Google-Employees of Google

Employees of Google

After the company's IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1.

Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google.

Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000.

In 2007 and early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer.

In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer of Facebook. At the same time, Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops. 

On April 4, 2011, Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google. In July 2012, Google's first female employee, Marissa Mayer, left Google to become Yahoo!'s CEO.

New employees are called "Nooglers," and are given apropeller beanie cap to wear on their first Friday.

As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.

Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience until July 2012, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off.