Business & Technology | Google's challenge: Prevent the exodus | Seattle Times Newspaper

Read the full article for more details, e.g., on Google's chief culture officer's perspective.

Less than three years after going public, Google is confronting one of the more confounding consequences of its phenomenal success: a potential brain drain if its earliest — and richest — employees quit after earning the right to cash in the last of the stock options that made them millionaires.

Hundreds of the 2,300 Googlers hired before the Internet juggernaut's initial public offering (IPO) in August 2004 are hitting their fourth anniversary.

When they do, they'll be free to cash in the final portions of their pre-IPO options, collectively worth an estimated $2.6 billion before taxes.

Source: Business & Technology | Google's challenge: Prevent the exodus | Seattle Times Newspaper