Googler Offered $3.5M to Turn Down Facebook

It's a common trick of the trade. You're looking for a raise but your employer won't give you one. So, you tell them you're going to go work for a competitor, hoping they'll so scared of losing you to the competition, they'll offer you more money to stay. Well, I don’t know if that was this Googler's plan when he told his employer that he had been offered a job at Facebook, but he definitely got offered a very handsome bonus to stay in Mountain View.

TechCrunch reports that Google recently offered a staff engineer $3.5 million in restricted stock to stop him leaving for Facebook. It's not clear whether or not this person had already received a job offer from the biggest social network in town, but Michael Arrington writes that he was being "heavily romanced" by Facebook.

TC reports that this isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, though the search giant won't make a nice counteroffer for everyone trying to leave, Google will often go to great lengths to stop staff leaving for the likes of Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn. By the sounds of things, this particular deal is bigger than the rest. That $3.5 million in restricted stock will vest over time, so it's not surprising to learn that the engineer reportedly accepted and stayed at Google. Wouldn't you?

Read more about Google's method of retaining engineers and other valuable members of staff on TechCrunch.

_{Source: TechCrunch}