<story><title>Google Paid This Man $100 Million</title><url>http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Google-Paid-This-Man-100-Million-Here-s-His-4414507.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>flyinglizard</author><text>Reading this, his compensation is the least amazing part. If this article is true, it should have been titled &quot;A Story Of Competence&quot;. Does anyone have any doubt the guy is generating Google this money many times over? It&apos;s simple math. It has nothing to do with curing cancer, economical equality or anything else. He&apos;s something that&apos;s worth X and pays back many X.&lt;p&gt;I can understand why this comes as a shock to some; it may be difficult to accept that another person doing his 9-5 job can bring so much value to a company. I always suspected such value creators exist (Jobs would be one).&lt;p&gt;So good for him for delivering, and good for Google for acknowledging and compensating accordingly. And good for me too; I&apos;m taking my first steps as an advertiser with Google and I&apos;m really liking what I&apos;m finding so far.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Paid This Man $100 Million</title><url>http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Google-Paid-This-Man-100-Million-Here-s-His-4414507.php</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>simonsarris</author><text>I find this fascinating. It almost smacks of game theory. A land-mined game of incentives, anyway.&lt;p&gt;Think of the sheer amount of considerations that go into a decision like this. Higher-ups at Google must acknowledge:&lt;p&gt;* Offering someone an enormous sum only &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; someone else has made you an offer can be off-putting. Consider the many articles written about never making counter offers[1], or never accepting them.&lt;p&gt;* Along the same lines, if you&apos;re not offered a large enough sum to stay, you might take it as an insult. &quot;They&apos;re only offering me this much money &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; I&apos;ve considered leaving?&quot; Google certainly made sure the sum was large enough, by any count.&lt;p&gt;* Offering an enormous sum to one person may tempt others to fish out offers from other companies. Others may feel like they&apos;re never going to get a raise unless they are courting or being courted actively.&lt;p&gt;* Google&apos;s decision-makers (or check-writers) have to be careful about the number picked. They want to send a message to the person, and to other companies, and to the market. But they probably don&apos;t want to end up paying $100m for &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; high value employee. Luckily for Google, if its gonna be a cash arms-race against other companies, there are few that can do serious battle with them.&lt;p&gt;* Speaking of high value employees, while you might get &lt;i&gt;person A&lt;/i&gt; to stay, you make make resentful &lt;i&gt;group B.&lt;/i&gt; After all, there&apos;s already a comment here: &quot;It&apos;s only a matter of time before us little developers get&apos;s similar packages!&quot; It&apos;s not a stretch for anyone to sympathize with that view.&lt;p&gt;~~~&lt;p&gt;And then, at the end of all that, people in a room pursed their lips together and quietly nodded while somebody pulled out the (metaphorical) checkbook. This guy is staying, it&apos;s going to be this much money, and we&apos;re going to make it purposefully public knowledge. Signals everywhere.&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a dangerous game. Others may (as a default) suddenly feel unappreciated since Google hasn&apos;t made them an offer to keep being a Googler, and perhaps hasn&apos;t approached them with any considerable raise in some time. 100 million ensures that you keep a single employee, but how many do you alienate at the same time?&lt;p&gt;Hard to blame Google&apos;s decision, I&apos;m sure they gave it much more thought than I have. I wish I could know what they&apos;re thinking, it&apos;s just so fascinating what goes into this.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>