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Did Amazon Induce Vista's Premature Birth?
theodp writes "A recent Amazon SEC filing sheds light on the puzzling departure of Microsoft Sr. VP Brian Valentine in Sept. 2006. Valentine is the Gen. George Patton-like figure charged with pushing Vista developers, who dumped the still not-ready-for-prime-time OS into RC1 status as he bolted for a new gig at Amazon. Having repeatedly assured everyone that Valentine was staying with the company post-Vista, Microsoft backpedaled and explained that Valentine decided to leave since the company had shipped a near-final version of Vista. Not so. Although analysts fell for the PR line, it seems Valentine had actually signed an Employment Agreement way back in June calling for him to be on board at Amazon on Sept. 11 if he wanted to pick up a $1.7M signing bonus, $150K base salary, another $500K bonus, and 400K shares of Amazon stock (now worth almost $30M). Who says you have to shell out $999.95 for MS-Project to come up with accurate planned completion dates?"
...it all depends on the situation. If you have access to a income with which you can reasonably support yourself and your kids and, optionally, donate to charities you find worthwhile, then you can't be faulted for making that income. If you make more, you are able to be faulted. Whether or not he can be faulted for the income he has received, I do not know. As I do not know the individual, or what he needs the money for, I can't make that judgment. However, that does not mean that such a judgment could not be rendered.
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For top notch positions, the yearly salary is just cosmetic. Its not uncommon for high ranked managers and architects to make some silly salary like minimum wadge, but get hundreds over hundreds of thousands in bonus every year. Its a whole different ballbark from the average salaried developer monkey.
No, I think like CEOs with far too high compensation packages, it is corporate executive management taking a page from the CEO. Screw the company, just pay me lots of cash.
If M$ has this kind of problems with their executives, perhaps they are more rotten at the core than most people even realize. And Amazon paying $30M to start? Come now, that would hire 300 programmers for a year. Or 30 for 10. I guess these companies are throwing away cash, could give it to the shareholders.
My guess both will go bust in time.
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