How to Get a Piece of the Action

In a renovated warehouse in the heart of Manhattan's Silicon Alley, Gordon Gould sits in a cavernous loft space called "The Pit." His surroundings exhibit none of the traditional emblems of business success. He doesn't have a corner office. In fact, he doesn't have an office at all -- or even a desk.

But Gould does have the one measure of success that matters: a piece of the action. Last February, the 27-year-old "information architect" left a comfortable job at Sony Corporation for a new-media startup called Thinking Pictures, Inc. That's not unusual. America is in the grip of startup fever. Tens of thousands of young people -- programmers, engineers, marketing specialists -- are turning their backs on big companies and signing up with startups. What is unusual is that Gould negotiated a major equity stake -- 3.5% -- before he made his move.

"I'm young but I'm not dumb," he says. "I know I'm a prime producer and I want my compensation to reflect that. If I'm going to spend 16 hours a day in an office, I want to be rewarded for the upside value my work generates. I want to feel that the company is partly my baby."

There's no mistaking Robert Heckman for Gordon Gould. At 56, he's comfortable with the trappings of corporate life. But when Heckman sat back to consider his future, he reached the same conclusion as Gould. Last May, he left a comfortable job as director of marketing at Andersen Consulting to join the Thomas Group Inc. (TGI), a consulting firm based in Irving, Texas that works with blue-chip clients such as EDS, Rubbermaid, and Siemens.

Heckman wasn't unhappy at his old job -- far from it -- but TGI offered something that privately held Andersen never could -- a piece of the action. That's because the firm is a rare species in the world of professional services -- a small, fast-growing, publicly traded company.

Before joining his new firm, Heckman negotiated an option package for 50,000 shares at an exercise price of $14.75. He expects those options to create enough wealth to make him financially independent. Since TGI went public three years ago at $12.62, its share price has risen as high as $20. Its long-term prospects are bright. The company, now a $70-million-a-year operation, has been growing at a sustained annual rate of 33%. It expects to grow even faster over the next five years -- and it will, if Heckman does his job. His title is vice president and chief growth officer.

"Stock options are the whole idea," Heckman says. "If Netscape's people perform, the company performs, the stock performs, and they build net worth. By the time I'm 60, I want to be able to stop working and do some things in the world of education. Stock will help me accomplish that goal."

More than ever before, knowledge workers can see and feel the direct relationship between the work they do and the market value of their companies. A small team of programmers, armed with a great idea and a few workstations, can write a new software package that generates hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. A small creative team can develop an advertising campaign so compelling that it puts their agency on the map -- and leads to an enormous increase in billings. Not surprisingly, people with this much impact want to share in the value they create. They want a piece of the action.

"We are at a cultural turning point in our attitudes toward jobs, and knowledge workers are at the leading edge of that change," says consultant William Bridges, an expert on careers and the author of Jobshift: How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs. "Knowledge workers realize that getting a 'salary' doesn't make sense for them. The value of what they contribute isn't based on the time they put in. A person who has a brilliant idea in the morning while he's shaving may be responsible for a breakthrough that vastly increases the value of the company. That person expects to be rewarded for those results."

Stephen Combs, managing partner of Juntunen Combs Poirier, an executive search firm in San Francisco, couldn't agree more. He says people's expectations have changed because their relationship to work has changed. Work is no longer a job; it's a way of life.

"The people I recruit aren't employees," Combs argues, "they are crusaders -- whether the crusade is to launch satellites for Craig McCaw's startup or to create the next great Web technology. They are experts with pride verging on arrogance. They want to make a difference." And they expect to be compensated accordingly.