5 ms·

Google has no leaders, only managers.

by new_realist 7y ago

tehlike 7y ago
Realistically, very few companies has inspiring c-level people. Bezos is inspiring, maybe thats about it for me.
- mcny 7y ago
  > Bezos is inspiring, maybe thats about it for me. (Not an Amazon.com employee or ex-employee. I have no inside information.) I was excited to learn about the culture at Amazon.com but I'm personally very disappointed (perhaps because of the high bar I imagined). The story of buying a door and using as a desk probably gets repeated a lot but that and the touted base salary cap gets lost in the sky high executive compensation. Salary.com https://archive.md/oIQ67 https://archive.md/oIQ67 pegs both Jeffrey A. Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer and Andrew R. Jassy, CEO Amazon Web Services at over seventeen million dollars per year and Jeffrey M. Blackburn, SVP, Business Development at over ten million dollars per year. Even Jeff Bezos took in over a million and half dollars. I don't find it inspiring at all. I would find it inspiring if the leaders made closer to the salary cap (definitely under a million dollars a year).
  - tehlike 7y ago
    That simply will not happen in us corporations. That said, my inspiration is independent of their compensation package You can find engineers in faang companies making over a million, so that seems like a very restrictivr compensation package you are suggesting.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Ballmer's salary was $260K IIRC. Many of his underlings made more than that. He's still an un-inspiring billionaire (and a very talented businessman, which few people give him credit for).
    - tehlike 7y ago
      He is underrated, thats true.
    - zitterbewegung 7y ago
      He helped make the Microsoft Surface line. At the time it had some trouble starting out but now Microsoft has a portfolio of Surface products that can actually go head to head with Apple products while Google's hardware strategy just keeps on being more and more confusing and weird.
      - tehlike 7y ago
        Ballmers main success was enterprise contracts with big corps.
        chrisweekly 7y ago
        Plus "Developers, developers, developers", right? Hilarious antics aside, doesn't he get some credit for pointing in that direction? FFWD a few years to VSC, Github, MS as arguably world's leading contrib to OSS... I came of professional age being pretty anti-M$ (and w good reason), but things do, sometimes, eventually, change.
        nl 7y ago
        "Developers, developers, developers" was in 2000, around the same time Ballmer was saying "Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."[1] The context of the "Developers, developers, developers" thing was that MS was fighting against open source to try to attract developers to the Windows platform instead. Visual Studio Code, Github etc only came after Ballmer left. [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballmer_quotes_from_microsoft_history/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballme...
        7y ago
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    I agree, Steve Jobs is the most inspiring person to ever live. Not only did he take $1 as his salary, but he personally gave us revolutionary tech products. /s I like Apple and Steve Jobs, it's not the same without him but in the age where we are building the capacity to colonize another planet that far exceeds "one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind", it's baffling to see people inspired by the frugality of one's personal income. Some of the greatest achievements in the history of humankind are on the verge of happening and most people on HN can't see past their neighbor's pocketbook.
    - debaserab2 7y ago
      It seems like we're closer to a self inflicted mass extinction event than it does the miraculous innovation of galactic migration considering how drastically underfunded the efforts for the latter are compared to the former. Or are we just hoping Bezos takes us all in his rocketships?
      - friendlybus 7y ago
        Maybe neither will happen and the few dollars we scraped from the each other's hearts will be our only comfort as humanity descends into an indifference about the natural world and world changing ideas. Maybe we will measure status in how much someone can accumulate for themselves and their tribe instead of the improvements they make for humanity.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      And the $1 is clearly because his revenue stream was not his salary, which would be taxed in a different way than his capital gains on stock. It's as if a tax dodge is interpreted as altruism.
      - tehlike 7y ago
        i mean... it's not a tax dodge, he would still own the stocks even if his salary wasn't $1.

Google has no leaders, only managers.

tehlike 7y ago

Realistically, very few companies has inspiring c-level people. Bezos is inspiring, maybe thats about it for me.

mcny 7y ago
> Bezos is inspiring, maybe thats about it for me. (Not an Amazon.com employee or ex-employee. I have no inside information.) I was excited to learn about the culture at Amazon.com but I'm personally very disappointed (perhaps because of the high bar I imagined). The story of buying a door and using as a desk probably gets repeated a lot but that and the touted base salary cap gets lost in the sky high executive compensation. Salary.com https://archive.md/oIQ67 https://archive.md/oIQ67 pegs both Jeffrey A. Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer and Andrew R. Jassy, CEO Amazon Web Services at over seventeen million dollars per year and Jeffrey M. Blackburn, SVP, Business Development at over ten million dollars per year. Even Jeff Bezos took in over a million and half dollars. I don't find it inspiring at all. I would find it inspiring if the leaders made closer to the salary cap (definitely under a million dollars a year).
- tehlike 7y ago
  That simply will not happen in us corporations. That said, my inspiration is independent of their compensation package You can find engineers in faang companies making over a million, so that seems like a very restrictivr compensation package you are suggesting.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Ballmer's salary was $260K IIRC. Many of his underlings made more than that. He's still an un-inspiring billionaire (and a very talented businessman, which few people give him credit for).
  - tehlike 7y ago
    He is underrated, thats true.
  - zitterbewegung 7y ago
    He helped make the Microsoft Surface line. At the time it had some trouble starting out but now Microsoft has a portfolio of Surface products that can actually go head to head with Apple products while Google's hardware strategy just keeps on being more and more confusing and weird.
    - tehlike 7y ago
      Ballmers main success was enterprise contracts with big corps.
      - chrisweekly 7y ago
        Plus "Developers, developers, developers", right? Hilarious antics aside, doesn't he get some credit for pointing in that direction? FFWD a few years to VSC, Github, MS as arguably world's leading contrib to OSS... I came of professional age being pretty anti-M$ (and w good reason), but things do, sometimes, eventually, change.
        nl 7y ago
        "Developers, developers, developers" was in 2000, around the same time Ballmer was saying "Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."[1] The context of the "Developers, developers, developers" thing was that MS was fighting against open source to try to attract developers to the Windows platform instead. Visual Studio Code, Github etc only came after Ballmer left. [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballmer_quotes_from_microsoft_history/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/24/top_10_steve_ballme...
        7y ago
- friendlybus 7y ago
  I agree, Steve Jobs is the most inspiring person to ever live. Not only did he take $1 as his salary, but he personally gave us revolutionary tech products. /s I like Apple and Steve Jobs, it's not the same without him but in the age where we are building the capacity to colonize another planet that far exceeds "one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind", it's baffling to see people inspired by the frugality of one's personal income. Some of the greatest achievements in the history of humankind are on the verge of happening and most people on HN can't see past their neighbor's pocketbook.
  - debaserab2 7y ago
    It seems like we're closer to a self inflicted mass extinction event than it does the miraculous innovation of galactic migration considering how drastically underfunded the efforts for the latter are compared to the former. Or are we just hoping Bezos takes us all in his rocketships?
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      Maybe neither will happen and the few dollars we scraped from the each other's hearts will be our only comfort as humanity descends into an indifference about the natural world and world changing ideas. Maybe we will measure status in how much someone can accumulate for themselves and their tribe instead of the improvements they make for humanity.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    And the $1 is clearly because his revenue stream was not his salary, which would be taxed in a different way than his capital gains on stock. It's as if a tax dodge is interpreted as altruism.
    - tehlike 7y ago
      i mean... it's not a tax dodge, he would still own the stocks even if his salary wasn't $1.