10 ms·

In defense of the Google Chef (2011)

132 points by laughinghan 13y ago

gggggggg 13y ago
The comments of support on that site for Charlie really inspire me and show that there is still good in the world. He has $20m in the bank now, so he is happy, but like any young company, every role feels a part of the family and should be able to profit as such. I would love it my company organised lunch for us.
- lotsofcows 13y ago
  "He has $20m in the bank now, so he is happy" What?
throwaway13qf85 13y ago
I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was a problem. By joining a young company, that probably can't pay you a market rate salary and that has a significant chance of failing, you are taking risks. You are compensated for those risks with equity. It's an out of the money call option - you expect that 90% (95%? 99%?) of the time it won't pay out, but when it does pay out, the payoff could be anywhere from "pretty good" to "life changing". Sure, the early Google employees are way out in the tails of the distribution (just like the early Facebook employees, early Twitter employees, early LinkedIn employees etc). But someone has to be in the tails of the distribution, and the fact that you see someone there certainly doesn't mean that they don't deserve their payout.
- mercurial 13y ago
  Because respecting a bargain is for chumps. Why not break if it can net you more cash? You're clearly not enough of a sociopath.
- scarmig 13y ago
  He's just a chef and a Lesser, after all. Not one of us engineering ubermenschen who make the world go 'round. Engineers work hard to deserve all of our hard-earned benefits like snacks and catered meals--after all, imagine how horrific the world would be without Zynga! But what did that moocher ever do for anyone?
  - Amygaz 13y ago
    Imagine how the world would be if people like MP where not like MP.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  >I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was a problem This feels like classism to me. I think they'd have the same issue with a support worker or even QA making the same payday, no matter what their contribution was. Being compensated for taking risks is "for people like them".
  - warfangle 13y ago
    bi~ngo
not_paul_graham 13y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595
sdoering 13y ago
Having worked in a professional kitchen during my time at the university, I can second a lot of what the author wrote on the pressure while working (and I only had to feed about 70 to 100 guests during a normal evening). So anybody taking him as an example for undeserved money, is just some big idiot (stronger words come to my mind, but have to stay there). Look at very strenuous working-environments like drilling rigs or anything like this and ask anyone there, what role the "ship's cook" plays.
- corin_ 13y ago
  That's not the right argument to make in favour of him becoming rich - unless you think all chefs deserve a $20m payout? The argument is that he took a risk (presumably accepting a below market rate salary) and worked hard in the hope it would pay off, which it did. Sure, the fact that his job isn't piss easy to do, and is useful to the company, is what makes this argument work, but it isn't the argument in itself.
abcd_f 13y ago
Posting this on HN is preaching to the choir. Early employees are rewarded for the risk taking first and their contributions next. Later employees are rewarded for making a well-running company better. That's what's profit sharing programs are for, not stock options.
- walshemj 13y ago
  Um checkout BT's share save that's just about to payout my mate is going to clear £60k tax free. How many Sv options are worth more than say $100,000 after tax. ps and the BT scheme is the grunt one gasp even clerical assistants and como's are allowed to participate
mehrdada 13y ago
"Charlie didn't make $20M for cooking, he made $20M for taking the risk that the company he was joining would fail and that he could end up five years older, unemployed, and with nothing to show for his trouble." Precisely--and the article should have ended there. It's all about the risk. Arguing for the raw amount of contribution a chef can have is a distraction from the core point and detracts from it.
- Argorak 13y ago
  I don't think so. If it stopped there, he would only be a lucky gambler.
  - mehrdada 13y ago
    I'd characterize it as an investment, rather than gambling.
    - moron4hire 13y ago
      Do you think the mean outcome for this /(gambling|investing)/ behavior over time for all people is a net positive or a net negative one? If we looked at all of the startup ecosystem employees in all of the startups over the years, would you say they have earned more or less, on average, than if they had stuck to enterprise industry? Granted, that the outcomes have a much higher standard deviation in startups is probably a no-brainer. But if the mean is less, then it's by-definition gambling. I guess the question centers on, do the winners outweigh the losers. In Las Vegas, they do not. That's why they advertise the winners so much, to make it look like winning happens all the time. They don't advertise the churn. Given how much SV "advertises" its big exits, to me it feels more like Las Vegas than a career.
    - Argorak 13y ago
      You might be closer to my point that you imagine, I just wanted to say that his role was not only that of a risk taker, but also that of a valuable employee.
    - ryandrake 13y ago
ronaldx 13y ago
Needs a 2011 tag
hrrsn 13y ago
This was posted in 2011. Zynga is barely relevant anymore.
shill 13y ago
Original HN discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595
michaelt 13y ago
So what terms should employees ask for in their contracts to "avoid a Zynga scenario"? Options automatically vest on firing? Options transfer to a major charity on firing?
shill 13y ago
This again?
sztanko 13y ago
First of all I find it inappropriate to discuss who deserved what. Second of all, it is wrong to bring an example of a chef in the context of the problem of disproportionally large reward of people who joined the company early compared to someone who joined the company later but contributed more. Early joiners get paid for the risk. They acknowledge the risk before joining the startup and have a choice. Unfortunately chefs don't have a choice and in most cases they have to accept what they are being offered, because there is no other alternative. Third of all, paying $20M a chef can be treated as an extremely successful public relations move. This helped Google to gain that image of the "don't be evil" Robin Hood operating on the Land Of Opportunities. On the other side, rich Zynga executives paint themselves in evil tones when denying money from a poor chef. The real question is what should be encouraged more: risk taking or professionalism. Zynga executives believe the later. Which probably reflects the fact startups are becoming more like corporations. But this is a first world problem and has nothing to do with the poor chef who was lucky enough to win a lottery in form of Google.
jedanbik 13y ago
This says much more about Zynga's values than it does Google's.
AznHisoka 13y ago
Nobody needs to defend anything. People win the lotto all the time. Not just money, but looks, brains, etc. It's like telling someone 'you don't deserve that hot girlfriend, what did u do to earn it? hard work?'
lr 13y ago
I would like to ask laughinghan what sparked the interest in this article? It has been on the front page of HN before (and during laughinghan's tenure on HN), so I am really interested to know the though process about posting it again (it was the same article as before, but with a new link). I have nothing wrong with this being posted again, but I see it over and over again with numerous topics, and I do find it kind of fascinating. At first I thought maybe laughinghan was a newbie on HN, but that's not the case, so this just makes it that much more interesting. You can read the comments from the last time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595
- maxerickson 13y ago
  I certainly don't think I see every story I would be interested in. I don't even try to see them all. Doesn't seem complicated.
  - talmand 13y ago
    Don't you understand? Someone else read it before, therefore that must you mean you've read it before. If you didn't read it before, it must not be worth your time to read it now. I'm with you, I truly do not understand this need to point out reposts as a negative. Sure, point out that it is a repost with a link to the original in case someone wants to read the comments from that thread as well. But there's no need to be negative about it.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Made-up controversy. If you don't see what is going on here, then fasten your seat belt because I'll tell you. First of all, every decent human being is going to side with "the Google Chef" (you know, he has a name: Charlie Ayers). He took a risk and it paid off. He earned every fucking cent. If you really think "Google chefs" like Charlie don't deserve to get rich on their stock, then you're an asshole. Now, let's look at why this controversy really exists. It's to emphasize the elevation of the Second Estate (programmers, data scientists, designers) over the Third Estate (workers) for the benefit of the First (executives, VCs). The First Estate of the Valley works overtime on creating divisions between the Second and Third so that the bricks go through the windows of Google buses (Second Estate) instead of houses in Atherton. It's divide-and-conquer. Investors and executives are going overboard to make the software engineers who keep the Valley running that they're a privileged class, and that they should be happy to deal with long hours, unreasonable expectations, low autonomy, fast and dishonest firing, and age discrimination because it could be worse, they could be "out there" preparing food instead of churning through Jira tickets. It's like telling a shit-poor, clay-eating Southern white person in 1850, "cheer up, you're still above the slaves."
- aaronchall 13y ago
  There always have been and always will be class divisions. Every society has a version of the phrase "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations." But now the slaves are free. We all get world class free public educations (ask the teacher unions.) We all have access to free graduate level education in technologies online. I'll brashly assert that class mobility has never looked better, and while they are possible, there are no real-world examples of a better society than ours (at least to my view).
felix 13y ago
Regardless of whether or not one feels he's deserving of this - it's the payment all parties agreed to. Do companies now consider compensation notional? Should they be able to take it back whenever they feel like it? If they think that actually a chef was totally useless for the first year - why stop with options - why not make him pay back 50% of his salary? This whole line of reasoning is senseless. Compensation was agreed to - that in the end Zynga valued their options less than they ought to have should be irrelevant to employees retaining them.
hacknat 13y ago
Oh man, we all need to get over ourselves on this one. The burden of proof is on us to show that he didn't provide value.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
zenbowman 13y ago
So people are upset that a chef who makes delicious food gets a big payoff, but not upset when moronic CEOs of financial firms run companies into the ground and then still take home millions of taxpayer dollars?
NDizzle 13y ago
I wish more chefs got the opportunity to walk away with millions in stock options. Because chefs are some of the people who deserve it the most. I spent a few hard years at a health food delivery startup in Oakland - and spent those years sometimes working in a support role for two different chefs that busted their ass like any other chef I've ever met. (I say support role because I was the server/dba/programmer at the startup but it was all hands in the kitchen when we got big orders. All hands in the kitchen starting at 4am, son.)
benched 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis The chef got $20M because Google gave him stock options early, which later became worth $20M. That's mostly all the explanation this needs. It's mechanical. If someone bought a house unwittingly, and ended up 100x wealthier because it was on an oil reservoir, I'm sure people would still be spinning pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to society, but those people would be just as misguided. I can't say that the "risk" related explanations that this thread is full of are completely wrong. There's some small element there. But it is wrong-headed. It seems like people are really saying "Well, what does PG say about startup lottery? Isn't it something about risk, or compressing work in a short time? Well, that must have happened here." Next, you'll tell me that everyone's pay is fair ... because markets!! And on the human/gossip-level, no I don't begrudge him in the slightest. Whoever a company decides is eligible for Startup Lotto, is eligible for Startup Lotto.
- laughinghan 13y ago
  Did you even read the article, or just these comments? Who is "spinning pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to society"? In the article, someone who worked at Google literally alongside "the Google Chef", Charlie Ayers, is testifying that Charlie Ayers in fact contributed as much to Google as many of the engineers that also got $20M, countering the widespread perception that Charlie Ayers got more than he deserved. Which may or may not be true, but your comment seems to be almost completely unrelated?
  - benched 13y ago
    Hacker News commenters spin pseudo-economic yarns like frogs say ribbit. If the really real reason why the chef made $20M is really because he contributed as much value as the engineers, and if that is not just a cheering sentiment, then we should be discussing why so many cooks are unfairly paid less than engineers. But that's not really what's going on here.
kapitalx 13y ago
The OP completely missed the point on the value that Google Chef brought to google. One of the hardest things at a startup is hiring. Google Chef became such a phenomenon so fast that everyone wanted to work at google. He became the poster child of what it's like to work at google! "You even get a private Chef cooking for you."
- endeavor 13y ago
  I remember when a friend of mine went to work at Google, relatively early in their history. I'm sure he told me that there were smart people working there, working on cool things -- but I don't remember much of that. What I do remember is that if he was going to be working late, he could order up a steak and it would get delivered to his office. That anecdote stuck with me.
JonFish85 13y ago
"Zynga's argument is that they don't want people who joined the company early to get disproportionately large rewards compared to someone who joined the company later but contributed more." And we can stop right here. That's an excuse, not a reason. It's purely PR bullshit to make it seem like they're trying to do something right. It's nothing more than the company (whether executives or investors) going back on their word when they realized how much money their stock was going to be worth at IPO. This is one of the biggest reasons I loathe Zynga.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
mangeletti 13y ago
I won't even go into my opinions on what kind of people Zynga is run by... sheesh. However, in my opinion: The greater question here shouldn't be whether the metaphorical chef (or literal in Google's case) brought as much value in the in the early days as he or she receive(s|ed) after the IPO. It should be about 2 principles: 1. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, which most definitely propelled the company to success, because the employees had an incentive to help the company succeed (see economics 101) 2. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, which were quite valueless at the time, representing a risk on the side of the employee, assuming the stock was taken as (partial) consideration for employment 3. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, and that's their own fault. It seems the employees without preferred stock will be bamboozled at any rate.
bigd 13y ago
Zynga chef, if they do have one, has probably been feeding pubic hairs to the authors of this bs. Since 2011.

132 points by laughinghan 13y ago

The comments of support on that site for Charlie really inspire me and show that there is still good in the world. He has $20m in the bank now, so he is happy, but like any young company, every role feels a part of the family and should be able to profit as such. I would love it my company organised lunch for us.

lotsofcows 13y ago
"He has $20m in the bank now, so he is happy" What?

throwaway13qf85 13y ago

I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was a problem. By joining a young company, that probably can't pay you a market rate salary and that has a significant chance of failing, you are taking risks. You are compensated for those risks with equity. It's an out of the money call option - you expect that 90% (95%? 99%?) of the time it won't pay out, but when it does pay out, the payoff could be anywhere from "pretty good" to "life changing". Sure, the early Google employees are way out in the tails of the distribution (just like the early Facebook employees, early Twitter employees, early LinkedIn employees etc). But someone has to be in the tails of the distribution, and the fact that you see someone there certainly doesn't mean that they don't deserve their payout.

mercurial 13y ago
Because respecting a bargain is for chumps. Why not break if it can net you more cash? You're clearly not enough of a sociopath.
scarmig 13y ago
He's just a chef and a Lesser, after all. Not one of us engineering ubermenschen who make the world go 'round. Engineers work hard to deserve all of our hard-earned benefits like snacks and catered meals--after all, imagine how horrific the world would be without Zynga! But what did that moocher ever do for anyone?
- Amygaz 13y ago
  Imagine how the world would be if people like MP where not like MP.
crdoconnor 13y ago
>I don't understand why anyone would feel that the "Google Chef" scenario was a problem This feels like classism to me. I think they'd have the same issue with a support worker or even QA making the same payday, no matter what their contribution was. Being compensated for taking risks is "for people like them".
- warfangle 13y ago
  bi~ngo

not_paul_graham 13y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595

sdoering 13y ago

Having worked in a professional kitchen during my time at the university, I can second a lot of what the author wrote on the pressure while working (and I only had to feed about 70 to 100 guests during a normal evening). So anybody taking him as an example for undeserved money, is just some big idiot (stronger words come to my mind, but have to stay there). Look at very strenuous working-environments like drilling rigs or anything like this and ask anyone there, what role the "ship's cook" plays.

corin_ 13y ago
That's not the right argument to make in favour of him becoming rich - unless you think all chefs deserve a $20m payout? The argument is that he took a risk (presumably accepting a below market rate salary) and worked hard in the hope it would pay off, which it did. Sure, the fact that his job isn't piss easy to do, and is useful to the company, is what makes this argument work, but it isn't the argument in itself.

abcd_f 13y ago

Posting this on HN is preaching to the choir. Early employees are rewarded for the risk taking first and their contributions next. Later employees are rewarded for making a well-running company better. That's what's profit sharing programs are for, not stock options.

walshemj 13y ago
Um checkout BT's share save that's just about to payout my mate is going to clear £60k tax free. How many Sv options are worth more than say $100,000 after tax. ps and the BT scheme is the grunt one gasp even clerical assistants and como's are allowed to participate

mehrdada 13y ago

"Charlie didn't make $20M for cooking, he made $20M for taking the risk that the company he was joining would fail and that he could end up five years older, unemployed, and with nothing to show for his trouble." Precisely--and the article should have ended there. It's all about the risk. Arguing for the raw amount of contribution a chef can have is a distraction from the core point and detracts from it.

Argorak 13y ago
I don't think so. If it stopped there, he would only be a lucky gambler.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  I'd characterize it as an investment, rather than gambling.
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    Do you think the mean outcome for this /(gambling|investing)/ behavior over time for all people is a net positive or a net negative one? If we looked at all of the startup ecosystem employees in all of the startups over the years, would you say they have earned more or less, on average, than if they had stuck to enterprise industry? Granted, that the outcomes have a much higher standard deviation in startups is probably a no-brainer. But if the mean is less, then it's by-definition gambling. I guess the question centers on, do the winners outweigh the losers. In Las Vegas, they do not. That's why they advertise the winners so much, to make it look like winning happens all the time. They don't advertise the churn. Given how much SV "advertises" its big exits, to me it feels more like Las Vegas than a career.
  - Argorak 13y ago
    You might be closer to my point that you imagine, I just wanted to say that his role was not only that of a risk taker, but also that of a valuable employee.
  - ryandrake 13y ago

ronaldx 13y ago

Needs a 2011 tag

hrrsn 13y ago

This was posted in 2011. Zynga is barely relevant anymore.

shill 13y ago

Original HN discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595

michaelt 13y ago

So what terms should employees ask for in their contracts to "avoid a Zynga scenario"? Options automatically vest on firing? Options transfer to a major charity on firing?

shill 13y ago

This again?

sztanko 13y ago

First of all I find it inappropriate to discuss who deserved what. Second of all, it is wrong to bring an example of a chef in the context of the problem of disproportionally large reward of people who joined the company early compared to someone who joined the company later but contributed more. Early joiners get paid for the risk. They acknowledge the risk before joining the startup and have a choice. Unfortunately chefs don't have a choice and in most cases they have to accept what they are being offered, because there is no other alternative. Third of all, paying $20M a chef can be treated as an extremely successful public relations move. This helped Google to gain that image of the "don't be evil" Robin Hood operating on the Land Of Opportunities. On the other side, rich Zynga executives paint themselves in evil tones when denying money from a poor chef. The real question is what should be encouraged more: risk taking or professionalism. Zynga executives believe the later. Which probably reflects the fact startups are becoming more like corporations. But this is a first world problem and has nothing to do with the poor chef who was lucky enough to win a lottery in form of Google.

jedanbik 13y ago

This says much more about Zynga's values than it does Google's.

AznHisoka 13y ago

Nobody needs to defend anything. People win the lotto all the time. Not just money, but looks, brains, etc. It's like telling someone 'you don't deserve that hot girlfriend, what did u do to earn it? hard work?'

lr 13y ago

I would like to ask laughinghan what sparked the interest in this article? It has been on the front page of HN before (and during laughinghan's tenure on HN), so I am really interested to know the though process about posting it again (it was the same article as before, but with a new link). I have nothing wrong with this being posted again, but I see it over and over again with numerous topics, and I do find it kind of fascinating. At first I thought maybe laughinghan was a newbie on HN, but that's not the case, so this just makes it that much more interesting. You can read the comments from the last time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223595

maxerickson 13y ago
I certainly don't think I see every story I would be interested in. I don't even try to see them all. Doesn't seem complicated.
- talmand 13y ago
  Don't you understand? Someone else read it before, therefore that must you mean you've read it before. If you didn't read it before, it must not be worth your time to read it now. I'm with you, I truly do not understand this need to point out reposts as a negative. Sure, point out that it is a repost with a link to the original in case someone wants to read the comments from that thread as well. But there's no need to be negative about it.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Made-up controversy. If you don't see what is going on here, then fasten your seat belt because I'll tell you. First of all, every decent human being is going to side with "the Google Chef" (you know, he has a name: Charlie Ayers). He took a risk and it paid off. He earned every fucking cent. If you really think "Google chefs" like Charlie don't deserve to get rich on their stock, then you're an asshole. Now, let's look at why this controversy really exists. It's to emphasize the elevation of the Second Estate (programmers, data scientists, designers) over the Third Estate (workers) for the benefit of the First (executives, VCs). The First Estate of the Valley works overtime on creating divisions between the Second and Third so that the bricks go through the windows of Google buses (Second Estate) instead of houses in Atherton. It's divide-and-conquer. Investors and executives are going overboard to make the software engineers who keep the Valley running that they're a privileged class, and that they should be happy to deal with long hours, unreasonable expectations, low autonomy, fast and dishonest firing, and age discrimination because it could be worse, they could be "out there" preparing food instead of churning through Jira tickets. It's like telling a shit-poor, clay-eating Southern white person in 1850, "cheer up, you're still above the slaves."

aaronchall 13y ago
There always have been and always will be class divisions. Every society has a version of the phrase "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations." But now the slaves are free. We all get world class free public educations (ask the teacher unions.) We all have access to free graduate level education in technologies online. I'll brashly assert that class mobility has never looked better, and while they are possible, there are no real-world examples of a better society than ours (at least to my view).

felix 13y ago

Regardless of whether or not one feels he's deserving of this - it's the payment all parties agreed to. Do companies now consider compensation notional? Should they be able to take it back whenever they feel like it? If they think that actually a chef was totally useless for the first year - why stop with options - why not make him pay back 50% of his salary? This whole line of reasoning is senseless. Compensation was agreed to - that in the end Zynga valued their options less than they ought to have should be irrelevant to employees retaining them.

hacknat 13y ago

Oh man, we all need to get over ourselves on this one. The burden of proof is on us to show that he didn't provide value.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

zenbowman 13y ago

So people are upset that a chef who makes delicious food gets a big payoff, but not upset when moronic CEOs of financial firms run companies into the ground and then still take home millions of taxpayer dollars?

NDizzle 13y ago

I wish more chefs got the opportunity to walk away with millions in stock options. Because chefs are some of the people who deserve it the most. I spent a few hard years at a health food delivery startup in Oakland - and spent those years sometimes working in a support role for two different chefs that busted their ass like any other chef I've ever met. (I say support role because I was the server/dba/programmer at the startup but it was all hands in the kitchen when we got big orders. All hands in the kitchen starting at 4am, son.)

benched 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis The chef got $20M because Google gave him stock options early, which later became worth $20M. That's mostly all the explanation this needs. It's mechanical. If someone bought a house unwittingly, and ended up 100x wealthier because it was on an oil reservoir, I'm sure people would still be spinning pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to society, but those people would be just as misguided. I can't say that the "risk" related explanations that this thread is full of are completely wrong. There's some small element there. But it is wrong-headed. It seems like people are really saying "Well, what does PG say about startup lottery? Isn't it something about risk, or compressing work in a short time? Well, that must have happened here." Next, you'll tell me that everyone's pay is fair ... because markets!! And on the human/gossip-level, no I don't begrudge him in the slightest. Whoever a company decides is eligible for Startup Lotto, is eligible for Startup Lotto.

laughinghan 13y ago
Did you even read the article, or just these comments? Who is "spinning pseudo-economic yarns about some specialized type of value he provided to society"? In the article, someone who worked at Google literally alongside "the Google Chef", Charlie Ayers, is testifying that Charlie Ayers in fact contributed as much to Google as many of the engineers that also got $20M, countering the widespread perception that Charlie Ayers got more than he deserved. Which may or may not be true, but your comment seems to be almost completely unrelated?
- benched 13y ago
  Hacker News commenters spin pseudo-economic yarns like frogs say ribbit. If the really real reason why the chef made $20M is really because he contributed as much value as the engineers, and if that is not just a cheering sentiment, then we should be discussing why so many cooks are unfairly paid less than engineers. But that's not really what's going on here.

kapitalx 13y ago

The OP completely missed the point on the value that Google Chef brought to google. One of the hardest things at a startup is hiring. Google Chef became such a phenomenon so fast that everyone wanted to work at google. He became the poster child of what it's like to work at google! "You even get a private Chef cooking for you."

endeavor 13y ago
I remember when a friend of mine went to work at Google, relatively early in their history. I'm sure he told me that there were smart people working there, working on cool things -- but I don't remember much of that. What I do remember is that if he was going to be working late, he could order up a steak and it would get delivered to his office. That anecdote stuck with me.

JonFish85 13y ago

"Zynga's argument is that they don't want people who joined the company early to get disproportionately large rewards compared to someone who joined the company later but contributed more." And we can stop right here. That's an excuse, not a reason. It's purely PR bullshit to make it seem like they're trying to do something right. It's nothing more than the company (whether executives or investors) going back on their word when they realized how much money their stock was going to be worth at IPO. This is one of the biggest reasons I loathe Zynga.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

mangeletti 13y ago

I won't even go into my opinions on what kind of people Zynga is run by... sheesh. However, in my opinion: The greater question here shouldn't be whether the metaphorical chef (or literal in Google's case) brought as much value in the in the early days as he or she receive(s|ed) after the IPO. It should be about 2 principles: 1. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, which most definitely propelled the company to success, because the employees had an incentive to help the company succeed (see economics 101) 2. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, which were quite valueless at the time, representing a risk on the side of the employee, assuming the stock was taken as (partial) consideration for employment 3. The company gave a large amount of stock to employees at an early stage, and that's their own fault. It seems the employees without preferred stock will be bamboozled at any rate.

bigd 13y ago

Zynga chef, if they do have one, has probably been feeding pubic hairs to the authors of this bs. Since 2011.