In disagreement. Google's revenue per person employee is $1.34 million[1]. Variation between individual engineers (according to Brooks et al) can be as high as

In disagreement. Google's revenue per person employee is $1.34 million[1]. Variation between individual engineers (according to Brooks et al) can be as high as 10x (leading to the famous "10x engineer" meme). This 3.5 mm is (most likely) vested over four years. Google doesn't hire from the bottom end, but given he's risen to staff (or is it senior staff?) level we can safely assume he's at least 2x more productive than an average engineer at Google. So the "naive" numbers mean that over the course of ten years, they could make up to $10mm from this person. Obviously, we don't know his marginal value (how much would Google lose if he was let go and no replacement was found?), but it's safe to assume Google will make money if he takes their offer and stays vs. if he leaves (even if wasn't going to a competitor): why would an engineering/metrics driven (sometimes to the point of "41 shades of blue") company make this offer, if they didn't think the bargain was theirs? He could also easily be worth more than $10mm (imagine if his contribution was an algorithm to increase CTR on ads but a few percent!) and I imagine Google does make an effort to measure a) how much money a product makes b) how much do various engineers contribute to various projects. This is likely a highly rational decision. [1] Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-google-revenue-dollar-per-employee-2010-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-google-reven...