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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

This isn't an April Fools post is it? I mean seriously, if you're willing to pay $50M or $100M to keep a single employee from walking, what happens if they die on their commute into work? What sort of risk are you carrying anyway?

And I didn't think I could be amazed by 'Google scale' any more, sure proves I was wrong on that.

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I'm wondering if they failed to check the date on the email of their tip-off.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I might be mistaken but I believe Sundar Pichai isn't an american national, in which case he'll be working on a visa. And in the US work visas require a public declaration of salary (the published data has the names stripped but frankly at a $50m salary I imagine he'd be easy to spot). So come paperwork renewal time we'll be able to see exactly how accurate TC are...

I like where you're going, but it mentioned it was $50MM in stock, not salary.

I would like to believe that the US visa laws are insufficiently moronic to be defeated by such a ploy... can anyone confirm?

The laws are moronic, confirmed.

I don't know what gave the GGP the idea that salaries are publicly declared in visa filings (which are not public anyway). The laws are not THAT moronic.

As far as I know, salaries are included in H1B visa database. Ah, here's the article where somebody mined it for game developer salary: http://realtimecollisiondetection.net/blog/?p=107

A company hiring H1-B workers must show that they're paying average+ wages for the position [1]. They need not disclose actual salaries paid to individuals, nor are they precluded from paying above market rate.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1b

Employers must attest that wages offered are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or alternatively, pay the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment, whichever is greater.

Looking at the H1B dataset it includes two fields "proposed wage rate" (what the company proposes to pay the candidate) and a "prevailing wage rate" (the market rate).

I believe companies are also required to disclose to this information to other employees on request (to provide a check that H1Bs aren't being used to replace employees with lower salary staff)

Since the real data (link above) disagrees with wikipedia, I prefer to believe the real data :)

Just because someone is not an American national doesn't mean that they are on a work visa. If you google his profile, you'll see that he's been working in the US for a long time (long enough for him to have a green card by now)

He seems to have been here (in the US) long enough to be either a permanent resident or naturalized Citizen. So that wouldn't apply, unless someone knows otherwise for sure.

Wrt Visa rules, I know you have to disclose salary information to the INS when applying for a work permit, don't think that's publicly available though.

You seem a little confused.

Its not so much that you have to disclose the salary - you have to prove that you advertised the job publicly and within the company, and that you included the salary. You also have to prove that the salary is at least market rate and that no one else who has applied can perform the work.

(It's a pretty thick amount of paperwork to prove the requirements)

Also, the INS hasn't existed since 2003.

When I see this kind of money being offered, FB valuated at $75B, Groupon at $25B etc etc..I remember the 2000 IT Bubble. A lot of similar things happened then and it was scary

If they die they don't go to work for Twitter.

what happens if they die on their commute into work?

Then their estate would inherit whatever %age of the vesting period that they agreed.

So if they had agreed, as was written on TC, $50m over two years and they died after 6 months then the estate would receive $12.5m unless there was a cliff agreed.

The above is a factually correct - are the downvotes because I gave a literal answer or because I'm not jumping on the "oh I'm outraged at these amounts" bandwagon?

If Google wants to golden-handcuff an employee with a $50 deal that's their prerogative. If you don't like it, sell your GOOG stock. If you don't have GOOG stock then why are you so worked up about it?

I agree that it's an outrageous amount of money, but it's not just a case of losing talent, it's also about losing trade secrets to a competitor.

The $50M/$100M still sounds a bit out of whack.

> losing trade secrets to a competitor

Wouldn't this be illegal?

Yes, probably. Doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.

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