At the end of the day critics are a dime a dozen. This is not the forum nor do I have the time nor do I care enough to argue, so I won't bother to poke holes in your logic.
I'm gonna call bullshit on your friend's claim of all expense paid trip purely as a one year anniversary gift from Zynga.
Here is when you get such perks at Zynga:
- You win some sort of company-wide award at the quarterly meeting. You (or your team) did something awesome and you are getting rewarded.
- You get a big quarter-end cash bonus and you spend it on your trip.
- It's not actually a vacation. You are on a business trip and maybe you convince your manager to delay your return and you take off for vacation time at that time.
- 25% of your stock options vest on your first anniversary and you cash in and spend on your trip. Assuming you got a boatload of options if you take into account the stock price.
That's all I can think of.
But what DO you get as a prize for your one year anniversary? Some studios put your name up on a poster... That's about it. The rest is by merit.
And as to your immature and completely unfit comment: I call bullshit on that as well. People like that do not get the type of funding that Zynga got. They do not get superstars on their board like Zynga does (Reid Hoffman, Bing Gordon, Jeffrey Katzenberg, etc). And people like that definitely do not get a company to go public. So, yeah, I call bullshit.