If you compare this with full professorship (academic tenure), that will cost the university about $4 million (assuming $60k/yr - probably $6-7 million if the university is upper echelon). So conservatively this is 10-15x what tenure is.
Neal Mohan sounds like the business equivalent of Jeff Dean [1]
>have to think about advertising all day every day
That sounds no difference from 'think about chemistry all day every day', doesn't it?
I think advertising is more interesting and inspiring these days than many of traditional science areas. Not to mention it's a huge field including bleeding age AI, Big Data, performance, etc.
I think the GP is saying that a tenured professor typically has the option of a wide range of job freedom. You work on pretty much what you want and when you want. The GP is contrasting this with being the head of advertising at Google, which one might guess is fairly demanding.
Also, improving advertising isn't generally seen as having the highest positive impact on society, whereas a professor might contribute to a cure for cancer.
If you compare this with full professorship (academic tenure), that will cost the university about $4 million (assuming $60k/yr - probably $6-7 million if the university is upper echelon). So conservatively this is 10-15x what tenure is.
Neal Mohan sounds like the business equivalent of Jeff Dean [1]
[1] http://research.google.com/people/jeff/