allowed the company to dominate search and is a key factor behind their multi-billion dollar annual revenues of today. The people that built that technology are easily millions of times more valuable than the average coder in terms of their contributions to the world.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#72

Post by InclinedPlane »

flyinglizard wrote: post #34

Reading this, his compensation is the least amazing part. If this article is true, it should have been titled "A Story Of Competence". Does anyone have any doubt the guy is generating Google this money many times over? It's simple math. It has nothing to do with curing cancer, economical equality or anything else. He's something that's worth X and pays back many X. I can understand why this comes as a shock to some;…

I find it sort of odd that people, especially on HN, would resist the idea. Many founders have earned for themselves tens or hundreds of millions of dollars through their startups (either through revenue or acquisition). And we accept C-level execs to earn this kind of money without really questioning whether they are actually worth it.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#73

Post by InclinedPlane »

dkwak wrote: post #37

I've always been curious what display advertising is and how it generates so much revenue for Google. Are there any good resources to learn more about what exactly goes on behind the scenes? Do those little ads on my gmail sidebar really create billions in wealth? Or is there some super secret illuminati-esque subliminal advertising going on?

http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/

It's distinguished from search-based advertising (e.g. adwords). It's basically just ordinary online advertising, and there are a great many different ad networks out there already. However, google's network has been gaining a huge amount of traction recently and took the top spot in marketshare within the last year or so, even pulling ahead of Facebook. In total these sorts of ads are worth around $2 billion a year in revenue for google but both the size of the market and google's share of it are growing at double digit rates so google's revenue from it is likely to double within the next few years.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#74

Post by nikcub »

majani wrote: post #69
NelsonMinar wrote: post #4

Original source for the article, with better formatting: http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-millio...

A study showed that links from Business Insider stand an extremely low chance of getting upvotes on HN ( http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analys... ). That's why people post other websites' syndications of BI.

which is a shame, because BI has been really good recently - to the point that I visit the site each day

that said, I do enjoy the irony of a BI original article being syndicated by another publisher and becoming more popular than the original source

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#75

Post by Tycho »

I'm thinking either this story is entirely sensationalized, or Google are scared that this guy will take his roadmap and go execute it elsewhere. Like he has seen upcoming trends and Google know they have to be first to act on them. I wonder what they could be...

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#76

Post by nawitus »

bjourne wrote: post #68
nikcub wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is safe offering him $100M without offending the other employees, because the other employees at that level at Google already earn that much, if not more. Giving him $100M was more of a correction because he arrived at the company later than the other equiv execs. Most of the top tiers of employees at Google, which is where he would be, are worth hundreds or millions and more through vested stock, new options,…

I find that very hard to believe. I'm ok with the talk about hackers being 10x more productive than regular developers. But a $100m bonus would mean that guy is about 1000 times more valuable than the average. It defies common sense in every way. And it's not just because I'm jealous and resentful I'm thinking that, no ones time is that valuable.

A person making decisions that may lose $100 million or make a $100 million profit can be thought as "1000 times more productive", because large losses/profit depend on his actions.

Of course the average software engineer at Google can't make similar decisions, so they can't be worth that much even in theory (unless they happen to invent something revolutionary).

So my point is that yes, CEOs can be "worth" thousands of times the salaries of the average employee, but that's not fundamentally about the skills of the CEO, but because the CEO happens to be in a position where his choices/strategy/etc have extremely large consequences. (In this example Mohan is not CEO though, but makes similar choices that a CEO does).

A real world example would be Stephen Elop at Nokia: some say that he has made Nokia lose billions of dollars, when another CEO might have made Nokia save that money.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#77

Post by rtpg »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #71
bjourne wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that very hard to believe. I'm ok with the talk about hackers being 10x more productive than regular developers. But a $100m bonus would mean that guy is about 1000 times more valuable than the average. It defies common sense in every way. And it's not just because I'm jealous and resentful I'm thinking that, no ones time is that valuable.

Why? Seems perfectly sensible to me. Are you telling me that there aren't developers out there who have thousands or even millions of times greater impact than an average coder? Some people write code that impacts literally millions of people (or even billions), code that generates literally billions or even trillions of dollars in value. This isn't about productivity, it's about impact. Google started out as a very…

>Are you telling me that there aren't developers out there who have thousands or even millions of times greater impact than an average coder?

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Slightly off-topic, but your statement is the programmer's equivalent to that. We all want to be the developer that is a million of times more important (and end up making huge sums of money/having a worldwide impact/whatever). This argument appeals to the ego of a lot of people here I think.

Though maybe I'm just projecting.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#79

Post by thomasbk »

burntsushi wrote: post #64
samstave wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am completely naive to what you just said, may you please explain like I am five? [I am dead serious]

I think the GP is saying that a tenured professor typically has the option of a wide range of job freedom. You work on pretty much what you want and when you want. The GP is contrasting this with being the head of advertising at Google, which one might guess is fairly demanding.

Also, improving advertising isn't generally seen as having the highest positive impact on society, whereas a professor might contribute to a cure for cancer.
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