
In defense of the Google Chef (2011) - laughinghan
http://blog.rongarret.info/2011/11/in-defense-of-google-chef.html
======
mehrdada
"Charlie didn't make $20M for cooking, he made $20M for taking the risk that
the company he was joining would fail and that he could end up five years
older, unemployed, and with nothing to show for his trouble."

Precisely--and the article should have ended there. It's all about the risk.
Arguing for the raw amount of contribution a chef can have is a distraction
from the core point and detracts from it.

~~~
Argorak
I don't think so. If it stopped there, he would only be a lucky gambler.

~~~
mehrdada
I'd characterize it as an _investment_ , rather than gambling.

~~~
ryandrake
I do not understand the difference between investing and gambling.

~~~
canvia
The level of confidence you have in the expected value.

------
sdoering
Having worked in a professional kitchen during my time at the university, I
can second a lot of what the author wrote on the pressure while working (and I
only had to feed about 70 to 100 guests during a normal evening).

So anybody taking him as an example for undeserved money, is just some big
idiot (stronger words come to my mind, but have to stay there).

Look at very strenuous working-environments like drilling rigs or anything
like this and ask anyone there, what role the "ship's cook" plays.

~~~
corin_
That's not the right argument to make in favour of him becoming rich - unless
you think all chefs deserve a $20m payout?

The argument is that he took a risk (presumably accepting a below market rate
salary) and worked hard in the hope it would pay off, which it did. Sure, the
fact that his job isn't piss easy to do, and is useful to the company, is what
makes this argument work, but it isn't the argument in itself.

------
throwaway13qf85
I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was a
problem. By joining a young company, that probably can't pay you a market rate
salary and that has a significant chance of failing, you are taking risks. You
are compensated for those risks with equity.

It's an out of the money call option - you expect that 90% (95%? 99%?) of the
time it won't pay out, but when it does pay out, the payoff could be anywhere
from "pretty good" to "life changing".

Sure, the early Google employees are way out in the tails of the distribution
(just like the early Facebook employees, early Twitter employees, early
LinkedIn employees etc). But _someone_ has to be in the tails of the
distribution, and the fact that you see someone there certainly doesn't mean
that they don't deserve their payout.

~~~
crdoconnor
>I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was
a problem

This feels like classism to me. I think they'd have the same issue with a
support worker or even QA making the same payday, no matter what their
contribution was. Being compensated for taking risks is "for people like
them".

~~~
warfangle
bi~ngo

------
JonFish85
"Zynga's argument is that they don't want people who joined the company early
to get disproportionately large rewards compared to someone who joined the
company later but contributed more."

And we can stop right here. That's an excuse, not a reason. It's purely PR
bullshit to make it seem like they're trying to do something right. It's
nothing more than the company (whether executives or investors) going back on
their word when they realized how much money their stock was going to be worth
at IPO. This is one of the biggest reasons I loathe Zynga.

------
felix
Regardless of whether or not one feels he's deserving of this - it's the
payment all parties agreed to. Do companies now consider compensation
notional? Should they be able to take it back whenever they feel like it? If
they think that actually a chef was totally useless for the first year - why
stop with options - why not make him pay back 50% of his salary?

This whole line of reasoning is senseless. Compensation was agreed to - that
in the end Zynga valued their options less than they ought to have should be
irrelevant to employees retaining them.

------
not_paul_graham
Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595)

------
michaelt
So what terms should employees ask for in their contracts to "avoid a Zynga
scenario"?

Options automatically vest on firing? Options transfer to a major charity on
firing?

------
kapitalx
The OP completely missed the point on the value that Google Chef brought to
google. One of the hardest things at a startup is hiring. Google Chef became
such a phenomenon so fast that everyone wanted to work at google. He became
the poster child of what it's like to work at google! "You even get a private
Chef cooking for you."

~~~
endeavor
I remember when a friend of mine went to work at Google, relatively early in
their history. I'm sure he told me that there were smart people working there,
working on cool things -- but I don't remember much of that. _What I do
remember_ is that if he was going to be working late, he could order up a
steak and it would get delivered to his office. _That_ anecdote stuck with me.

------
hrrsn
This was posted in 2011. Zynga is barely relevant anymore.

------
abcd_f
Posting this on HN is preaching to the choir.

Early employees are rewarded for the risk taking first and their contributions
next. Later employees are rewarded for making a well-running company better.
That's what's profit sharing programs are for, not stock options.

~~~
walshemj
Um checkout BT's share save that's just about to payout my mate is going to
clear £60k tax free.

How many Sv options are worth more than say $100,000 after tax.

ps and the BT scheme is the grunt one gasp even clerical assistants and como's
are allowed to participate

------
NDizzle
I wish more chefs got the opportunity to walk away with millions in stock
options. Because chefs are some of the people who deserve it the most.

I spent a few hard years at a health food delivery startup in Oakland - and
spent those years sometimes working in a support role for two different chefs
that busted their ass like any other chef I've ever met. (I say support role
because I was the server/dba/programmer at the startup but it was all hands in
the kitchen when we got big orders. All hands in the kitchen starting at 4am,
son.)

------
sztanko
First of all I find it inappropriate to discuss who deserved what.

Second of all, it is wrong to bring an example of a chef in the context of the
problem of disproportionally large reward of people who joined the company
early compared to someone who joined the company later but contributed more.

Early joiners get paid for the risk. They acknowledge the risk before joining
the startup and have a choice. Unfortunately chefs don't have a choice and in
most cases they have to accept what they are being offered, because there is
no other alternative.

Third of all, paying $20M a chef can be treated as an extremely successful
public relations move. This helped Google to gain that image of the "don't be
evil" Robin Hood operating on the Land Of Opportunities. On the other side,
rich Zynga executives paint themselves in evil tones when denying money from a
poor chef.

The real question is what should be encouraged more: risk taking or
professionalism. Zynga executives believe the later. Which probably reflects
the fact startups are becoming more like corporations.

But this is a first world problem and has nothing to do with the poor chef who
was lucky enough to win a lottery in form of Google.

------
mangeletti
I won't even go into my opinions on what kind of people Zynga is run by...
sheesh.

However, in my opinion:

The greater question here shouldn't be whether the metaphorical chef (or
literal in Google's case) brought as much value in the in the early days as he
or she receive(s|ed) after the IPO. It should be about 2 principles:

1\. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage,
which most definitely propelled the company to success, because the employees
had an incentive to help the company succeed (see economics 101) 2\. The
company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, which
were quite valueless at the time, representing a risk on the side of the
employee, assuming the stock was taken as (partial) consideration for
employment 3\. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an
early stage, and that's their own fault.

It seems the employees without preferred stock will be bamboozled at any rate.

------
gggggggg
The comments of support on that site for Charlie really inspire me and show
that there is still good in the world. He has $20m in the bank now, so he is
happy, but like any young company, every role feels a part of the family and
should be able to profit as such.

I would love it my company organised lunch for us.

~~~
lotsofcows
"He has $20m in the bank now, so he is happy"

What?

------
ronaldx
Needs a 2011 tag

------
shill
Original HN discussion is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595)

------
hacknat
Oh man, we all need to get over ourselves on this one. The burden of proof is
on us to show that he didn't provide value.

------
AznHisoka
Nobody needs to defend anything. People win the lotto all the time. Not just
money, but looks, brains, etc. It's like telling someone 'you don't deserve
that hot girlfriend, what did u do to earn it? hard work?'

------
zenbowman
So people are upset that a chef who makes delicious food gets a big payoff,
but not upset when moronic CEOs of financial firms run companies into the
ground and then still take home millions of taxpayer dollars?

------
jedanbik
This says much more about Zynga's values than it does Google's.

------
lr
I would like to ask laughinghan what sparked the interest in this article? It
has been on the front page of HN before (and during laughinghan's tenure on
HN), so I am really interested to know the though process about posting it
again (it was the same article as before, but with a new link). I have nothing
wrong with this being posted again, but I see it over and over again with
numerous topics, and I do find it kind of fascinating. At first I thought
maybe laughinghan was a newbie on HN, but that's not the case, so this just
makes it that much more interesting.

You can read the comments from the last time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595)

~~~
maxerickson
I certainly don't think I see every story I would be interested in. I don't
even try to see them all. Doesn't seem complicated.

~~~
talmand
Don't you understand? Someone else read it before, therefore that must you
mean you've read it before. If you didn't read it before, it must not be worth
your time to read it now.

I'm with you, I truly do not understand this need to point out reposts as a
negative. Sure, point out that it is a repost with a link to the original in
case someone wants to read the comments from that thread as well. But there's
no need to be negative about it.

------
bigd
Zynga chef, if they do have one, has probably been feeding pubic hairs to the
authors of this bs. Since 2011.

------
shill
This again?

------
michaelochurch
Made-up controversy. If you don't see what is going on here, then fasten your
seat belt because I'll tell you.

First of all, every decent human being is going to side with "the Google Chef"
(you know, he has a name: Charlie Ayers). He took a risk and it paid off. He
earned every fucking cent. If you really think "Google chefs" like Charlie
don't deserve to get rich on their stock, then you're an asshole.

Now, let's look at why this controversy _really_ exists. It's to emphasize the
elevation of the Second Estate (programmers, data scientists, designers) over
the Third Estate (workers) for the benefit of the First (executives, VCs). The
First Estate of the Valley works overtime on creating divisions between the
Second and Third so that the bricks go through the windows of Google buses
(Second Estate) instead of houses in Atherton. It's divide-and-conquer.

Investors and executives are going overboard to make the software engineers
who keep the Valley running that they're a privileged class, and that they
should be happy to deal with long hours, unreasonable expectations, low
autonomy, fast and dishonest firing, and age discrimination because it could
be worse, they could be "out there" preparing food instead of churning through
Jira tickets.

It's like telling a shit-poor, clay-eating Southern white person in 1850,
"cheer up, you're still above the slaves."

~~~
aaronchall
There always have been and always will be class divisions. Every society has a
version of the phrase "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations." But now
the slaves are free. We all get world class free public educations (ask the
teacher unions.) We all have access to free graduate level education in
technologies online. I'll brashly assert that class mobility has never looked
better, and while they are possible, there are no real-world examples of a
better society than ours (at least to my view).

------
benched
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

The chef got $20M because Google gave him stock options early, which later
became worth $20M. That's mostly all the explanation this needs. It's
mechanical. If someone bought a house unwittingly, and ended up 100x wealthier
because it was on an oil reservoir, I'm sure people would still be spinning
pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to
society, but those people would be just as misguided.

I can't say that the "risk" related explanations that this thread is full of
are completely wrong. There's some small element there. But it is wrong-
headed. It seems like people are really saying "Well, what does PG say about
startup lottery? Isn't it something about risk, or compressing work in a short
time? Well, that must have happened here." Next, you'll tell me that
everyone's pay is fair ... because markets!!

And on the human/gossip-level, no I don't begrudge him in the slightest.

Whoever a company decides is eligible for Startup Lotto, is eligible for
Startup Lotto.

~~~
laughinghan
Did you even read the article, or just these comments? Who is "spinning
pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to
society"? In the article, someone who worked at Google literally _alongside_
"the Google Chef", Charlie Ayers, is testifying that Charlie Ayers in fact
contributed as much to Google as many of the engineers that also got $20M,
countering the widespread perception that Charlie Ayers got more than he
deserved. Which may or may not be true, but your comment seems to be almost
completely unrelated?

~~~
benched
Hacker News commenters spin pseudo-economic yarns like frogs say ribbit.

If the really real reason why the chef made $20M is really because he
contributed as much value as the engineers, and if that is not just a cheering
sentiment, then we should be discussing why so many cooks are unfairly paid
less than engineers. But that's not really what's going on here.

