Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Googlers' bonus is a mobile phone?!

Well, I was little busy with real world issues and cannot blog for some time now, to add insult to the injury, My hosting company made a terrible mistake and misplaced my domain renewal agreement and as a result the site was offline for more than 5 days!!

I am some pro!

Ok back to the matter at hand, I was mindlessly going thru the cnet RSS feed(or was it atom??) and came across this piece An end to the Google bonus fairytale?

Gosh, I've known friends in google India make more than $5000 in annual bonus, now people working in BAy area to get a mobile phone for Bonus...


That will be some day, huh...This surely is an economic meltdown...

The article follows.

For Googlers eagerly awaiting their famous holiday bonuses, be warned: Santa is tightening his belt too.

Google employees, some of whom have reportedly grown used to fairytale-like cash bonuses on the north side of $20,000, apparently got coal in their stockings this year. Certainly that's the takeaway for gossip blog Valleywag, which in a headline likened this year's bonus to "dogfood"--a euphemism for in-house testing--because Google would like some feedback.

So how bad was it? Well, Google gave its employees a smartphone. Yep, can you believe it? Man, if I had a nickel for all the years my bosses gave me a smartphone...

But I digress. Back to Google's gift. Apparently, Valleywag took issue with Google giving its employees an Android--its own phone! Well, actually, the memo that Valleywag reprinted referred to it as a "Dream phone." It's basically the T-Mobile G1 that retails for $179.99, but it's been customized to "work anywhere in the world" on the carrier of their choice. (Google estimates its value at $400.)

The nerve!

Here, in the real world, while many in the tech industry have received pink slips, Google employees are receiving a gift--oh, yeah, it is a gift--that many people would love to find under their trees. What a bummer, man. As far as the dogfooding goes, I am guessing that this company that has a reputation for being astoundingly generous when economic realities were more positive isn't going to can employees for not sending back the questionnaire.

Now, back to the topic of Santa...

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