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Google Paid This Man $100 Million

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Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#91

Post by wpietri »

bjourne wrote: post #85
nawitus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, CEO:s have a much greater impact on the company than the average employee. And they should get paid "lots," I don't disagree on that. But that's not the scale we are on here, we're talking 1000 times more productive . It's a larger difference than between peasants and the kings of feudal Europe. Google either gets 1000 extra engineers or gets this probably really smart guy. I guess we just have to agree to disa…

Yes! My problem with the "CEOs make big decisions so they should get paid a lot" thing is that it encourages CEOs to set up companies where they make all the big decisions. And of course to draw all the attention to themselves. And to focus everybody on trying to figure out what the CEO wants, rather than what the customers want.

Contrast that with, say, 3M. The Post-it Note was a bottom-up invention. One guy came up with the adhesive. Another person figure out what to do with it. They've sold billions of dollars worth of the stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that makes the 3M CEOs much smarter than the hands-on ones. Instead of treating the company like a giant prosthesis, they created an ecology.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#92

Post by pesenti »

oijaf888 wrote: post #90
pesenti wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop at $100M? A company worth $250B could justify $50B salaries following this argument. And the same exact argument can justify outrageous salaries for traders who gamble huge amount of money that's not theirs. Yes, large losses/profits depend on their actions but it's unclear how much of that depends on their skills. A lot has to do with chance or market dynamics that nobody really grasps. And if they win, the…

That seems to say that stock pickers and fund advisors have no skills, not very much about professional traders. whatsoever. I've read some stuff that said that the military has studied pit traders at NYMEX due to their skill in handling vast amounts of information and making split second decisions on it.

You are right. I used "traders" a bit too vaguely. Kanheman's research applied more to stock pickers and wealth advisors. But I think the argument applies to all: none of these people's skills justify the 8 or 9 figure bonuses that Wall Street has been distributing.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#93

Post by wpietri »

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…

The people aren't more valuable. Their contributions were more valuable.

I know plenty of Google millionaires, and they are indeed really smart. But no smarter than the other top-tier people I know. The reasonable explanation for their wealth versus equivalently good people is, depending on how you view it, either circumstance or luck.

That this guy can extract $100m from Google is certainly true, but that orthogonal to the point you were replying to, which is about it being right.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#94

Post by walshemj »

nawitus wrote: post #76
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.

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…

Well I know a dev at a major publisher recently messed up a canonical meta implimentation on a single job site and that cost over 1/2 a million £ in less than a week.

And in the past I was admin in charge of a billing system for British Telecom and when we had our first million pound month (about $5,000,000 in today's money) the CTO (one of Vint Cerf reports I believe) Nudeged me and said this had better be right or we are both out of a job :-)

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#95

Post by walshemj »

njx wrote: post #88
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not out of line with what F500 CEOs get paid. Heck, Jamie Dimon's peak comp was double that and JPM is a $100 billion/year organization.

Check out Top 500 CEO pay, larry makes $0/year https://my.infocaptor.com/dash/mt.php?pa=ceo_compensation_20...

Tax dodge

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#96

Post by paul »

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.

How much was Steve Jobs worth to Apple?

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#97

Post by Maven911 »

whnevan wrote: post #45

"They'd spent the months prior trying to turn Twitter into "a real company" after years of neglectful management." Anyone care to explain how the management was neglectful? Serious question.

I think it might have to do with the founder, jack dorsey, staying on as CEO, though he was eventually ousted out of that role

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#98

Post by michaelochurch »

You know what? Fuck that.

Nothing against this guy. If it were $1 million, or $3 million, I probably wouldn't bat an eye.

A hundred million for a non-technical executive would be OK, if engineers had basic autonomy and open allocation. Then (and only then) they'd actually be able to afford (morally speaking) a $100M payout to a non-technical executive.

Don't call yourself a technical company if engineers in the $100k-200k range can't even fucking change projects until 18 months in (and often not even then, due to a corrupt performance review system) but you're running a private welfare system for non-tech executives.

I know all about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence") but somewhere around the 5-standard-deviation incompetence level I go back to malice because 5-sigma is just awful rare. Paying a non-tech executive $100M while engineers making Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint.

(Or just implement basic autonomy/open allocation for all engineers. Then we're cool no matter what you pay your execs.)

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#99

Post by proexploit »

OGinparadise wrote: post #89
theverse wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Google and don't think anyone alone can bring this amount of value alone, knowing well that every decision is taken very collectively. There are some many in this article that doesn't fit Google's work culture.

knowing well that every decision is taken very collectively. There are some many in this article that doesn't fit Google's work culture. So you have a company wide vote on major decisions? That's very interesting. How did you vote on buying Motorola or replacing Yelp and other local results with Google Local? What about Google+ being added to everything?

I don't think he's implying that every employee votes on every decision, just that decisions aren't made by a single person.
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