Bonnie Brown was fresh from a nasty divorce in 1999, living with her sister and uncertain of her future. On a lark, she answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google, then a Silicon Valley start-up with 40 employees. She was offered the part-time job, which started out at $450 a week but included a pile of Google stock options that she figured might never be worth a penny. After five years of kneading engineers’ backs, Ms. Brown retired, cashing in most of her stock options, which were worth millions of dollars. To her delight, the shares she held onto have continued to balloon in value. ... When Google’s stock topped $700 a share last week before dropping back to $664 on Friday, outside shareholders were not the only ones smiling. According to documents filed on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google employees and former employees are holding options they can cash in worth about $2.1 billion. In addition, current employees are sitting on stock and unvested options, or options they cannot immediately cash in, that together have a value of about $4.1 billion. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/t...a6571bf3258ff3&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss What's even crazier is: Google hired a masseuse in the first place! We don't get that at Arby's!
Even the lowly janitor could be a millionaire if they get in with the right company! It gives me hope...
Its definitely a rags to riches story Going from making $450 a week to a multi millionaire, only in America
Well, only partly so.. she cashed out at $85 a share. Luckily she held plenty back against her broker's wishes.
This is a very nice read, it sure does give hope that hard working efforts are not total losses in the end. I wonder if any of the Google employees had hairy backs.
THAT is some freeloading if I've ever seen it. Like she cared who she was getting a new job for! Pssh. Oh well, some people get lucky. It sounds very much like google to hire their own masseuse though haha, I've heard interesting stories about working for them.
real lucky hit. i would invent a time telephone and call myself 5 years a go and tell to buy some google stock