Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyinglizard | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

I think the compensation is the most amazing part. There are so many competent people out there generating many multiples of value for their employers that it's surprising he's not getting screwed like the rest. That is, that Google recognizes and compensates him for his competence is the "man bites dog" aspect of this story.

Is there reason to believe that successful executives are not like successful traders, in that they behave better than chance?

That is, if you make 10,000 people executives and make them make decisions by flipping coins, won't 100 of them be in the top 1% even if success is the result of successive chance outcomes?

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.

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.

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.

I work for Google and don't think anyone alone can bring this amount of value alone, knowing well that every decision is taken very collectively. There are some many in this article that doesn't fit Google's work culture.

knowing well that every decision is taken very collectively. There are some many in this article that doesn't fit Google's work culture.

So you have a company wide vote on major decisions? That's very interesting. How did you vote on buying Motorola or replacing Yelp and other local results with Google Local? What about Google+ being added to everything?

I don't think he's implying that every employee votes on every decision, just that decisions aren't made by a single person.

I don't think he's implying that every employee votes on every decision, just that decisions aren't made by a single person.

That's obvious, and that's why Google and other corporations have many highly paid executives. But someone has to make the tough decisions, day after day. You should read his original comment

Acquisitions are not everyday's issues, usually beyond L6 and above comments, but sometimes it'll only visible to execs. But certain topics such as "What about Google+ being added to everything?" are actively in discussion.

Disclaimer: I have never worked with Neal Mohan and not familiar with his output. But, product decisions are taken collectively and by relying on data. Anything beyond that doesn't fit Google's culture and internally you'd have a bad time to find engineers that wants to work for you. In order to be in the genius status at Google, you have be a true inventor. We're more or less capable people and giving an impression that Google's core business is run by some 500-600 slides is ridiculous.

Thanks for your insight, but we see the results of "Google's culture" every day, just as wee those of Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

The important consideration are the alternatives. He may easily create that much value but are there other people (substitutes) that could create as much or nearly as much for far less than 100M?

Being that there aren't many people with this ability, and that there are absolutely no indicators as to their performance apart from letting them do the job over a prolonged period (as many companies hiring hotshots discovered), and that the position is directly responsible for billions in revenue - I'd say that it's not realistic to expect a drop in replacement.

I find it sort of odd that people, especially on HN, would resist the idea. Many founders have earned for themselves tens or hundreds of millions of dollars through their startups (either through revenue or acquisition). And we accept C-level execs to earn this kind of money without really questioning whether they are actually worth it.

I highly doubt he's bringing in $100M for Google. I think he knows $100M worth of Google's secrets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com