He was a japanese physicist, lost his job when Supercollider project canceled. Instead of going back to Japan, I was able to hire him as lead graphics engineer on a Macintosh imaging product, he was super creative in developing unique graphics effects and his product became our biggest and most profitable. The company grew to 140 employees, his team was 20, but it's reasonable to think about a quarter of the workforce was tied to it given it was about a quarter of our revenues.
So how much were you paying him? (Last week?) there was an article about someone trying to double the H1B minimum wage to $140k; surely if this physicist is as important as you say he is, you were compensating him around that figure, no?
Can you give details so it can be judged if this is true, and if so how common/relevant it is?