Google Pays Engineer $3.5M Not to Go to Facebook

Competition heats up, as Google employees eye IPO-bound companies
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 12, 2010 11:28 AM CST
Google Pays Engineer $3.5M Not to Go to Facebook
In this photo made July 13, 2010, a Google worker rides a bike at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

How desperate is Google to prevent its employees from bolting for Facebook? So eager that it just paid an engineer a whopping $3.5 million in restricted stock to turn down an offer from the social networking giant, sources tell Tech Crunch.

It’s the latest and most staggering of Google’s attempts to keep employees from jumping to competitors that haven’t had their IPOs yet. In an earlier reported case, an engineer who’d been making $150,000 a year turned down a 15% raise and $500,000 in restricted stock, and headed to Facebook anyway. (Click here for the story of another ex-Googler.)

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