Yahoo! hires! top! Googler! to! revamp! operations! On her first day back in the office after just two weeks of maternity leave, Yahoo! CEO Marisa Mayer has announced that she's wooed a senior Google employee to join her management team. Henrique de Castro, currently Google's president of Global Media, Mobile & Platforms, will join Yahoo! in January as chief operating officer …
$600k salary and a $1m hello doesn't seem all that ludicrous, at least given his apparent track record for extracting cash. First result googling "silicon valley salaries 2012" quotes average salary for engineer with 7-9 years experience as $132k, and clearly Ms Mayer rates him rather more highly.
And at the awesome elevation of a management team the air is rarified and the head gets giddy - the current CEO of Nokia received $7.9m "compensation" for 2011 (including $1m salary) plus a $6.2m hello. Much bigger numbers - but of course Ms Mayer isn't is expecting Mr de Castro to perform at the same level as that!
The one thing I never like about these big hires is it's almost never the big hire that actually does the work. "We hired XXX manager based on the good work he did at XXX company" when in fact it was the people far lower down the ladder than him who did the hard work, and he just claimed the glory.
Hell I've seen it where I work, Manager A calls a meeting of the minds of the normal coders, we all pitch ideas most of them crappy but a few gems. A few weeks later in a team meeting "We had a team meeting and here's what I came up with" to share with the rest of the team, note how it starts with a we and turns to an I.
After the rest of the team improves on it, he takes it to a managers meeting where it's almost entirely I while the ideais based on positive feedback from the team. By now the moment it gets to a manager who can do something the only one who gets any recognition for it will be the one who called the meeting, not the one who did the work.
Totally not bitter or anything here btw.
gets paid the dollars and gets headhunted for more dollars because of two things:
He is visible and can make his case to the paymasters.
It's taken as a given that good results imply good strategic management of the underlings and that enables them to achieve. This is self-serving on the part of the other executives because the same applies to them and hence they can justify their own rewards.
The underlings have to hope that the well regarded manager rewards them in turn so there is a ripple down of the bounty and their graft is rewarded. I don't know how often that actually happens.
Also not bitter - destiny in own hands etc etc
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
