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> The letter was in response to a New York Times report that Android creator Andy Rubin received a $90m exit package despite facing misconduct allegations. Woa

> The letter was in response to a New York Times report that Android creator Andy Rubin received a $90m exit package despite facing misconduct allegations. Woah, holy shit, a $90M exit package? It's like Bighead in the Silicon Valley TV show, except 4.5x more. The writers for that show picked a crazy number and reality comes along and over-quadruples it. Granted, Bighead did not create Android, or anything, in the TV show. But an severance package of that size is still absolutely ridiculous.

mscasts 8y ago
If you created Android which runs on the overwhelming majority of phones today, you probably should get a very good exit package deal. Imagine how much wealth Android has generated for Google.
- econner 8y ago
  Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. The $90 million was for Google to keep the story quiet and to keep Rubin from working for a competitor.
  - mscasts 8y ago
    > Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. I disagree. It all depends on what the cause is. Regarding sexual harassment which today means any woman can accuse you of that and no questions is asked and you'll get sacked is not a valid reason for not getting any money imo.
  - bitL 8y ago
    How would they attract a similarly capable person in the future if they withdrew generous compensation? It's like when secret service withdraws protection offer after they received the information they were after; they wouldn't ever recruit anyone in that area again.
    - econner 8y ago
      Are you actually equating intentionally quieting a credible sexual harassment claim to withdrawing secret service protection?
      - bitL 8y ago
        Not at all. Reread it please. It's about attracting highest technical/management caliber employees able to create $XBn projects from the scratch. If you showcase that you dispose of such employees after they finished their job with no reward because of tangential factors, other people might not want to join you in the future, because who knows what actually happened, if there e.g. wasn't a team inside collecting potentially damaging information about their employees to be used when company wanted to save money after their usefulness expired, or if somebody wasn't playing another Game of Thrones, manipulating easily impressionable people and their opinions to keep the money. Who can tell what exactly the truth was? E.g. it's highly unlikely just one side is right if two people end up in the same hotel room alone; believing that would insult intelligence of everyone...
        jensv 8y ago
        Andy went on to create the Essentials phone line which nobody uses or cares about.
        bitL 8y ago
        This is not about Essentials (flop) but about Android (huge success). Would you like to be paid for your most successful project based off your worst one? Of course without Google Andy would not be successful, but the same could have been the other way round - without Andy Google might not have had Android and Nokia would be still popular smartphone king...
    - jensv 8y ago
      With a bodacious babe.
  - DannyBee 8y ago
    "Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything." This assumes that, for example, when he became an SVP, he was still on any sort of standard employee agreement. That is highly unlikely. Almost all execs at that level in that large a company would have a specially negotiated agreement. Most still end up with something even if terminated for cause. Almost all their exits would be specifically negotiated mutual separation agreements. (I'm not defending the above, obviously, just explaining what i expect is the case based on experience) Also worth pointing out: don't know when he was made SVP/etc, but it probably predates any pushes to change any of this in tech. :(
    - econner 8y ago
      Very good point. I hadn't thought of that.
    - defen 8y ago
      The New York Times article about him today said: > Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. However I don't know if that's just opinion or based on some set of facts about his situation.
      - DannyBee 8y ago
        That seems just like opinion. Some data: My wife works in HR (not at Google, but in tech and other industries), and has handled things like executive compensation/retention/etc. She has done many of these types of situations over the years. She was doubtful they would have been able to pay him nothing. I've also seen a bunch fly by on the legal side over the years, and most (but not all) that i've seen would have paid out something in a case like this. Best guess as to the 90 million was that it was not about this, but stock payout in exchange for not competing with google for a while or something.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I did a key-person contract negotiation after my last company was sold, and I over-spent on legal for it (20/20 hindsight everything would have worked out peachy for me had I just blind-signed what the acquirer gave me) and it was not my experience that compensation after termination for cause was a market ask. My lawyer, for whom I was very small fish indeed, suggested that I could probably ask for anything I wanted short of any kind of severance or acceleration on termination for cause. You know more about the market in the Valley than I do, but I am surprised to hear the suggestion that anyone at the SVP level would have negotiated severance on for-cause termination. (The point you made subsequently, about him maybe having locked in some amount of comp in exchange for non-compete, makes more sense.) Again you know this stuff way more than I do. I'm just sort of probing here.
  - donatj 8y ago
    But he wasn’t terminated with cause. He quit.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. But Rubin probably wasn't terminated for cause, but nudged to resign. > The $90 million was for Google to keep the story quiet and to keep Rubin from working for a competitor. The $90 million was probably to prevent a protracted legal battle Google wasn't guaranteed to win; senior executives typically have fairly strong exit guarantees in individual contracts; people talk about it being hard to fire people under union contracts, but doing so under executive contracts (without paying the pre-negotiated severance and adhering to the likely-present mutual non-disparagement clause) is at least as difficult.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Being terminated for cause shouldn't retroactively makes you un-earn money. If for the sake of argument the money was for developing android, then he would deserve both the pile of money and punishment for wrongdoing.
- georgiecasey 8y ago
  and how much it created for Samsung
- krainboltgreene 8y ago
  > If you created Android which runs on the overwhelming majority of phones today This is kind of like figuring out that coal provides good energy output and then someone saying you "created the industrial revolution".
nostrademons 8y ago
Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be fair, it was already heading there before she joined). https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-severance-stock-verizon/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may... I have a suspicion that corporate executives are Veblen goods [1], which makes their price/wage behavior somewhat economically counterintuitive. When a company's board hires a new CEO, the primary return to the individual director who puts forth the candidate is in social status. They want to be seen as having made a bold, risky move, and having the social connections to pull it off and get their candidate approved. (The idea that the board acts to maximize shareholder value is a legal fiction only; people make decisions, not laws, and unless the shareholders can bring a successful shareholder lawsuit the individual people will make the decision that maximizes their own personal utility.) That means that the more a candidate already makes, and the higher their profile in the business world, the more they can command in compensation. On the way out, all participants are again motivated by status - a lengthy wrongful termination lawsuit damages the reputations of everyone involved, and so all parties have an incentive to spend more shareholder money to avoid it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- munk-a 8y ago
  The executive that's considered to be most responsible for all the corruption in Well's Fargo received a 125M$ retirement package. The world is just generally amazingly unjust.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Clearly he had merit and worked hard for every cent of the 125M, how dare you say otherwise. /s
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  > Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be fair, it was already heading there before she joined). Uh, so which is it? Did Mayer: A) Change yahoo’s trajectory from positive to negative, thus “running it into the ground” B) Yahoo was running into the ground when she took over For the crime of failing to turn around the cluster fuck that was 2012 yahoo, I guess Mayer is forever destined to be HN’s punching bag.

mscasts 8y ago

If you created Android which runs on the overwhelming majority of phones today, you probably should get a very good exit package deal. Imagine how much wealth Android has generated for Google.

econner 8y ago
Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. The $90 million was for Google to keep the story quiet and to keep Rubin from working for a competitor.
- mscasts 8y ago
  > Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. I disagree. It all depends on what the cause is. Regarding sexual harassment which today means any woman can accuse you of that and no questions is asked and you'll get sacked is not a valid reason for not getting any money imo.
- bitL 8y ago
  How would they attract a similarly capable person in the future if they withdrew generous compensation? It's like when secret service withdraws protection offer after they received the information they were after; they wouldn't ever recruit anyone in that area again.
  - econner 8y ago
    Are you actually equating intentionally quieting a credible sexual harassment claim to withdrawing secret service protection?
    - bitL 8y ago
      Not at all. Reread it please. It's about attracting highest technical/management caliber employees able to create $XBn projects from the scratch. If you showcase that you dispose of such employees after they finished their job with no reward because of tangential factors, other people might not want to join you in the future, because who knows what actually happened, if there e.g. wasn't a team inside collecting potentially damaging information about their employees to be used when company wanted to save money after their usefulness expired, or if somebody wasn't playing another Game of Thrones, manipulating easily impressionable people and their opinions to keep the money. Who can tell what exactly the truth was? E.g. it's highly unlikely just one side is right if two people end up in the same hotel room alone; believing that would insult intelligence of everyone...
      - jensv 8y ago
        Andy went on to create the Essentials phone line which nobody uses or cares about.
        bitL 8y ago
        This is not about Essentials (flop) but about Android (huge success). Would you like to be paid for your most successful project based off your worst one? Of course without Google Andy would not be successful, but the same could have been the other way round - without Andy Google might not have had Android and Nokia would be still popular smartphone king...
  - jensv 8y ago
    With a bodacious babe.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  "Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything." This assumes that, for example, when he became an SVP, he was still on any sort of standard employee agreement. That is highly unlikely. Almost all execs at that level in that large a company would have a specially negotiated agreement. Most still end up with something even if terminated for cause. Almost all their exits would be specifically negotiated mutual separation agreements. (I'm not defending the above, obviously, just explaining what i expect is the case based on experience) Also worth pointing out: don't know when he was made SVP/etc, but it probably predates any pushes to change any of this in tech. :(
  - econner 8y ago
    Very good point. I hadn't thought of that.
  - defen 8y ago
    The New York Times article about him today said: > Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. However I don't know if that's just opinion or based on some set of facts about his situation.
    - DannyBee 8y ago
      That seems just like opinion. Some data: My wife works in HR (not at Google, but in tech and other industries), and has handled things like executive compensation/retention/etc. She has done many of these types of situations over the years. She was doubtful they would have been able to pay him nothing. I've also seen a bunch fly by on the legal side over the years, and most (but not all) that i've seen would have paid out something in a case like this. Best guess as to the 90 million was that it was not about this, but stock payout in exchange for not competing with google for a while or something.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I did a key-person contract negotiation after my last company was sold, and I over-spent on legal for it (20/20 hindsight everything would have worked out peachy for me had I just blind-signed what the acquirer gave me) and it was not my experience that compensation after termination for cause was a market ask. My lawyer, for whom I was very small fish indeed, suggested that I could probably ask for anything I wanted short of any kind of severance or acceleration on termination for cause. You know more about the market in the Valley than I do, but I am surprised to hear the suggestion that anyone at the SVP level would have negotiated severance on for-cause termination. (The point you made subsequently, about him maybe having locked in some amount of comp in exchange for non-compete, makes more sense.) Again you know this stuff way more than I do. I'm just sort of probing here.
- donatj 8y ago
  But he wasn’t terminated with cause. He quit.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Sure, but if you're terminated for cause you shouldn't receive anything. But Rubin probably wasn't terminated for cause, but nudged to resign. > The $90 million was for Google to keep the story quiet and to keep Rubin from working for a competitor. The $90 million was probably to prevent a protracted legal battle Google wasn't guaranteed to win; senior executives typically have fairly strong exit guarantees in individual contracts; people talk about it being hard to fire people under union contracts, but doing so under executive contracts (without paying the pre-negotiated severance and adhering to the likely-present mutual non-disparagement clause) is at least as difficult.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Being terminated for cause shouldn't retroactively makes you un-earn money. If for the sake of argument the money was for developing android, then he would deserve both the pile of money and punishment for wrongdoing.
georgiecasey 8y ago
and how much it created for Samsung
krainboltgreene 8y ago
> If you created Android which runs on the overwhelming majority of phones today This is kind of like figuring out that coal provides good energy output and then someone saying you "created the industrial revolution".

nostrademons 8y ago

Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be fair, it was already heading there before she joined). https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-severance-stock-verizon/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may... I have a suspicion that corporate executives are Veblen goods [1], which makes their price/wage behavior somewhat economically counterintuitive. When a company's board hires a new CEO, the primary return to the individual director who puts forth the candidate is in social status. They want to be seen as having made a bold, risky move, and having the social connections to pull it off and get their candidate approved. (The idea that the board acts to maximize shareholder value is a legal fiction only; people make decisions, not laws, and unless the shareholders can bring a successful shareholder lawsuit the individual people will make the decision that maximizes their own personal utility.) That means that the more a candidate already makes, and the higher their profile in the business world, the more they can command in compensation. On the way out, all participants are again motivated by status - a lengthy wrongful termination lawsuit damages the reputations of everyone involved, and so all parties have an incentive to spend more shareholder money to avoid it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

munk-a 8y ago
The executive that's considered to be most responsible for all the corruption in Well's Fargo received a 125M$ retirement package. The world is just generally amazingly unjust.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Clearly he had merit and worked hard for every cent of the 125M, how dare you say otherwise. /s
jaredklewis 8y ago
> Marissa Mayer got $260M for basically running Yahoo into the ground. (To be fair, it was already heading there before she joined). Uh, so which is it? Did Mayer: A) Change yahoo’s trajectory from positive to negative, thus “running it into the ground” B) Yahoo was running into the ground when she took over For the crime of failing to turn around the cluster fuck that was 2012 yahoo, I guess Mayer is forever destined to be HN’s punching bag.