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Google Paid This Man $100 Million

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Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#81

Post by RockyMcNuts »

rayiner wrote: post #47
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$7b revenue will put you in the 300s on the Fortune 500. Since the display ads is one of Google's high margin cash cows, would guess quite a bit higher on the list in profits. Google has about 1/2 the earnings of JPM, about 1/3 the book value, but a larger market cap than JPM, and let's just say there's some wiggle room in what JPM reports, loan loss reserves, 'debt valuation adjustment', non-marked to market 'whale'…

Article says that Goole gets 32% of that $7 billion, which is not out of line with JPM's profits on its revenue. Yeah, Google has a lot more growth potential, but on the flip side, I'd imagine Mohan isn't in the line of fire as much as the CEO of a Wall Street bank... Point is that he's not clearly getting low-balled at that number.

very true. and if he's a legit key man and it's reasonably tied to performance, not irrational either, to match a Sheryl Sandberg type offer.

$2.2b in profit will put you in the 90s on the Fortune 500. Google is 16th in net profit margin at 25.7, JPM 49th at 17.1 [1]. the saying is, earnings are an opinion, cash is fact.* JPM's earnings are more of an opinion than most.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/perfo...

*although cash can be generated from crazy contingent liabilities and derivatives, eg AIG.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#82

Post by theverse »

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 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.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#84

Post by pesenti »

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…

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, they win big bonuses, but if they lose, at worst they lose their job.

For traders, Daniel Kahneman has shown that they have no skills whatsoever (see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-ha...). I do believe that CEOs have some skills but the expected value of these skills is much lower than the potential impact of their decisions. Having been a company owner, I have learned that how CEO decisions are executed (by all the other people in the company who don't make outrageous salaries) is often much more important than the decisions themselves.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#85

Post by bjourne »

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…

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 disagree since there is no way to measure how valuable a CEO is. I do think that the burden of proof is upon those that think those salary differences is justifiable since "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

> 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.

Not a good example since Symbian has been a dead end for years and Nokia has failed to make desirable smart phones. Putting all the blame on him ignores all the bad decisions all the other people at Nokia did.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#86

Post by patrickk »

Zakharov wrote: post #35
cridal wrote: post #16

Wow. Definitely, an interesting reading. And a special guy, no question about it. On the other hand, the guy didn't cure cancer. Doesn't it give anyone pause to thin that the topic of conversation is 'ads'? You know, those little annoying things you would never click, and which get in the way of your normal life. I mean we're talking about billions of dollars. So much human talent, skill, intelligence taken away from…

It's reasonably likely that a good chunk of the $100m will end up going to charity, which would go a lot further toward curing cancer or whatever the charity is focused on.

Or perhaps angel investing- funding the next wave of innovation.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#87

Post by patrickk »

rckrd wrote: post #38

The article mentions an "epic 400-500 page Powerpoint document" outlining Mohan's strategies. In the rare chance that this is floating around the internet, does anyone know where it would be or more information on it?

Sounds like the kind of document that the distribution of would be tightly controlled. It was probably shown to select people, but not actually emailed to anyone. You get to see the slides, but you don't get a copy.

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#88

Post by njx »

rayiner wrote: post #29
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vesting over... 7-10 years? $10m a year for a guy running a $7b business.

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...

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#89

Post by OGinparadise »

theverse wrote: post #82
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 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?

Re: Google Paid This Man $100 Million

#90

Post by oijaf888 »

pesenti wrote: post #84
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…

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.
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