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Google Rewards Employees With Millions
iseff writes "According to News.com, the Google guys created a program in November which rewards employees for outstanding achievements. The program gives the possibility of millions of dollars of stock to teams who perform great work. The goal of the program, according to Brin, is two-fold. First, it allows the company to reward 'genius', or whatever they see as genius. And second, it allows them to continue to hire all sorts of employees. According to the article, they believe that a recent grad who would like to work in a start-up will still be attracted to them because of the opportunity to create something great and be rewarded with millions (and without much of the risk associated with startups)."
The question is, if the money is a motivation, then when you get your first multi-million dollar project bonus, you retire.
Alternately, you're in it for the love of the game and no amount of money will make you quit. But then what's the motivation?
Google swimming in post-IPO riches, doesn't know what to do with all that money.
Seriously though, while giving such extravagant rewards is nice for those that get them, it can cause a lot of resentment among those who don't. It's one thing for someone whose idea is (in my mind) only marginally better, or maybe even worse, than mine to get a $2k bonus when I don't, but it's quite another for them to be suddenly set for life. The politics this sort of thing could create could get ugly.
Also, there's the problem of attrition. Google is probably already going to be dealing with this issue soon, as many of their brightest engineers already have millions in stock options, but a company that has a lot of instant millionaires one day may end up with a lot of resignation letters the next.
You make it sound like a joke, but ask some IBM or Intel employees who hold dozens of patents how much money their genius has earned them.
Of course, that's not to say that every patent is a genius idea, or that large numbers of patents deserve proportionally larger reward, but incentives programs do not typically account for the value of the patent to a company.
How long can they keep this up? They're a publically held company and eventually they're going to get entrenched like every other "smart" company. Then they quietly stop giving away millions and start selling their address lists...
Even Ben and Jerry's had to drop its "no executive makes more than 10 times the lowest level employees salary" rule when Ben and Jerry looked for a new CEO.
I'm all for stuff like this, but how do you sustain it over the long term?
Stock is actually a bit flakey, you can be rich as hell without having any money to buy food with; this happened to me a one point during the great boom.
Sadly, now I got neither stock or money.
Still, I bet it strengthen the employee commitment to the company, which is what they want.
This is not always the case.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Without much of the risk because they're being paid "millions" -- on paper, in the form of Google stock? Some people never learn.
(Oh, and kids, those "millions" are very likely to be taxable before you ever see a dime of cold hard cash. Enjoy!)
More stock based incentives for employees. Didn't we learn from Enron, Worldcom or the dot com boom that stock base incentives causes people to do everything possible to raise the price of the stock including fraud and other dubious business practices. Why can't companies just give cash bonuses.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
But I would request cold hard cash instead of stock options .com's. Many employees see $$ flash before their eyes and hinge their whole retirement on these stock options. As with all stocks, the potential for growth is much greater than taking the cash. I don't think that corporations inform their employees well enough when presenting them different bonus options (it probably isn't even their responsibility to either). I would definitely say "Show me the money".
I agree. This result isn't applicable to just
I think he moded it insightful because (last I checked) the funny mod didn't actually increase your karma....so people tend to mod things insightful as a way to reward the person who said something funny. :D
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
No kidding. There are thousands of companies that reward their hard-working, profit-leading, genius employees. It usually comes in one of the following forms:
.75)
coffee (with non-dairy creamer and sugar!)
a mug/hat/pen with company logo
doughnuts on the third Tuesday of every month
reorganization, yay!
casual Fridays
2-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms
annual raise (cost of living *
pink slip (bright pink!)
Having worked for a company that does not respect the employees, I applaud any company that sees the value of happy, motivated employees.
Huge IPO.
Massive employee benifits.
Loads of hype.
Money flowing all over the place.
Zero profit.
Unproven business strategy.
Happy days are here again!
When the next fake boom collapses sometime around 2009 or so...
...you learn from the last boom and when things are looking good you jump from "profitable company that isn't going anywhere" to "profitable company that isn't going anywhere" while they loose people to the start-ups and are trying to increase their salaries and benifits to match the start-ups. You may not end up making as much or rolling the crapshoot for millions, but when the new bust hits, you're at a stable company that isn't going anywhere with a salary and benifits that have been pumped up by companies that are long gone.
Google should learn from the past.
The bubble taught us all a couple things: Internet companies are not inherently more profitable. They are certainly not a "new paradigm".
Got cash in the bank? Ok, sure make acquisitions. But don't become a dot-bomb rollup. Buy brick and mortar companies too.
Rewarding internal (essentially "dot-com") projects, is a bit like valuing dot com companies in an even *more* dangerous way: without the input of the marketplace.
Seems a little scary.
Lets hope they reward *profitable* internal projects. Not ones with "potential".
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Try this scenario- you bust your ass 12 hours a day/7 days a week for a year to spec, design and code Wizzyfoo. It's awesome. It does some really neat things. Two weeks before it goes live, the company decides that Wizzyfoo just isn't compatible with the new direction the company is moving in. All your work is tossed in the bin and you're assigned to a new project. No bonus for you.
Meanwhile, Bob across the aisle goofs off, posting meaningless replies at /. for most the day and goes golfing with the boss every weekend. Since he's got the ear of the boss, he manages to get a great looking demo before the suits, who decide to make it the new big thing. He gets the cash for the neat demo, even if there's nothing behind it and the product wouldn't work in reality.
Would this happen at Google? Maybe not, but if you don't think similar happens everyday in industry you're blind. The suckups and losers get rewarded, the truly good get shuffled off since they're hard to deal with.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
That is not just a funny remark. I find it extremely heartening that in a world still ruled by the ignorant, the warlike, the greedy, the hard-nosed etc - there will still be a few places where ordinary bright guys - who are *not* out to scam anyone - can make the bigtime and (most importantly) greatly improve their chances of reproductive success*. Maybe the human race won't die out just yet.
*by reproductive success I mean (a) marry a more beautiful woman and thus have more beautful children which in turn...etc and (b) get to shag truckloads of chicks on the side, some of whom will fall pregnant. 'Cos that's the way it works.
or, that dude needed to pay rent and buy food. at the time, perhaps taking stocks as payment and risk not being able to pay the bills wasn't an option. the lesson is that sometimes, fortuna favors the bold, but, you still gotta' eat... so you do what you have to do.
i'm just sayin'.
My understanding is that they want more and better people (remember the billboard advertisements, google tests, contests, etc), not that they can't retain the ones they have already. They have high standards and the "very smart" employee pool is limited. So, I imagine, they want to poach from other big companies a little.
Public companies are required by law to maximise their profit. Profit is not usually maximised by giving large bonuses to employees.
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It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Then why do CEOs, etc receive large (some would say outrageous) performance bonuses? If a low-level grunt invents the Next Big Thing, and makes the company millions, why doesn't he get the large bonus? I guess it was the brilliant "Mission Statement" the CEO came up with that really lead to the success.
A friend of mine, a fairly competent sales rep, started his own printing company a couple of years ago. I worked for him for a while doing pre-print and graphic design, but I couldn't hack it for very long, as he gave the reps he employed free rein. The company was a sales person paradise, perks, insanely high wages, they could say what they liked to whoever they liked. It was the kind of company my friend would have liked to work for, so thats what he built.
Needless to say, that went under in about a year, and I got the equipment in lieu of pay that had been given to salespeople instead, but the point of this is that google was founded by highly intelligent, academic people, and what they are doing is building an academics dream job. Intelligence is rewarded, whether applying for a job, or within the job itself. I do applaud their strategies, which are fairly novel, but you can't run a business like that. Their results have been slipping in terms of accuracy and reliability, their image search is actually less useful than the new MSN effort, and the pay per click model (which I'm betting is a good portion of their income) is starting to get a seriously bad name, as companies realise that competitors are costing them money by simply clicking on their adverts.
By indulging in these "gentlemans club" policies, and losing sight of their core functionality, google will go the way of the dot bombs. Intelligence doth not a successful business make.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.