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Comment by romed | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why Google has always been so generous with its execs. It's a little club I guess. But when someone is walking out the door, why the need to heap money on them? They're all as rich as anyone already. When Pichette left they converted his _unvested_ options to cash. Why? Why give a guy tens of millions when the theory of executive compensation revolves around retention?

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From the article it sounds like they care very strongly about those execs not going to work for direct competitors. Gotta provide some kind of consideration for that. While it would be nice to drag these guys through the street a little more, I have to imagine Google is in like the 80th+ percentile of not-evilness by forcing key employees to resign after a single credible complaint.

This was my take also. It's a purely business decision: how much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor? Also dovetails with the statement that lower level employees are dismissed with a little to no severance. Less risk there.

Its not a business decision, it’s simply the culture of executive management. It’s because they can.

This is why executives go to strip clubs together. So they’ve all got something on each other, so no one betrays their cosy little club.

> How much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor?

Isn't this line of reasoning an antitrust violation?

The article goes into some details on that. Basically at that level, you're bribing the employee to not bother to file a wrongful termination lawsuit (that they have the resources to execute on, and that will be embarrassing for the company whether or not it succeeds). Incentives are structured around defending the company from that.

Pretty much every company is generous with its executives.

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