5 ms·

Yahoo appoints Google's Henrique de Castro as COO

36 points by ximeng 14y ago

ximeng 14y ago
"According to a regulatory filing, de Castro will receive an annual base salary of $600,000 and a one-time retention equity award comprising $US18 million in restricted stock units and $US18 million in performance-based stock options. He will get a $1 million bonus for leaving Google and restricted stock with a target value of $US20 million." 60 million USD package according to http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/yahoo-to-pay-new-coo-henrique-de-castro-us60m/story-e6frg90o-1226497025098 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/yahoo-to-pay-... (paywall unless you come via Google) Better article at allthingsd: http://allthingsd.com/20121015/yahoo-confirms-hiring-of-googles-de-castro-as-coo-like-i-said/ http://allthingsd.com/20121015/yahoo-confirms-hiring-of-goog...
- 001sky 14y ago
  interesting => package is 100x reported base salary
manaskarekar 14y ago
Reminds me of this old discussion : "Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138086 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138086
confluence 14y ago
$60 million dollars for a sales exec! WTF! Am I the only one that thinks this is completely ridiculous? Yahoo! needs products and you could've hired 250 highly paid full time developers for 1 year for that cash. Hell - you could've pouched a nice sliver of Google. I mean doesn't Yahoo! suck at engineering and not sales as compared to Google? They're second in search and still pulling billions - I thought all they needed were more products?
- 001sky 14y ago
  COO is slightly different, if that is in fact his role. at $20B mkt cap, $60MM is like a 0.03% stake in the company. Basically a rounding error. In the last 10 years, people learned that value destruction is the same as creation, when it comes to leverage in these scenarios. If you don't pay them $XYZ, they will destroy value or sit idly by as entropy does it for them. The mathematical equivalence of marginal productivity (what they teach in school) and marginal malevolence (street smarts) is elegant in its simplicity. That's how the game is played. One of the downsides of "maximizing shareholder value" as your guiding principle.[1] With that in mind, look at a comp for COO pay: Exec Comp Consuultant > American businesswoman and the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion Not justifying it, just pointing out the facts. ______ [1] A Mature company is completely different dynamic than a (0,1) innovation scenario/startup, IMHO. And there are more and less sophisticated ways to understand even "Maximizing X value" at the Board Level, stage agnostic.
  - guelo 14y ago
    Net worth after an IPO is not the same as a compensation package.
    - 001sky 14y ago
      Apologise, as I was not more precise in my data. But, in this case, most of Sandberg's net worth was from her compensation package at FB as COO. [1] It was really more for order of magnitude: $60 vs $1,500. You could cut that in half and divide by ten and still be 25% higher. When you think like this, the fact that packgage $60M is 100x $0.6 salary gets lost in the shuffle. =D _________ [1] In 2009, FB was $10-15B company. She had some money, though, from google as well presumably.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  There in the declining cash cow phase, so its a matter of whatever corporate-political faction can get in there and gobble up that revenue ($60mm, nice). It really, really, f'n really is not about engineering at this point in a big corp's life. Most executives would shoot all the engineers if they could get away with it and it created a tiny personal profit for themselves.
franze 14y ago
i'm wondering what yahoo will be in 5 years? are there any cases where an established big company / big player in decline re-invented itself successfully? (ok, any company other than Apple ...)
- nhebb 14y ago
  IBM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gerstner#IBM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gerstner#IBM
- seivan 14y ago
  No chance. Why would a developer want to feel his contribution is less than of a sales exec.... Good luck building great products Yahoo.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    At which companies are developers paid more than executives?

36 points by ximeng 14y ago

"According to a regulatory filing, de Castro will receive an annual base salary of $600,000 and a one-time retention equity award comprising $US18 million in restricted stock units and $US18 million in performance-based stock options. He will get a $1 million bonus for leaving Google and restricted stock with a target value of $US20 million." 60 million USD package according to http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/yahoo-to-pay-new-coo-henrique-de-castro-us60m/story-e6frg90o-1226497025098 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/world/yahoo-to-pay-... (paywall unless you come via Google) Better article at allthingsd: http://allthingsd.com/20121015/yahoo-confirms-hiring-of-googles-de-castro-as-coo-like-i-said/ http://allthingsd.com/20121015/yahoo-confirms-hiring-of-goog...

001sky 14y ago
interesting => package is 100x reported base salary

manaskarekar 14y ago

Reminds me of this old discussion : "Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138086 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138086

confluence 14y ago

$60 million dollars for a sales exec! WTF! Am I the only one that thinks this is completely ridiculous? Yahoo! needs products and you could've hired 250 highly paid full time developers for 1 year for that cash. Hell - you could've pouched a nice sliver of Google. I mean doesn't Yahoo! suck at engineering and not sales as compared to Google? They're second in search and still pulling billions - I thought all they needed were more products?

001sky 14y ago
COO is slightly different, if that is in fact his role. at $20B mkt cap, $60MM is like a 0.03% stake in the company. Basically a rounding error. In the last 10 years, people learned that value destruction is the same as creation, when it comes to leverage in these scenarios. If you don't pay them $XYZ, they will destroy value or sit idly by as entropy does it for them. The mathematical equivalence of marginal productivity (what they teach in school) and marginal malevolence (street smarts) is elegant in its simplicity. That's how the game is played. One of the downsides of "maximizing shareholder value" as your guiding principle.[1] With that in mind, look at a comp for COO pay: Exec Comp Consuultant > American businesswoman and the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion Not justifying it, just pointing out the facts. ______ [1] A Mature company is completely different dynamic than a (0,1) innovation scenario/startup, IMHO. And there are more and less sophisticated ways to understand even "Maximizing X value" at the Board Level, stage agnostic.
- guelo 14y ago
  Net worth after an IPO is not the same as a compensation package.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    Apologise, as I was not more precise in my data. But, in this case, most of Sandberg's net worth was from her compensation package at FB as COO. [1] It was really more for order of magnitude: $60 vs $1,500. You could cut that in half and divide by ten and still be 25% higher. When you think like this, the fact that packgage $60M is 100x $0.6 salary gets lost in the shuffle. =D _________ [1] In 2009, FB was $10-15B company. She had some money, though, from google as well presumably.
codeonfire 14y ago
There in the declining cash cow phase, so its a matter of whatever corporate-political faction can get in there and gobble up that revenue ($60mm, nice). It really, really, f'n really is not about engineering at this point in a big corp's life. Most executives would shoot all the engineers if they could get away with it and it created a tiny personal profit for themselves.

franze 14y ago

i'm wondering what yahoo will be in 5 years? are there any cases where an established big company / big player in decline re-invented itself successfully? (ok, any company other than Apple ...)

nhebb 14y ago
IBM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gerstner#IBM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gerstner#IBM
seivan 14y ago
No chance. Why would a developer want to feel his contribution is less than of a sales exec.... Good luck building great products Yahoo.
- freehunter 14y ago
  At which companies are developers paid more than executives?