|
|
|
|
|
|
by defen
3300 days ago
|
|
|
This article[0] from almost 10 years ago estimated that the Google IPO resulted in 1,000 people having more than $5 million worth of Google shares. So I guess it hinges on how you define "instrumental" and "almost none". It's a tautology to say that "instrumental" means "they contributed to the effort", so I would say "instrumental" means "it seems like no one else could have done it" and "almost none" means less than 5%. If you had to take a wild guess about Google, what percentage of that 1,000 would you estimate were instrumental? Furthermore, presumably there are more Google millionaires now, 10 years later. I wonder what percentage of those were also instrumental in Google's success? [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12google.html |
|
|
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that many employees at companies like Google are not brilliant or not extremely effective in their work, but "no one else could have done it" is a useless test that relies on mythologizing people. The way I figure out, the people getting rich (as employees) are those that: a) took the risk to get in early enough, b) performed their jobs competently enough to stay long term and to give the company a chance to succeed, c) got lucky enough in that all the imponderable external factors also resulted in that particular company succeeding. That doesn't mean they weren't "instrumental", in the sense of being the people who actually happened to get the work done. But that's different from "irreplaceable".