

Google senior execs getting 30 percent raises - emilepetrone
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20022729-265.html

======
jgilliam
It's totally normal for a CFO to get $20 million in stock, but shocking news
when an engineer gets $3.5 million. How much longer will that last?

~~~
patio11
It will last as long as the CFO is in the room when that decision is made and
the engineer is not. (Psst: there is a fairly straightforward way to make sure
you are always in the room when compensation decisions are made.)

~~~
WildUtah
By owning the company or getting elected to the board?

------
emilepetrone
Increasing employee pay is a bandaid on the real problem. Googlers think there
are more interesting places to work. Not even a pay-raise, or a free massage
can change that.

~~~
pavs
People leaving for potential higher pay (IPO) says more about those people
than Google not being an interesting place to work at. Nothing that facebook
has recently done that suggest to me that facebook might be more interesting
place to work at.

Facebook and twitter might have the "momentum", but they are on a niche
(social) thats unstable at best. Google on the other hand is not only on
several stable niche, but they are trying new things all the time.

People who are leaving for facebook/twitter are riding the horse while its
still fat. Nothing more, nothing less.

~~~
emilepetrone
Agree, they are chasing/riding the "momentum" wave. But as you said, Google
has stability. That includes structure, process, bureaucracy. A big piece to
these departures is - "Employees are tired of that bureaucracy."

~~~
robryan
Facebook is getting pretty big not to though, they are either going to run
into the same bureaucracy or start seeing more issues with bugs being
introduced. I have to say I much more frequently see bugs/ half deployed
features popping up on Facebook than any of Google's core offerings.

------
emilepetrone
The real question - how many Googlers leave each week? What is the employee
turnover?

We know about the high-profile exits, but I'd be interested to see how many
middle and lower level employees are leaving.

~~~
yanw
From the last quarter's numbers the overall headcount is up, they added the
talent from the metaweb, on2, slide (Levchin and co.) and ITA when that passes
through, and the other 36 talent acquisition they did this year. If some long
time employee wants to try something new or join a pre-IPO startup that is
normal, but since the Lars departure everyone got ultra-hyperbolic about the
whole thing, casting every bounce or raise as some sort of desperation rather
than an award after a decent financial year.

My point being that departures are normal, but as Google is a high-profile
company, and a great link bait, people start reading too much into these
stories.

------
JeffJenkins
I don't think I've seen the same degree of this with Microsoft before. Is the
difference that FB and Google are both in Silicon Valley and so there's very
low friction moving from one to the other?

~~~
jdp23
Excellent point. Back during the 1990s and the dot com boom Microsoft couldn't
compete at all with startups, but moving to the Valley was a big barrier to a
lot of people.

More recently a lot of Microsoft people have gone to Amazon or Google (which
has done a lot of hiring in Seattle and for a while was aggressively
recruiting MS folks) ... it'd be interesting to see how the numbers compare
with FB/Google crossover.

~~~
chunkbot
I'm sorry, but the notion that Microsoft "couldn't compete at all with
startups" back during the 1990s is ludicrous. For everyone who doesn't
remember the bad old days, they _were_ huge competition.

~~~
jdp23
i'm sorry, badly phrased by me ... i meant "couldn't compete on compensation".

------
grandalf
Sorry about the meta-comment, but this is seriously the top story on HN? What
is this, Valleywag?

------
johnrob
It all seems like chump change when compared to the holdings of the CEO and
founders (according to the article they hold over half the stock). Google is
in amazing entity when you think about that. The smartest people in the world
work their asses off, and over half of that value goes to 3 people. The
ultimate pyramid scheme ;)

~~~
steveklabnik
A cynical individual would describe most companies this way. On multiple
levels: Founders work hard, and 30% of the value goes to VCs. First employees
work hard, and founders get 60% of the value. Interns work hard, and first
hires get 10% of the value.

It's the way of the world.

------
bugsy
Ahhhh.. so now we know more about why the rank and file got 10% raises across
the board last week.

------
InclinedPlane
On the one hand, this isn't so crazy since employee pay makes up a much larger
portion of expenditures than executive pay, so there's a lot more headroom for
raises to the latter. On the other hand, executives make a lot more money to
start with so the same percentage of raise translates to a much larger
increase in pay so this is hardly "fair".

