Google Founders' Awards... another Googlegate?

Disclaimer: This is a response that I gave to Dare Obasanjo's post about the his view of the Google Founders' Awards. Dare is an engineer at Microsoft and he maintains one of the most educating and entertaining blog. Highly recommended.

While there are always people who will exploit the system for their own greeds, the idea is actually pretty neat. You award the people (and hopefully engineer) who create a successfully product with a large sum of money, just as the way you would buy from a start-up company. The amount is of course considerably less, but that is compensated by the job security the company has already guaranteed. Not a bad idea.

I don't know all of those who actually won the award but it has been given to some brilliant engineer (i.e. Niniane Wang, a formerly Softie herself). And it also gives you the impression that the company is willing to share its wealth with the employer.

One of the reason there are so much grief in MSFT is that the executives got the perks while the engineers are not earning their due. I don't know how much of it is true, but after reading a bit of Mini you get the sense that employees are treated better at Google. That's how you generate the morale in the team.

And I don't know how you compare it with the notorious Ship'it award at MSFT. But while the GFA certainly sounds better, I believe the GFA also carries some monetary values while the Ship It is just a trophy. Which one would you choose? Go figure....