One Reason Staffers Quit Google's Car Project? The Company Paid Them So Much
'F-you money' awarded to veteran team members boosted parent Alphabet’s R&D costs, prompting comment from the company's CFO
by Alistair Barr and Mark Bergen
February 13, 2017, 11:03 AM EST
bloomberg.com
For the past year, Google's car project has been a talent sieve, thanks to leadership changes, strategy doubts, new startup dreams and rivals luring self-driving technology experts. Another force pushing people out? Money. A lot of it.
Early staffers had an unusual compensation system that awarded supersized payouts based on the project's value. By late 2015, the numbers were so big that several veteran members didn't need the job security anymore, making them more open to other opportunities, according to people familiar with the situation. Two people called it "F-you money."
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, according to a person familiar with the situation. Still, the original program got so costly that a top executive at parent Alphabet Inc. highlighted it last year to explain a jump in expenses. A spokeswoman for Alphabet, the holding company that owns Google and "Other Bets" like the autonomous car business, declined to comment.
The payouts contributed to a talent exodus at a time when the company was trying to turn the project into a real business and emerging rivals were recruiting heavily. The episode highlights Alphabet's difficult transition from a digital advertising giant into a diversified technology company with varied groups of employees requiring different incentives. Other new businesses, including health care unit Verily, use different compensation systems too, but they have yet to generate huge payouts like the car project.
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