There was no doubt Sergey was the highest-paid person in the room, but he didn’t make a compelling argument as to why his idea was the best, and Sridhar didn’t agree with it. Sridhar wasn’t a senior executive at the time, so as the hippo, Sergey could have simply ordered Sridhar to comply. Instead, he suggested a compromise. Half of Sridhar’s team could work on what Sergey wanted, and the other half would follow Sridhar’s lead. Sridhar still disagreed, and after much debate about the relative merits of the competing ideas, Sergey’s idea was discarded.
