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I don't think getting paid a large sum of money is the contributing factor for the departures. If this was true, than logic would dictate that no company should

I don't think getting paid a large sum of money is the contributing factor for the departures. If this was true, than logic would dictate that no company should be able to retain executives based on their compensation payouts each year. If anything, the exodus at google shows clear lack of vision and direction from the management and executive teams. Engineers care about achieving something they can feel proud of and if the project lacks that, they move on. This article is written in a way that suggests engineers should be paid less so that they remain loyal...you know, like slaves.

gregshap 10y ago
I think it's more like if you pay someone FU money to stay for a fixed term or milestone, you'll need to pay them exponentially more FU money to stay for the next milestone. Many top executives are on this track as well, which explains some of the crazed pay scales.
tptacek 10y ago
Two problems with this first-principles analysis: 1. The highest paid executives in other industries tend to be at the apex of their careers, and new startups would be a status step down for them. 1. Empirically, executives do switch companies somewhat routinely. Your last sentence presents a false dichotomy: either we're meant to reject the notion that flight money is a real phenomenon, or we're required to believe engineers shouldn't be compensated above slave levels. There's a huge excluded middle in that argument.
- phillmv 10y ago
  I would buy this more if we routinely heard "problems with retention" as an issue with runaway executive compensation. It's possible I've not seen them, but seems curiously absent in the discourse to me.
  - maxander 10y ago
    Engineers with skills related to self-driving car development are also currently much rarer than highly trained executives, and companies trying to get into the autonomous car sector need more engineers than executives. Failing to retain an executive simply isn't as much of a problem.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    This response basically ignores what my comment said. We don't have "flight risk" problems with executive compensation because there is no higher-status place for an executive to go from the helm of a company that can reliably pay 8-figure salaries than to the helm of another such company. Starting new companies is a step down for those people. And, in fact, that's the ostensible reason executives make so much: because they can and do switch companies in pursuit of better compensation packages. These are positive statements, not normative ones.
    - phillmv 10y ago
      I left this unvoiced but let's fisk it: > new startups would be a status step down for them. No, but highly paid executives can always go to a higher status company; similarly, if you were status-motivated but also a well placed mid career goog eng… it's not clear to me you _needed_ a sweet bonus in order to switch to your startup, ya know? >executives do switch companies somewhat routinely. I think the theory of what I'm trying to advance is, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I personally feel I would be rather loyal to someone paying me fuck you money, but then again I'm well into my own incredible journey, so it's possible I'm now blind to status incentives relative to working at google.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        I'm vocal about this because the concept of "flight risk" is a very old one, particularly in consulting land. The premise behind flight risk money is that people might not be interested in optimizing their salary by constantly switching jobs, especially because they might really like their current job. But a lot of people have a short list of jobs that they would be interested in if money weren't a factor; many employees (maybe most) aren't in their absolute ideal job, but are balancing money and work life. When you give those people lots of additional money, you change that balance. This isn't complicated, right? A pretty large group of people (1) like their current job, and (2) would like to start or join a new company. That's just not the same as what happens with executives. Executives are not waiting for their big break so that they can start a new thing.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fossuser 10y ago
Google seems to have some trouble with execution. Tesla's 'master plan' is pretty easy to understand externally and gives a clear path/vision forward. How Google plans to actually use their autonomous car tech is unclear from the outside (and I suspect also unclear on the inside). Tesla's focus on manufacturing and using already sold cars to train their software was a really good plan. Google can't really compete with that even with their fleet of waymo mini cars - it also leaves the big problem of manufacturing cars unsolved (partnership? licensing?). This seems especially tricky when any car manufacturer that plans to exist in a couple years is already building out their own software divisions with a focus on autonomy. I'd suspect the engineers see that the management plan isn't going to win so they'd rather jump ship to someone that's doing a better job of it. This seems to be a recurring trend with Google - get in early with something good, but then let others eventually catch up and beat you.
- gydfi 10y ago
  My guess is that they want to pull an Android. Tesla (and other manufacturers) want to do the iPhone thing and make a unified software-hardware solution, but it's unlikely that everyone's solution is going to reach maturity at the same time. Say, for instance, that the best three self-driving technologies in the world, at the time consumer adoption starts, are Tesla, Google and Volvo. Every other manufacturer is going to rush to dump their own half-developed version and just licence Google's. At the very least, Google should be able to make money by selling geographic data to all the different manufacturers. But I imagine you'll see Google self-driving tech all over the place.
segmondy 10y ago
Not true, executives don't create shit. If they leave without any prospect of making money, they can't create on their own to earn. Developers are creator, given enough money, most would leave to take a chance at bringing their own creation into the world. This creation could possibly make money. Sometimes it's not even the money, it's the idea of having your project seeing the light of day. Working on a project that might not see the light of day or that might ship in 10yrs can be very frustrating for creators.
- hellofunk 10y ago
  This comment is a gross misunderstanding of what good executives do, and they are indeed critical players.
  - segmondy 10y ago
    I'm not disputing that they are critical players. They are, but they are not creators. Most of them at that point in life are owner of capital. If they leave with nothing in sight, they are leaving because they are bored and have amassed enough capital to take a chance and invest in someone else. But why leave when you are raking in millions for a chance? Developers are creators, if they leave, they tend to leave because their dreams are getting squashed and the opportunity window is getting closed in an area they would love to innovate. If you are at google and don't see google releasing a self driving car, you will miss the window unless you jump ship to Tesla or GM or Audi. If you are into VR, maybe you would wanna jump ship to Oculus, the window to be part of history is very small.
    - dsacco 10y ago
      Can you define what you mean by "create"? Are you saying programmers are creators because they can code? That sounds like a one-dimensional view of what product or value creation is. Furthermore, you're charitably generalizing developers as people who leave because of their dreams and uncharitably generalizing executives as people who just get bored and want to turn the wheels of production at a whim. I think the point that the other commenter and I are trying to make is what while you can defensibly claim you're not saying executives "aren't critical players", you're being dismissive of their overall contributions by painting them in a diminutive and uncharitable way. You're essentially saying, "I'm not saying executives aren't critical players, they're just not the real creators of value...they leave because they get bored and have so much capital while developers leave because of a twinkle in their eye."
trhway 10y ago
>I don't think getting paid a large sum of money is the contributing factor for the departures. the stop of that large money is what seems to have happened: "In December, the car unit morphed into a standalone business called Waymo, and the system was replaced with a more uniform pay structure that treats all employees the same" >Engineers care about achieving something they can feel proud of and if the project lacks that, they move on. they achieved "milestones", got handsomely paid for that, after that the payment structure changed back to regular with no such payouts in the future, and the real achievement - fully autonomous car - is still long in the future with a lot of grunt unglorious work to be performed in order to reach that future ... While other companies invite you to make the same glorious "milestones" for even bigger money - sounds like no-brainer. Google wanted that division to be like a startup - they seems to have got it right to all the details, including that exodus after cash-out on an "exit" with product barely reaching prototype stage and powerpoint of trillion dollar business. An expensive at that - 16x "valuations" growth applied to 4 years of an engineer's bonus and equity - i.e. something like 16 x $1M = $16M per engineer (nicely matches market going rate for AI and other hot aquihires. man! i should have made a career out of that GC hobby back in 2004-5 :) - i'd not be surprised if Ruth had heart attack upon seeing those numbers :)
- beaner 10y ago
  The article says departures increased during 2016. The pay structure only just changed in December. Departures were increasing over time before the pay structure changed.
  - trhway 10y ago
    I don't think that they unexpectedly canceled the multiplier program. It sounds more like it just ran out in 2015-16 without replacement (at the same levels).
ufmace 10y ago
Agreed. I would think tons of engineers would kill to be on a project to build the first real self-driving car, whether they're getting paid millions or thousands. If people keep quitting after making a pile of money, that sounds more like it's clear to everyone from the bottom up that there's no real commitment or ability to execute on this than that they're paying people too much. No surprise if everyone is jumping ship to other companies that have an actual plan to get people into self-driving cars.
- user5994461 10y ago
  People will always quit for a bigger pile of money. It's that simple.
  - grzm 10y ago
    It's really not. There are people who value other things than only money.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Any value can be bought with an appropriate pile of money.
      - grzm 10y ago
        Is there truly nothing you would not do or relinquish for a large enough payment?
        user5994461 10y ago
        We are talking about getting a job at a regular company. There isn't much relinquishment.
        jayjay71 10y ago
        I know plenty of people that refuse to work for defense contractors for large sums of money, and many others who refuse jobs in finance because they expect a miserable experience. Plenty of people consider things besides salary when taking a job.
kristianc 10y ago
> This article is written in a way that suggests engineers should be paid less so that they remain loyal...you know, like slaves. Isn't that the argument behind Daniel Pink's book?
- kobeya 10y ago
  No, Drive is about intangible benefits. The connection to salary is secondary.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
I don't think it was the engineers getting paid huge bonuses, but the project executives.
christophilus 10y ago
I've left a company (Microsoft) in part due to big bonuses. In my case, it was because the bonus gave me psychological stress. I felt a lot of (self-imposed) pressure to keep performing at a very high level. The bonus was given to me because I did a lot of work to get a product out the door successfully. That process was frustrating and painful. The big bonus made me think "we expect more of the same!" In retrospect, that's not at all what management was telling me. But I felt it. And I didn't want to go through another year like the one that led up to the bonus. And I didn't feel like climbing a career ladder (the way Microsoft at the time seemed to encourage). I just wanted to be a simple software engineer and build cool stuff. I guess what I'm trying to say is anecdotally, actions (including big salaries / bonuses) can have unintended consequences. Take IBM's recent initiative to kill remote work. Well, a predictable unintended consequence of that is a brain-drain. Those who aren't capable of finding other jobs will stay at IBM. Those who are capable will leave for greener (and remote-friendly) pastures.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  That was a very interesting and meaningful anecdote and I appreciate your sharing it with us. Thank you.
  - crestedtazo 10y ago
    I really enjoyed this comment. Thank you.
- kobeya 10y ago
  I have never ever thought of a bonus as expectation for future work...
- muzz 10y ago
  I would have taken the opposite view-- that a bonus was for hard work already done, not an expectation of future work. A salary increase would represent that expectation.
  - ramy_d 10y ago
randyrand 10y ago
Exactly. What reasonable company would not want slaves? Of course, in the age of welfare, its typically better to have your employees be slaves to the state than slaves to you so you dont have to pay to feed, clothe, and house them. But for businesses where the market rate of their employees is above the wage to keep that person alive and housed, then slaves are a very attractive thing to have. Many people (~millions) have no moral opposition to slavery.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
IshKebab 10y ago
I'm not sure engineers and executives are similarly motivated. I'm pretty sure most engineers (at least the ones that work at Google and read HN) have tons of ideas about hobby projects they'd love to work on full time if only they had fuck-off money. I would expect most executives like the power of being executives at established companies and managing lots of people, and they probably have fewer personal projects that they want to do. Maybe I'm wrong; I'm not an executive.

gregshap 10y ago

I think it's more like if you pay someone FU money to stay for a fixed term or milestone, you'll need to pay them exponentially more FU money to stay for the next milestone. Many top executives are on this track as well, which explains some of the crazed pay scales.

tptacek 10y ago

Two problems with this first-principles analysis: 1. The highest paid executives in other industries tend to be at the apex of their careers, and new startups would be a status step down for them. 1. Empirically, executives do switch companies somewhat routinely. Your last sentence presents a false dichotomy: either we're meant to reject the notion that flight money is a real phenomenon, or we're required to believe engineers shouldn't be compensated above slave levels. There's a huge excluded middle in that argument.

phillmv 10y ago
I would buy this more if we routinely heard "problems with retention" as an issue with runaway executive compensation. It's possible I've not seen them, but seems curiously absent in the discourse to me.
- maxander 10y ago
  Engineers with skills related to self-driving car development are also currently much rarer than highly trained executives, and companies trying to get into the autonomous car sector need more engineers than executives. Failing to retain an executive simply isn't as much of a problem.
- tptacek 10y ago
  This response basically ignores what my comment said. We don't have "flight risk" problems with executive compensation because there is no higher-status place for an executive to go from the helm of a company that can reliably pay 8-figure salaries than to the helm of another such company. Starting new companies is a step down for those people. And, in fact, that's the ostensible reason executives make so much: because they can and do switch companies in pursuit of better compensation packages. These are positive statements, not normative ones.
  - phillmv 10y ago
    I left this unvoiced but let's fisk it: > new startups would be a status step down for them. No, but highly paid executives can always go to a higher status company; similarly, if you were status-motivated but also a well placed mid career goog eng… it's not clear to me you _needed_ a sweet bonus in order to switch to your startup, ya know? >executives do switch companies somewhat routinely. I think the theory of what I'm trying to advance is, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I personally feel I would be rather loyal to someone paying me fuck you money, but then again I'm well into my own incredible journey, so it's possible I'm now blind to status incentives relative to working at google.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      I'm vocal about this because the concept of "flight risk" is a very old one, particularly in consulting land. The premise behind flight risk money is that people might not be interested in optimizing their salary by constantly switching jobs, especially because they might really like their current job. But a lot of people have a short list of jobs that they would be interested in if money weren't a factor; many employees (maybe most) aren't in their absolute ideal job, but are balancing money and work life. When you give those people lots of additional money, you change that balance. This isn't complicated, right? A pretty large group of people (1) like their current job, and (2) would like to start or join a new company. That's just not the same as what happens with executives. Executives are not waiting for their big break so that they can start a new thing.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fossuser 10y ago

Google seems to have some trouble with execution. Tesla's 'master plan' is pretty easy to understand externally and gives a clear path/vision forward. How Google plans to actually use their autonomous car tech is unclear from the outside (and I suspect also unclear on the inside). Tesla's focus on manufacturing and using already sold cars to train their software was a really good plan. Google can't really compete with that even with their fleet of waymo mini cars - it also leaves the big problem of manufacturing cars unsolved (partnership? licensing?). This seems especially tricky when any car manufacturer that plans to exist in a couple years is already building out their own software divisions with a focus on autonomy. I'd suspect the engineers see that the management plan isn't going to win so they'd rather jump ship to someone that's doing a better job of it. This seems to be a recurring trend with Google - get in early with something good, but then let others eventually catch up and beat you.

gydfi 10y ago
My guess is that they want to pull an Android. Tesla (and other manufacturers) want to do the iPhone thing and make a unified software-hardware solution, but it's unlikely that everyone's solution is going to reach maturity at the same time. Say, for instance, that the best three self-driving technologies in the world, at the time consumer adoption starts, are Tesla, Google and Volvo. Every other manufacturer is going to rush to dump their own half-developed version and just licence Google's. At the very least, Google should be able to make money by selling geographic data to all the different manufacturers. But I imagine you'll see Google self-driving tech all over the place.

segmondy 10y ago

Not true, executives don't create shit. If they leave without any prospect of making money, they can't create on their own to earn. Developers are creator, given enough money, most would leave to take a chance at bringing their own creation into the world. This creation could possibly make money. Sometimes it's not even the money, it's the idea of having your project seeing the light of day. Working on a project that might not see the light of day or that might ship in 10yrs can be very frustrating for creators.

hellofunk 10y ago
This comment is a gross misunderstanding of what good executives do, and they are indeed critical players.
- segmondy 10y ago
  I'm not disputing that they are critical players. They are, but they are not creators. Most of them at that point in life are owner of capital. If they leave with nothing in sight, they are leaving because they are bored and have amassed enough capital to take a chance and invest in someone else. But why leave when you are raking in millions for a chance? Developers are creators, if they leave, they tend to leave because their dreams are getting squashed and the opportunity window is getting closed in an area they would love to innovate. If you are at google and don't see google releasing a self driving car, you will miss the window unless you jump ship to Tesla or GM or Audi. If you are into VR, maybe you would wanna jump ship to Oculus, the window to be part of history is very small.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    Can you define what you mean by "create"? Are you saying programmers are creators because they can code? That sounds like a one-dimensional view of what product or value creation is. Furthermore, you're charitably generalizing developers as people who leave because of their dreams and uncharitably generalizing executives as people who just get bored and want to turn the wheels of production at a whim. I think the point that the other commenter and I are trying to make is what while you can defensibly claim you're not saying executives "aren't critical players", you're being dismissive of their overall contributions by painting them in a diminutive and uncharitable way. You're essentially saying, "I'm not saying executives aren't critical players, they're just not the real creators of value...they leave because they get bored and have so much capital while developers leave because of a twinkle in their eye."

trhway 10y ago

>I don't think getting paid a large sum of money is the contributing factor for the departures. the stop of that large money is what seems to have happened: "In December, the car unit morphed into a standalone business called Waymo, and the system was replaced with a more uniform pay structure that treats all employees the same" >Engineers care about achieving something they can feel proud of and if the project lacks that, they move on. they achieved "milestones", got handsomely paid for that, after that the payment structure changed back to regular with no such payouts in the future, and the real achievement - fully autonomous car - is still long in the future with a lot of grunt unglorious work to be performed in order to reach that future ... While other companies invite you to make the same glorious "milestones" for even bigger money - sounds like no-brainer. Google wanted that division to be like a startup - they seems to have got it right to all the details, including that exodus after cash-out on an "exit" with product barely reaching prototype stage and powerpoint of trillion dollar business. An expensive at that - 16x "valuations" growth applied to 4 years of an engineer's bonus and equity - i.e. something like 16 x $1M = $16M per engineer (nicely matches market going rate for AI and other hot aquihires. man! i should have made a career out of that GC hobby back in 2004-5 :) - i'd not be surprised if Ruth had heart attack upon seeing those numbers :)

beaner 10y ago
The article says departures increased during 2016. The pay structure only just changed in December. Departures were increasing over time before the pay structure changed.
- trhway 10y ago
  I don't think that they unexpectedly canceled the multiplier program. It sounds more like it just ran out in 2015-16 without replacement (at the same levels).

ufmace 10y ago

Agreed. I would think tons of engineers would kill to be on a project to build the first real self-driving car, whether they're getting paid millions or thousands. If people keep quitting after making a pile of money, that sounds more like it's clear to everyone from the bottom up that there's no real commitment or ability to execute on this than that they're paying people too much. No surprise if everyone is jumping ship to other companies that have an actual plan to get people into self-driving cars.

user5994461 10y ago
People will always quit for a bigger pile of money. It's that simple.
- grzm 10y ago
  It's really not. There are people who value other things than only money.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Any value can be bought with an appropriate pile of money.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Is there truly nothing you would not do or relinquish for a large enough payment?
      - user5994461 10y ago
        We are talking about getting a job at a regular company. There isn't much relinquishment.
        jayjay71 10y ago
        I know plenty of people that refuse to work for defense contractors for large sums of money, and many others who refuse jobs in finance because they expect a miserable experience. Plenty of people consider things besides salary when taking a job.

kristianc 10y ago

> This article is written in a way that suggests engineers should be paid less so that they remain loyal...you know, like slaves. Isn't that the argument behind Daniel Pink's book?

kobeya 10y ago
No, Drive is about intangible benefits. The connection to salary is secondary.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

I don't think it was the engineers getting paid huge bonuses, but the project executives.

christophilus 10y ago

I've left a company (Microsoft) in part due to big bonuses. In my case, it was because the bonus gave me psychological stress. I felt a lot of (self-imposed) pressure to keep performing at a very high level. The bonus was given to me because I did a lot of work to get a product out the door successfully. That process was frustrating and painful. The big bonus made me think "we expect more of the same!" In retrospect, that's not at all what management was telling me. But I felt it. And I didn't want to go through another year like the one that led up to the bonus. And I didn't feel like climbing a career ladder (the way Microsoft at the time seemed to encourage). I just wanted to be a simple software engineer and build cool stuff. I guess what I'm trying to say is anecdotally, actions (including big salaries / bonuses) can have unintended consequences. Take IBM's recent initiative to kill remote work. Well, a predictable unintended consequence of that is a brain-drain. Those who aren't capable of finding other jobs will stay at IBM. Those who are capable will leave for greener (and remote-friendly) pastures.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
That was a very interesting and meaningful anecdote and I appreciate your sharing it with us. Thank you.
- crestedtazo 10y ago
  I really enjoyed this comment. Thank you.
kobeya 10y ago
I have never ever thought of a bonus as expectation for future work...
muzz 10y ago
I would have taken the opposite view-- that a bonus was for hard work already done, not an expectation of future work. A salary increase would represent that expectation.
- ramy_d 10y ago

randyrand 10y ago

Exactly. What reasonable company would not want slaves? Of course, in the age of welfare, its typically better to have your employees be slaves to the state than slaves to you so you dont have to pay to feed, clothe, and house them. But for businesses where the market rate of their employees is above the wage to keep that person alive and housed, then slaves are a very attractive thing to have. Many people (~millions) have no moral opposition to slavery.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

IshKebab 10y ago

I'm not sure engineers and executives are similarly motivated. I'm pretty sure most engineers (at least the ones that work at Google and read HN) have tons of ideas about hobby projects they'd love to work on full time if only they had fuck-off money. I would expect most executives like the power of being executives at established companies and managing lots of people, and they probably have fewer personal projects that they want to do. Maybe I'm wrong; I'm not an executive.