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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 First Annual Google Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence?
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?
This kind of thing unfairly punishes those of us who do a half assed job.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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.
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?
Hey, at least they are redirecting their hoarde of gold back at the people who generated it instead of the execs.
As I read the article, Google awarded *stock*, not stock options - and I find that significant.
Rather than rewarding employees with paper that has no real value today (and which costs the company no real money today) and which might have value in the future, they are rewarding the employees with paper that has value today, and probably will have value in the future (as well as costing the company real money today).
If that is the case, then kudos to Google.
If the linked story is incorrect and this is nothing more than options - then I retract my kudos.
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Luckily the dollar estimates are in Google dollars, only available after Google takes over and starts printing money.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
and most importantly, it will help these deserving geeks to attract beautiful women to themselves.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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.
For those who weren't tuned in Sunday, This is the award Mr. Burns gave to Homer on Sunday's episode of the Simpsons. Poster failed, however to work in any jokes about low sperm count.
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
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!"
True, a restricted stock may not be sold today. That is not my point.
A stock option is normally issued at very nearly today's market price for a stock, and is nothing more than the guarantee that stock may be purchased at that price.
If gasoline is $1.759 a gallon, and I offer you a piece of paper saying "I guarantee you can buy a gallon of gasoline from me for $1.759", how much is that paper worth right now.
Nothing, as you can go to the gas station and buy that gas for that price without my paper.
Now, if gas goes to $2.759 tomorrow, then that paper is worth $1.00.
If the price of gas goes to $1.009 tomorrow (fat chance), then the paper has no value whatsoever.
Now, if I give you a piece of paper that says "I guarantee you 1 gallon of gas" then that paper is worth $1.759 today. If gas goes to $1.00 a gallon, then it is STILL worth $1.00.
And that is my point - that if Google is actually issuing stock, not options, then they are doing something unusual and worthy of respect.
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