22 ms·

Google Paid This Man $100 Million

231 points by jmount 14y ago

yekko 14y ago
It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!
- richoffrails 14y ago
  One can dream.
- cygwin98 14y ago
  Not really. I have been curious on what kind of compensation Paul Buchheit obtained for his creation of gmail and adsense, the former being the one of the two GOOG services I depend on daily, the latter built the empire financially. I am pretty sure that that amount could be far lower than $100M, which is a very depressive fact for our programmers.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  Sales guys and top product guys are more visible, and therefore have higher incomes and bigger bonuses. It's just how it works.
capred 14y ago
Does anyone know if these types of $100M numbers are actually true? I think it makes a great headline but wouldn't everyone at senior ranks get packages like this making it unsustainable?
- niggler 14y ago
  Google is a 258B market cap company (as per yesterday's closing price). They can afford to give hundreds of these packages, even if they diluted the stock, without moving the needle too much.
- rhizome 14y ago
  It's only paper, and Google is under the spotlight for anti-poaching collusion. This story makes them look like in-demand workers benefit from their policies rather than the worker just laboring away unaware that other companies have already agreed with Google not to try to hire him away.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  It does seem likely that some tricks were involved to arrive at a sensational number. But if Google pays an average engineer on the order of $100,000 , this is 1000 times the average annual salary as a one time bonus. That seems exceptional, certainly, but not completely insane. On the flip side, it might keep a certain type of engineer for bolting for a startup. Even the most optimistic entrepreneur knows the odds of a $100 M payday are pretty much non-existent.
  - robrenaud 14y ago
    Google pays a starting engineer fresh out of college that much salary, and then there is stock and bonus incentive compensation.
- Evbn 14y ago
  How many people do you think are VP's at Google? A few hundred at most? $X million per year is normal for a big co VP. This isn't like a bank were every teller or saleman is called VP. He is a One-percenter at the top of the Google pyramid.
NelsonMinar 14y ago
Original source for the article, with better formatting: http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-million-man-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-millio...
- majani 14y ago
  A study showed that links from Business Insider stand an extremely low chance of getting upvotes on HN ( http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analysis/ http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analys... ). That's why people post other websites' syndications of BI.
  - nikcub 14y ago
    which is a shame, because BI has been really good recently - to the point that I visit the site each day that said, I do enjoy the irony of a BI original article being syndicated by another publisher and becoming more popular than the original source
iamvictorious 14y ago
It makes sense ... the guy is running a multi-billion dollar new business line for Google that is their most meaningful business outside of search ads.
genericresponse 14y ago
The article makes a point to say that he started with a job that paid a "humble" $60,000 per year in 1997. Based on my quick and dirty run on wolfram alpha, that is the equivalent to $120,000 per year today. Not so much of a humble beginning for a second job out of college.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  What? That can't possibly be right. BLS says it's more like $86k http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1=1997&year2=2013 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1...
  - jarcoal 14y ago
    Was just about to post that exact link. Still not too shabby.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Not bad, but I was making the same in 97 with about the same experience level, in Atlanta. It wasn't an exceptional salary in any way.
      - nilkn 14y ago
        It's not exactly a completely humble beginning either, though. You may be out of touch with what salaries look like for the average American.
- spullara 14y ago
  That is the same salary I was being paid as my second job out of college at WebLogic in San Francisco in Dec 1996. It was a step down from the consulting company I had come from in Chicago but so much better!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
cridal 14y ago
Wow. Definitely, an interesting reading. And a special guy, no question about it. On the other hand, the guy didn't cure cancer. Doesn't it give anyone pause to thin that the topic of conversation is 'ads'? You know, those little annoying things you would never click, and which get in the way of your normal life. I mean we're talking about billions of dollars. So much human talent, skill, intelligence taken away from really important things... Just sad...
- quaunaut 14y ago
  I'm not about to say that this is as noble as curing cancer- but then again, the skills aren't one to one. Generally the kinds of people who are able to think at such a high level strategically for a business, have very different ways of thinking from those who do hard science. Science is slow, arduous, and full of rigor in a way that would probably make Neal into a mediocre scientist at best. Things that Neal accomplishes at Google in a week, he wouldn't see movement on as a scientist in his lifetime. They require different sorts of people. Not to mention- while he is getting paid a monstrous sum of money, think of how many people he is also enabling to have jobs, both at Google and the businesses that use their services. The direct effect is obviously very different, but I'd bet he does a lot of good for the world in his own way.
  - codeonfire 14y ago
    Equally plausible to the 'providing value' theory are several possible scenarios of externalities that can't be mentioned without asbestos underwear. And as for thinking about how many jobs a person is enabling, we'll just call that the 'dear leader' argument.
- slyv 14y ago
  Ads are also the thing that enables really amazing things to exist. Regardless of your feelings about facebook, the community it has created has had drastic impacts on the world at large. Almost the entire knowledge of humanity is now in anyone's grasp with a simple click of a button (Google). That was only possible because Google was able to make money off of it through ads. How do you propose that the internet pay for its self without ads? The whole freedom of the internet is because they can make money off of ads. Not everyone needs to cure cancer to do something great.
simonsarris 14y ago
I find this fascinating. It almost smacks of game theory. A land-mined game of incentives, anyway. Think of the sheer amount of considerations that go into a decision like this. Higher-ups at Google must acknowledge: * Offering someone an enormous sum only after someone else has made you an offer can be off-putting. Consider the many articles written about never making counter offers[1], or never accepting them. * Along the same lines, if you're not offered a large enough sum to stay, you might take it as an insult. "They're only offering me this much money after I've considered leaving?" Google certainly made sure the sum was large enough, by any count. * Offering an enormous sum to one person may tempt others to fish out offers from other companies. Others may feel like they're never going to get a raise unless they are courting or being courted actively. * Google's decision-makers (or check-writers) have to be careful about the number picked. They want to send a message to the person, and to other companies, and to the market. But they probably don't want to end up paying $100m for every high value employee. Luckily for Google, if its gonna be a cash arms-race against other companies, there are few that can do serious battle with them. * Speaking of high value employees, while you might get person A to stay, you make make resentful group B. After all, there's already a comment here: "It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!" It's not a stretch for anyone to sympathize with that view. ~~~ And then, at the end of all that, people in a room pursed their lips together and quietly nodded while somebody pulled out the (metaphorical) checkbook. This guy is staying, it's going to be this much money, and we're going to make it purposefully public knowledge. Signals everywhere. It seems to be a dangerous game. Others may (as a default) suddenly feel unappreciated since Google hasn't made them an offer to keep being a Googler, and perhaps hasn't approached them with any considerable raise in some time. 100 million ensures that you keep a single employee, but how many do you alienate at the same time? Hard to blame Google's decision, I'm sure they gave it much more thought than I have. I wish I could know what they're thinking, it's just so fascinating what goes into this. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384
- rhizome 14y ago
  Based on a virtual napkin math based on what's in the story and GOOG's current stock price, I'm speculating the entire deal was simply "200,000 options." I'm sure he got a promotion/raise out of it as well.
avenger123 14y ago
This is a classic story of really good negotiation. Getting the very serious offer from Twitter was the best thing to happen to Neal. I can only imagine the negotiation with Google that he must of had. It probably went on the lines of something like this - "Hey, I really love it here at Google. I am really excited with what we are working on and want to deliver it but this Twitter offer is just something that I can't ignore. I am looking at the financial future of my family and I would be doing them a disservice if I don't consider this offer seriously. Is there anything we can do to just make this offer go away." Neal had the upper hand. Worst-case scenario for him would be that there would be no change. He would continue to work at Google. Next best case scenario would be that he would be working at another mega-tech company, and getting better compensated with potentially even greater upside. Google was in a position of weakness in either case. If they did nothing and he left, it would amount to even more collateral damage as others would get the message that Google can't compete and Twitter would make even more offers to others. By paying him out, they basically paid him the opportunity cost in real dollars that he may have had if he moved to Twitter. In all of this, Neal's professionalism would have tipped the favor on his side.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Some people might be happier if more of the hundred millionaires walked out to pillage flailing competitors. It isn't obvious that VP retention is good for morale. But it would be cool if Larry Page said "your old org, from intern to director, says you are the the grease in our money machine, we will always pay you more than any one else would offer, and we want you to find out how high we can reward you"
- 777466 14y ago
  Serious question: does the sweetened language, how you couch the situation really make a difference to decision makers?
  - vacri 14y ago
    I think when you start talking about the financial future of your family, it makes more sense when you're a line employee. But when you're on a salary well into the six figures, it sounds disinegenuous (to me) to say "we're struggling here". By all means go for "hey, I'm in demand and thinking of moving - business is business", but "I'm moving because I'm concerned about my personal finances"? But then again, I'm not the guy who does salary negotiations...
wallflower 14y ago
This is a job for life and then some. If you compare this with full professorship (academic tenure), that will cost the university about $4 million (assuming $60k/yr - probably $6-7 million if the university is upper echelon). So conservatively this is 10-15x what tenure is. Neal Mohan sounds like the business equivalent of Jeff Dean [1] [1] http://research.google.com/people/jeff/ http://research.google.com/people/jeff/
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  Ahem. This is 10-15x the money portion of tenure. You still have to think about advertising all day every day. I'd take the tenure.
  - samstave 14y ago
    I am completely naive to what you just said, may you please explain like I am five? [I am dead serious]
    - burntsushi 14y ago
      I think the GP is saying that a tenured professor typically has the option of a wide range of job freedom. You work on pretty much what you want and when you want. The GP is contrasting this with being the head of advertising at Google, which one might guess is fairly demanding.
      - thomasbk 14y ago
        Also, improving advertising isn't generally seen as having the highest positive impact on society, whereas a professor might contribute to a cure for cancer.
  - snaky 14y ago
    >have to think about advertising all day every day That sounds no difference from 'think about chemistry all day every day', doesn't it? I think advertising is more interesting and inspiring these days than many of traditional science areas. Not to mention it's a huge field including bleeding age AI, Big Data, performance, etc.
SeoxyS 14y ago
Google's purchase of DoubleClick seems to be considered a huge success. I'm curious how the $750M purchase of AdMob is seen in the company. Does anybody have an insight or references?
Evbn 14y ago
Does anyone remember when DoubleClick was the most hated company on the Internet? Spying on users, displaying obnoxious ads? The Evil that Google was to Not Be?
flyinglizard 14y ago
Reading this, his compensation is the least amazing part. If this article is true, it should have been titled "A Story Of Competence". Does anyone have any doubt the guy is generating Google this money many times over? It's simple math. It has nothing to do with curing cancer, economical equality or anything else. He's something that's worth X and pays back many X. I can understand why this comes as a shock to some; it may be difficult to accept that another person doing his 9-5 job can bring so much value to a company. I always suspected such value creators exist (Jobs would be one). So good for him for delivering, and good for Google for acknowledging and compensating accordingly. And good for me too; I'm taking my first steps as an advertiser with Google and I'm really liking what I'm finding so far.
- dopamean 14y ago
  People sometimes find it difficult to understand that some people are actually worth the astronomical figures they are paid. When we hear about the big pay day it's easy to focus on that number what not what was done to earn it.
  - flyinglizard 14y ago
    True, and it's way easier to accept how someone is a successful businessman or a stakeholder in a company, than it is to accept that someone may be actually producing this kind of value on a personal level. It's easy to imagine how some trader did some wheeling and dealing for a quick buck or how someone with shrewd instincts made a profitable investment, but it's very difficult to imagine how someone creates all this value by himself, day in day out; how someone stands out like this in an organization like Google, which is both an intellectual powerhouse and far removed from the compensation culture in the finance sector - this is even more difficult to accept. Maybe that's why people pick on CEO salaries but stay silent on the shareholder profits from the very same corporations. You can imagine 100 million dollars of oil barrels or real estate, but you can't imagine a 100 million dollars mind.
    - dopamean 14y ago
      It really is a hard concept to grasp. It's one thing to have grand plans for a business. It's another thing entirely to be able to communicate those plans effectively to all of the people who will be needed to make sure the plan is properly executed. People who can do this successfully deserve everything they are given in my opinion.
dyno12345 14y ago
Note to self: Become an executive.
- wilfra 14y ago
  *Become indispensable in a role where you are directly responsible for driving billions of dollars in revenue.
  - swah 14y ago
    I think Seth Godin's book Linchpin talks about this - but I've only skimmed it.
  - dyno12345 14y ago
    Step 1: Become an executive
    - wilfra 14y ago
      Step 1 is to be really fucking good at your job, whatever that job is. Ideally that job would be in a unit that is directly responsible for driving revenue growth. That will probably lead to you becoming an executive at some point, but that would be a symptom of your success, a necessary evil, not the starting point. Especially in a company like Google, which has a cultural disdain for empty suits, if your goal is to "become an executive" you'd never find yourself in his position.
      - dyno12345 14y ago
        I've been really good at my job, and never became an executive. I think there's more to it than that.
dkwak 14y ago
I've always been curious what display advertising is and how it generates so much revenue for Google. Are there any good resources to learn more about what exactly goes on behind the scenes? Do those little ads on my gmail sidebar really create billions in wealth? Or is there some super secret illuminati-esque subliminal advertising going on?
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/ http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/ It's distinguished from search-based advertising (e.g. adwords). It's basically just ordinary online advertising, and there are a great many different ad networks out there already. However, google's network has been gaining a huge amount of traction recently and took the top spot in marketshare within the last year or so, even pulling ahead of Facebook. In total these sorts of ads are worth around $2 billion a year in revenue for google but both the size of the market and google's share of it are growing at double digit rates so google's revenue from it is likely to double within the next few years.
rckrd 14y ago
The article mentions an "epic 400-500 page Powerpoint document" outlining Mohan's strategies. In the rare chance that this is floating around the internet, does anyone know where it would be or more information on it?
- patrickk 14y ago
  Sounds like the kind of document that the distribution of would be tightly controlled. It was probably shown to select people, but not actually emailed to anyone. You get to see the slides, but you don't get a copy.
whnevan 14y ago
"They'd spent the months prior trying to turn Twitter into "a real company" after years of neglectful management." Anyone care to explain how the management was neglectful? Serious question.
- Maven911 14y ago
  I think it might have to do with the founder, jack dorsey, staying on as CEO, though he was eventually ousted out of that role
namank 14y ago
Wonder how it worked out... Did he hand in his resignation and was asked to reconsider? Did he tell them he wanted more money? Did they find out about the twitter offer from outside sources and arrange for the bump? How did the semantics play out?!
SKy33 14y ago
This happened at a time when Google was bleeding top management talent to Facebook and Twitter. http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-level-mole-at-twitter-makes-massive-counteroffers-to-retain-employees/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-le... Sundar Pichai was also offered $50M. As things have settled down, I doubt if this would happen again, at least anytime soon.
Tycho 14y ago
I'm thinking either this story is entirely sensationalized, or Google are scared that this guy will take his roadmap and go execute it elsewhere. Like he has seen upcoming trends and Google know they have to be first to act on them. I wonder what they could be...
erhanerdogan 14y ago
According to story, he did use Powerpoint. It is bothering me.
michaelochurch 14y ago
You know what? Fuck that. Nothing against this guy. If it were $1 million, or $3 million, I probably wouldn't bat an eye. A hundred million for a non-technical executive would be OK, if engineers had basic autonomy and open allocation. Then (and only then) they'd actually be able to afford (morally speaking) a $100M payout to a non-technical executive. Don't call yourself a technical company if engineers in the $100k-200k range can't even fucking change projects until 18 months in (and often not even then, due to a corrupt performance review system) but you're running a private welfare system for non-tech executives. I know all about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence") but somewhere around the 5-standard-deviation incompetence level I go back to malice because 5-sigma is just awful rare. Paying a non-tech executive $100M while engineers making < 1% of that struggle to get a decent project is 8, 9 sigma at the least. Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint. (Or just implement basic autonomy/open allocation for all engineers. Then we're cool no matter what you pay your execs.)
- cygwin98 14y ago
  What kind of trade secrets this guy could possess that made GOOG feel so threatened to make this offer, since nobody is indispensable, right? Care to shed some lights on this? I know GOOG has been dominating the search market for more than a decade, does it also have the same position in the ad market?
- _k 14y ago
  Regarding epen allocation. What if only 2 engineers are needed and 100 are interested ?
  - rhizome 14y ago
    To use an anecdote from just this morning, if you Google the terms, "google tasks android," you'll see that the inverse may also be true: Google engineers able and interested to work on something that is a no-op for mysterious reasons.
- yuhong 14y ago
  BTW, on Google, what do you think of Eric Schmidt? Someone suggested after the anti-poaching fiasco that he should be fired: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523513
vannevar 14y ago
They say Mohan is the visionary who predicted how brand advertising would fund the Internet, turned this vision into a plan, and then executed it. Some say 'fund', others might say 'destroy'. What's in a word?

231 points by jmount 14y ago

yekko 14y ago

It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!

richoffrails 14y ago
One can dream.
cygwin98 14y ago
Not really. I have been curious on what kind of compensation Paul Buchheit obtained for his creation of gmail and adsense, the former being the one of the two GOOG services I depend on daily, the latter built the empire financially. I am pretty sure that that amount could be far lower than $100M, which is a very depressive fact for our programmers.
mratzloff 14y ago
Sales guys and top product guys are more visible, and therefore have higher incomes and bigger bonuses. It's just how it works.

capred 14y ago

Does anyone know if these types of $100M numbers are actually true? I think it makes a great headline but wouldn't everyone at senior ranks get packages like this making it unsustainable?

niggler 14y ago
Google is a 258B market cap company (as per yesterday's closing price). They can afford to give hundreds of these packages, even if they diluted the stock, without moving the needle too much.
rhizome 14y ago
It's only paper, and Google is under the spotlight for anti-poaching collusion. This story makes them look like in-demand workers benefit from their policies rather than the worker just laboring away unaware that other companies have already agreed with Google not to try to hire him away.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
It does seem likely that some tricks were involved to arrive at a sensational number. But if Google pays an average engineer on the order of $100,000 , this is 1000 times the average annual salary as a one time bonus. That seems exceptional, certainly, but not completely insane. On the flip side, it might keep a certain type of engineer for bolting for a startup. Even the most optimistic entrepreneur knows the odds of a $100 M payday are pretty much non-existent.
- robrenaud 14y ago
  Google pays a starting engineer fresh out of college that much salary, and then there is stock and bonus incentive compensation.
Evbn 14y ago
How many people do you think are VP's at Google? A few hundred at most? $X million per year is normal for a big co VP. This isn't like a bank were every teller or saleman is called VP. He is a One-percenter at the top of the Google pyramid.

NelsonMinar 14y ago

Original source for the article, with better formatting: http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-million-man-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-millio...

majani 14y ago
A study showed that links from Business Insider stand an extremely low chance of getting upvotes on HN ( http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analysis/ http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-analys... ). That's why people post other websites' syndications of BI.
- nikcub 14y ago
  which is a shame, because BI has been really good recently - to the point that I visit the site each day that said, I do enjoy the irony of a BI original article being syndicated by another publisher and becoming more popular than the original source

iamvictorious 14y ago

It makes sense ... the guy is running a multi-billion dollar new business line for Google that is their most meaningful business outside of search ads.

genericresponse 14y ago

The article makes a point to say that he started with a job that paid a "humble" $60,000 per year in 1997. Based on my quick and dirty run on wolfram alpha, that is the equivalent to $120,000 per year today. Not so much of a humble beginning for a second job out of college.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
What? That can't possibly be right. BLS says it's more like $86k http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1=1997&year2=2013 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1...
- jarcoal 14y ago
  Was just about to post that exact link. Still not too shabby.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Not bad, but I was making the same in 97 with about the same experience level, in Atlanta. It wasn't an exceptional salary in any way.
    - nilkn 14y ago
      It's not exactly a completely humble beginning either, though. You may be out of touch with what salaries look like for the average American.
spullara 14y ago
That is the same salary I was being paid as my second job out of college at WebLogic in San Francisco in Dec 1996. It was a step down from the consulting company I had come from in Chicago but so much better!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

cridal 14y ago

Wow. Definitely, an interesting reading. And a special guy, no question about it. On the other hand, the guy didn't cure cancer. Doesn't it give anyone pause to thin that the topic of conversation is 'ads'? You know, those little annoying things you would never click, and which get in the way of your normal life. I mean we're talking about billions of dollars. So much human talent, skill, intelligence taken away from really important things... Just sad...

quaunaut 14y ago
I'm not about to say that this is as noble as curing cancer- but then again, the skills aren't one to one. Generally the kinds of people who are able to think at such a high level strategically for a business, have very different ways of thinking from those who do hard science. Science is slow, arduous, and full of rigor in a way that would probably make Neal into a mediocre scientist at best. Things that Neal accomplishes at Google in a week, he wouldn't see movement on as a scientist in his lifetime. They require different sorts of people. Not to mention- while he is getting paid a monstrous sum of money, think of how many people he is also enabling to have jobs, both at Google and the businesses that use their services. The direct effect is obviously very different, but I'd bet he does a lot of good for the world in his own way.
- codeonfire 14y ago
  Equally plausible to the 'providing value' theory are several possible scenarios of externalities that can't be mentioned without asbestos underwear. And as for thinking about how many jobs a person is enabling, we'll just call that the 'dear leader' argument.
slyv 14y ago
Ads are also the thing that enables really amazing things to exist. Regardless of your feelings about facebook, the community it has created has had drastic impacts on the world at large. Almost the entire knowledge of humanity is now in anyone's grasp with a simple click of a button (Google). That was only possible because Google was able to make money off of it through ads. How do you propose that the internet pay for its self without ads? The whole freedom of the internet is because they can make money off of ads. Not everyone needs to cure cancer to do something great.

simonsarris 14y ago

I find this fascinating. It almost smacks of game theory. A land-mined game of incentives, anyway. Think of the sheer amount of considerations that go into a decision like this. Higher-ups at Google must acknowledge: * Offering someone an enormous sum only after someone else has made you an offer can be off-putting. Consider the many articles written about never making counter offers[1], or never accepting them. * Along the same lines, if you're not offered a large enough sum to stay, you might take it as an insult. "They're only offering me this much money after I've considered leaving?" Google certainly made sure the sum was large enough, by any count. * Offering an enormous sum to one person may tempt others to fish out offers from other companies. Others may feel like they're never going to get a raise unless they are courting or being courted actively. * Google's decision-makers (or check-writers) have to be careful about the number picked. They want to send a message to the person, and to other companies, and to the market. But they probably don't want to end up paying $100m for every high value employee. Luckily for Google, if its gonna be a cash arms-race against other companies, there are few that can do serious battle with them. * Speaking of high value employees, while you might get person A to stay, you make make resentful group B. After all, there's already a comment here: "It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!" It's not a stretch for anyone to sympathize with that view. ~~~ And then, at the end of all that, people in a room pursed their lips together and quietly nodded while somebody pulled out the (metaphorical) checkbook. This guy is staying, it's going to be this much money, and we're going to make it purposefully public knowledge. Signals everywhere. It seems to be a dangerous game. Others may (as a default) suddenly feel unappreciated since Google hasn't made them an offer to keep being a Googler, and perhaps hasn't approached them with any considerable raise in some time. 100 million ensures that you keep a single employee, but how many do you alienate at the same time? Hard to blame Google's decision, I'm sure they gave it much more thought than I have. I wish I could know what they're thinking, it's just so fascinating what goes into this. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384

rhizome 14y ago
Based on a virtual napkin math based on what's in the story and GOOG's current stock price, I'm speculating the entire deal was simply "200,000 options." I'm sure he got a promotion/raise out of it as well.

avenger123 14y ago

This is a classic story of really good negotiation. Getting the very serious offer from Twitter was the best thing to happen to Neal. I can only imagine the negotiation with Google that he must of had. It probably went on the lines of something like this - "Hey, I really love it here at Google. I am really excited with what we are working on and want to deliver it but this Twitter offer is just something that I can't ignore. I am looking at the financial future of my family and I would be doing them a disservice if I don't consider this offer seriously. Is there anything we can do to just make this offer go away." Neal had the upper hand. Worst-case scenario for him would be that there would be no change. He would continue to work at Google. Next best case scenario would be that he would be working at another mega-tech company, and getting better compensated with potentially even greater upside. Google was in a position of weakness in either case. If they did nothing and he left, it would amount to even more collateral damage as others would get the message that Google can't compete and Twitter would make even more offers to others. By paying him out, they basically paid him the opportunity cost in real dollars that he may have had if he moved to Twitter. In all of this, Neal's professionalism would have tipped the favor on his side.

Evbn 14y ago
Some people might be happier if more of the hundred millionaires walked out to pillage flailing competitors. It isn't obvious that VP retention is good for morale. But it would be cool if Larry Page said "your old org, from intern to director, says you are the the grease in our money machine, we will always pay you more than any one else would offer, and we want you to find out how high we can reward you"
777466 14y ago
Serious question: does the sweetened language, how you couch the situation really make a difference to decision makers?
- vacri 14y ago
  I think when you start talking about the financial future of your family, it makes more sense when you're a line employee. But when you're on a salary well into the six figures, it sounds disinegenuous (to me) to say "we're struggling here". By all means go for "hey, I'm in demand and thinking of moving - business is business", but "I'm moving because I'm concerned about my personal finances"? But then again, I'm not the guy who does salary negotiations...

wallflower 14y ago

This is a job for life and then some. If you compare this with full professorship (academic tenure), that will cost the university about $4 million (assuming $60k/yr - probably $6-7 million if the university is upper echelon). So conservatively this is 10-15x what tenure is. Neal Mohan sounds like the business equivalent of Jeff Dean [1] [1] http://research.google.com/people/jeff/ http://research.google.com/people/jeff/

hyperbovine 14y ago
Ahem. This is 10-15x the money portion of tenure. You still have to think about advertising all day every day. I'd take the tenure.
- samstave 14y ago
  I am completely naive to what you just said, may you please explain like I am five? [I am dead serious]
  - burntsushi 14y ago
    I think the GP is saying that a tenured professor typically has the option of a wide range of job freedom. You work on pretty much what you want and when you want. The GP is contrasting this with being the head of advertising at Google, which one might guess is fairly demanding.
    - thomasbk 14y ago
      Also, improving advertising isn't generally seen as having the highest positive impact on society, whereas a professor might contribute to a cure for cancer.
- snaky 14y ago
  >have to think about advertising all day every day That sounds no difference from 'think about chemistry all day every day', doesn't it? I think advertising is more interesting and inspiring these days than many of traditional science areas. Not to mention it's a huge field including bleeding age AI, Big Data, performance, etc.

SeoxyS 14y ago

Google's purchase of DoubleClick seems to be considered a huge success. I'm curious how the $750M purchase of AdMob is seen in the company. Does anybody have an insight or references?

Evbn 14y ago

Does anyone remember when DoubleClick was the most hated company on the Internet? Spying on users, displaying obnoxious ads? The Evil that Google was to Not Be?

flyinglizard 14y ago

Reading this, his compensation is the least amazing part. If this article is true, it should have been titled "A Story Of Competence". Does anyone have any doubt the guy is generating Google this money many times over? It's simple math. It has nothing to do with curing cancer, economical equality or anything else. He's something that's worth X and pays back many X. I can understand why this comes as a shock to some; it may be difficult to accept that another person doing his 9-5 job can bring so much value to a company. I always suspected such value creators exist (Jobs would be one). So good for him for delivering, and good for Google for acknowledging and compensating accordingly. And good for me too; I'm taking my first steps as an advertiser with Google and I'm really liking what I'm finding so far.

dopamean 14y ago
People sometimes find it difficult to understand that some people are actually worth the astronomical figures they are paid. When we hear about the big pay day it's easy to focus on that number what not what was done to earn it.
- flyinglizard 14y ago
  True, and it's way easier to accept how someone is a successful businessman or a stakeholder in a company, than it is to accept that someone may be actually producing this kind of value on a personal level. It's easy to imagine how some trader did some wheeling and dealing for a quick buck or how someone with shrewd instincts made a profitable investment, but it's very difficult to imagine how someone creates all this value by himself, day in day out; how someone stands out like this in an organization like Google, which is both an intellectual powerhouse and far removed from the compensation culture in the finance sector - this is even more difficult to accept. Maybe that's why people pick on CEO salaries but stay silent on the shareholder profits from the very same corporations. You can imagine 100 million dollars of oil barrels or real estate, but you can't imagine a 100 million dollars mind.
  - dopamean 14y ago
    It really is a hard concept to grasp. It's one thing to have grand plans for a business. It's another thing entirely to be able to communicate those plans effectively to all of the people who will be needed to make sure the plan is properly executed. People who can do this successfully deserve everything they are given in my opinion.

dyno12345 14y ago

Note to self: Become an executive.

wilfra 14y ago
*Become indispensable in a role where you are directly responsible for driving billions of dollars in revenue.
- swah 14y ago
  I think Seth Godin's book Linchpin talks about this - but I've only skimmed it.
- dyno12345 14y ago
  Step 1: Become an executive
  - wilfra 14y ago
    Step 1 is to be really fucking good at your job, whatever that job is. Ideally that job would be in a unit that is directly responsible for driving revenue growth. That will probably lead to you becoming an executive at some point, but that would be a symptom of your success, a necessary evil, not the starting point. Especially in a company like Google, which has a cultural disdain for empty suits, if your goal is to "become an executive" you'd never find yourself in his position.
    - dyno12345 14y ago
      I've been really good at my job, and never became an executive. I think there's more to it than that.

dkwak 14y ago

I've always been curious what display advertising is and how it generates so much revenue for Google. Are there any good resources to learn more about what exactly goes on behind the scenes? Do those little ads on my gmail sidebar really create billions in wealth? Or is there some super secret illuminati-esque subliminal advertising going on?

InclinedPlane 14y ago
http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/ http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/ It's distinguished from search-based advertising (e.g. adwords). It's basically just ordinary online advertising, and there are a great many different ad networks out there already. However, google's network has been gaining a huge amount of traction recently and took the top spot in marketshare within the last year or so, even pulling ahead of Facebook. In total these sorts of ads are worth around $2 billion a year in revenue for google but both the size of the market and google's share of it are growing at double digit rates so google's revenue from it is likely to double within the next few years.

rckrd 14y ago

The article mentions an "epic 400-500 page Powerpoint document" outlining Mohan's strategies. In the rare chance that this is floating around the internet, does anyone know where it would be or more information on it?

patrickk 14y ago
Sounds like the kind of document that the distribution of would be tightly controlled. It was probably shown to select people, but not actually emailed to anyone. You get to see the slides, but you don't get a copy.

whnevan 14y ago

"They'd spent the months prior trying to turn Twitter into "a real company" after years of neglectful management." Anyone care to explain how the management was neglectful? Serious question.

Maven911 14y ago
I think it might have to do with the founder, jack dorsey, staying on as CEO, though he was eventually ousted out of that role

namank 14y ago

Wonder how it worked out... Did he hand in his resignation and was asked to reconsider? Did he tell them he wanted more money? Did they find out about the twitter offer from outside sources and arrange for the bump? How did the semantics play out?!

SKy33 14y ago

This happened at a time when Google was bleeding top management talent to Facebook and Twitter. http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-level-mole-at-twitter-makes-massive-counteroffers-to-retain-employees/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-le... Sundar Pichai was also offered $50M. As things have settled down, I doubt if this would happen again, at least anytime soon.

Tycho 14y ago

I'm thinking either this story is entirely sensationalized, or Google are scared that this guy will take his roadmap and go execute it elsewhere. Like he has seen upcoming trends and Google know they have to be first to act on them. I wonder what they could be...

erhanerdogan 14y ago

According to story, he did use Powerpoint. It is bothering me.

michaelochurch 14y ago

You know what? Fuck that. Nothing against this guy. If it were $1 million, or $3 million, I probably wouldn't bat an eye. A hundred million for a non-technical executive would be OK, if engineers had basic autonomy and open allocation. Then (and only then) they'd actually be able to afford (morally speaking) a $100M payout to a non-technical executive. Don't call yourself a technical company if engineers in the $100k-200k range can't even fucking change projects until 18 months in (and often not even then, due to a corrupt performance review system) but you're running a private welfare system for non-tech executives. I know all about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence") but somewhere around the 5-standard-deviation incompetence level I go back to malice because 5-sigma is just awful rare. Paying a non-tech executive $100M while engineers making < 1% of that struggle to get a decent project is 8, 9 sigma at the least. Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint. (Or just implement basic autonomy/open allocation for all engineers. Then we're cool no matter what you pay your execs.)

cygwin98 14y ago
What kind of trade secrets this guy could possess that made GOOG feel so threatened to make this offer, since nobody is indispensable, right? Care to shed some lights on this? I know GOOG has been dominating the search market for more than a decade, does it also have the same position in the ad market?
_k 14y ago
Regarding epen allocation. What if only 2 engineers are needed and 100 are interested ?
- rhizome 14y ago
  To use an anecdote from just this morning, if you Google the terms, "google tasks android," you'll see that the inverse may also be true: Google engineers able and interested to work on something that is a no-op for mysterious reasons.
yuhong 14y ago
BTW, on Google, what do you think of Eric Schmidt? Someone suggested after the anti-poaching fiasco that he should be fired: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523513

vannevar 14y ago

They say Mohan is the visionary who predicted how brand advertising would fund the Internet, turned this vision into a plan, and then executed it. Some say 'fund', others might say 'destroy'. What's in a word?