I'm Feeling Lucky_ The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards [63]
"When Gerald wanted to work in the Swiss office," Jeff Dean heard, "he somehow managed to get a Canton outside Zurich to change their tax laws for options. It's unclear if they did it for him, but it certainly would have applied to him."
To me, Gerald represented the unattainable ideal of bargaining savvy. When I brought in contracts, still wet with red ink bleeding from the slaughtered profit margins of vanquished vendors, Sergey sniffed, "These terms don't look very favorable. Maybe we should have Gerald talk to them." In his suggestion I heard, "Summon the Prince of Deepest Discounts! Let him pick the carcass clean and suck the bones of their marrow!" Perhaps my fears were exaggerated, but I knew Gerald, if set loose on my deal, would dash any hope of future favors from my supplier. The specter spurred me to put the screws in, which often was enough to sufficiently improve the terms. The sales reps I dealt with will never know the kindness I did them by squeezing them as hard as I could.
Think big. Stay flexible. Embrace data. Be efficient and economical in the extreme. I was mapping Google's unique terrain and starting to feel less like a toddler lost in the wilderness and more like an intrepid explorer boldly exploring terra incognita. I kept my eyes open and took one step after another in a direction I hoped was forward.
Examining My Options
Serious men wearing jackets (but no ties) were gathering in the I'm Feeling Lucky Lounge—our largest conference room. I watched the shadow army of laptop-toting factotums come and go, speaking in dry cellular whispers. Inside, I imagined our directors laying out visions, making revisions, moving, acting, arguing, and trying to keep their egos in check. Hours later they would emerge as the factotums checked their Palm Pilots and scuttled off to fetch their cars. At that point, I would start scanning my email very carefully.
I never dealt with our board face-to-face, but I always read the notes distributed after their meetings. Why? Well, of course I wanted to know about major shifts in our strategy, and announcements about significant executive hires, and... Ah, hell. Mostly because the board set the price of our stock.
Maybe this would be a good time to talk about money.
Almost no one talked about money at Google. It was an easy topic to avoid because nobody at the company had money to speak of. There may have been one or two people who left other startups with spending cash, but if they were rich enough to retire, they hid it well. What we did have was wealth potential.
I mentioned that in coming to Google I took a twenty-five-thousand-dollar pay cut. That did not help my cash flow, but at dot-coms stock options carried more weight than salary. Each option locked in the purchase price for a single share of stock, set at the stock's value the day the option was granted (the "strike price"). Even if the shares' price had skyrocketed by the time I actually exercised my option and bought the stock, I would still pay only the strike price, guaranteeing me a hefty profit. Companies usually offered their first hires significant numbers of shares but got stingier as the company grew. The earlier one joined, the greater the risk. The more risk, the greater the potential reward. Buy low, sell extremely high, retire young.
Stock options could compress the distance between a life of daily toil and one of affluent ease to the width of a sidewalk crack. I had seen friends and neighbors step across, buying mansions and taking charter-jet vacations, while my kids shared a room and were lucky to get day passes to Raging Waters. Why them? Why not me?
The truth is, most people in Silicon Valley worked hard, made smart decisions, and yet never passed that threshold. Randomness played too big a role. Or call it luck. I wasn't an entrepreneur