Google claims Levandowski launched competing projects long before Otto

I think the calculation is probably different when you are making "big bets" with other people's money.

The mistake you're making is in thinking there is some objective definition of "value" - as in, there is some all-seeing entity which knows everything and knows exactly what a person "should" be paid.

I would argue that that's a fundamentally incorrect way of looking at it. You're "worth" whatever you can negotiate for (making baseline assumptions about not defrauding people).

If you can convince someone to pay you 10 million dollars to mow his lawn, I think you deserve every penny.

After thinking about it a while, I think part of the numbers come from a time-based valuation.

Apple's chief council is likely not the only lawyer who could 'do his job' for that price. But I need someone to do his job this afternoon, no, now. Who has all the relevant information in their head so they can give me an informed opinion based on the entire company's operations and positions about a $10B decision that must be made by the end of the day. Go find me that person. How much would you pay to have that person here and now today rather than tomorrow to guide whether the price should be $21B or $18B for the deal.

I think you may be missing the point with examples of execs who got paid a ton of money even for mediocre or poor performance. The reason they got paid so much is that decisions at that level are absolutely "billion dollar decisions", in that the performance of the executive, and the executive alone, can be the difference between a super successful company and a failure. That is one reason why execs are paid so much - going in to the deal boards are betting that their execs will be one of the successful ones, not one of the failing ones.

The same is true for "rock star" engineers. I absolutely believe there are a few engineers who can make the difference between being wildly successful or being an also ran. To use a well known related example, consider Jony Ive. I believe that his unique design talents have been responsible for billions of dollars in value to Apple shareholders.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

The price may very well exceed the average engineer. However, the value to Google in incentivizing such leaders to drive product development with 100~1000% ROI is that much higher and it's crazy that they have so much cash to do be able to do this.

So if I pay you $100 million to make a product and I have a very high likelihood of flipping it for $10 billion for a 100x return, it makes sense why a market for such talent exists at Google.

If you think about how large Google is and the amount of innovation that the market expects from them along with the pressure from Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook etc, $50~200 million is a premium they will gladly pay because this in turn would put pressure on other competitors.

Lyft simply would not be able to match Google's offer of $100 million. This is how Google and Microsoft wins most of the time. Cash.

I'm not saying it applies here, but it's the core of many cons that you apply time pressure on the mark. "You can make all of this money, but only if you act NOW! Everyone else is doing it, they're smart and successful and YOU want to be smart and successful! I'm not asking for more than you can afford to spend, and I'm offering so much more in return! BUT ONLY IF YOU ACT NOW!"

What race are they losing? Google search/ads is a monopoly or duopoly. You don't need to pay execs $100MM to maintain this--just need to keep the DOJ off your back. The rest (self-driving cars, et al) is money losing window dressing.

When you pay people $100million for the grand accomplishment of sweet-talking the CEO, you get... Google+.

I'd like to think that the fact that companies just want to keep the money, and the supply of other engineers, is why the comp is not a linear function.

Ok but you mentioned someone making a 1% improvement in existing revenue. For THAT.

I can understand that when Google was on a technology growth curve in 2007 that a single engineer could hit a home run. I think that is much much harder today. So I would have to see it. I'm not saying it's impossible but I'd have to see it.

My favorite Google engineer idea was how much autocorrect improved search results and efficiency. Awesome idea but I doubt it contributed $100M in revenue. MapReduce, good idea but I doubt it contributed $100M in revenue.

One engineer, $100M is easy to say. It's really hard to do.

Do you need a career if you have that much money?

He could always run for president of the United States.

I assume opposing counsel has an opinion on how much of the value was based on stolen documents, and how much was not.

I totally get what you're saying. But I mostly don't see verdicts, settlement amounts, forfeitures, and the like following common sense.

I agree, it looks grim. Actually losing half a billion+, though, depends on some hairball of laws, judges, juristictions, and so forth...around actual damages, punitive measures, forfeiture in a separate criminal case, etc. Handslaps aren't uncommon, and neither are the opposite...awards that seem too large. There's also the degree to which Uber is culpable (provably, legally) vs Levandowski personally.

Would be interested in hearing a prediction from an IP lawyer.