Even the Masseuse is a Multimillionaire at Google

PCOL writes "The NY Times is running a story on how stock options that have given an estimated 1,000 employees at Google a net worth of $5 million each affects the culture at Google. Google gives each of its new employees stock options, as well as a smaller number of shares of Google stock, as a recruiting incentive. The average options grant for a "Noogler" (new Google employee) who started a year ago was 685 shares at a price of roughly $475 a share which at last Friday's close would be worth $128,000. But employees say Google is different from other large high-tech companies where the day's stock price is a fixture on many people's computer screens. "It isn't considered 'Googley' to check the stock price," said one engineer adding that it is also considered unseemly to discuss the price with other employees. And the masseuse? In 1999 Bonnie Brown answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google "on a lark" and after five years of kneading engineers' backs, she retired, cashing in most of her stock options to travel the world, oversee a charitable foundation she founded, and write a book, still unpublished, titled "Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google.""

Comments

This is a very familiar story

[Anonymous Coward]

Web company. Billions made in advertising dollars. Founders making billions. Employees getting rich from stock options.

When this crashes it will be loud and hard. Hopefully you guys working at Google are going to do the smart thing and save as much money as you can while you can.

Re:This is a very familiar story

[Richthofen80]

Being Positioned is one thing. You can have all the capital in the world, but if you don't have a way to transform it into a revenue stream, your business isn't worth as much as your stock price. Google's current revenue stream comes from advertisements. Fine, that's a valid model. But i have no idea if its actually recouping the costs of all the projects they have going on.

Ballmer will one day wake up and will find their mail products, office products and OS sales are all no longer selling.

Fine, everyone uses google office, in your scenario. But how does that make Google money? Again, having tons of happy customers is fine, but not having a way to collect revenues from them directly... that's the killer. There's a difference between making people happy and making them money. Stock price is about making people money.

Stock Options

[El Cabri]

Maybe the reason why it's not done at Google to ostensibly check the stock price every day is out of embarassment over the fact that employees that join now will have to hope that their $700 options stay afloat while they may be more brilliant and their contribution more critical to the company than that of employees who join only one year ago.

I think that options are great for startup companies, which Google is not anymore, to compensate for the risk that the people who work in them do, and the fact that the contribution of early employees is by definition seminal to building a successful company. But for mature companies (which Google is now), it becomes too difficult to manage as a standard compensation system. How can you keep employees focused on their commitments if the cash bonus that you can afford to offer them at their annual review is dwarfed by the value of the stock options they already got just for being hired ?

Re:Cash them in!!!

[FooAtWFU]

Better idea, for most people: Don't bother day-trading. Don't even buy individual stocks like Google. Drop your money in a few good index funds and sit around 20-40 years while you wait for retirement. Anything else is borderline gambling.

(Not that you can't make money gambling, borderline or otherwise, mind you...)