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Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

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Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#151
post #64

The upper management at Google are so lucky that the company is filled with timid people who are averse to change and didn't unionize. Now they can safely siphon the profits for another several years until they inevitably drive the company into the ground when the ad revenue dries up, and they move to similar positions at other places with healthy revenue streams. And the rank-and-file Googlers will defend this becau…

Can you define "several years"? Google's revenues are at all-time highs, and still growing (albeit slowly). Seems pretty far from anything drying up...

Nokia sold about $50Bn worth of phones in 2007, another $50Bn in 2008. They made an enormous amount of money long after it was obvious to everyone their business was in massive decline.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#153

I simply don’t see what good this CEO has done. He’s destroyed googles reputation with developers. Destroyed customer trust in Google products. Done nothing to fix googles reputation for terrible customer service. Led Google to third place in cloud computing. AND been thrashed by Microsoft / ChatGPT, putting Googles core business at risk. Why is this guy CEO?

Sundar became CEO at a time when Google needed a leader who could build consensus across different product areas. Sundar was the right person for this role. Unfortunately Sundar is also relatively weak at setting a bold vision to ensure the company continues to grow and innovate, as Larry had done. So under Sundar the company has slowly shifted from being innovative to being very risk averse, incentivising not making mistakes, maintaining the status quo, and focusing on cutting costs over creating new lasting value. The effect of these changes is finally becoming more apparent.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#154

I simply don’t see what good this CEO has done. He’s destroyed googles reputation with developers. Destroyed customer trust in Google products. Done nothing to fix googles reputation for terrible customer service. Led Google to third place in cloud computing. AND been thrashed by Microsoft / ChatGPT, putting Googles core business at risk. Why is this guy CEO?

Under his leadership (2015 to now), Google revenues have gone from $75B to $279B, a 272% increase. Google stock was a $30/share and is now at $105/share (250% increase).

That's what he's done.

Just in 2022, revenues were up $23B, so his cut was 1.2% of that.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#155
post #130

What I don't get about CEO compensations is, do they even work? Like I get that you're a high impact person and you should have the proper incentives to lead the company in the right direction, but do the crazy compensations actually achieve that? Like is there any difference between $100M and $200M? Both of those numbers are way higher than anyone and their children can use in their entire lifetimes, why do you even…

It definitely works better when the compensation is mostly in equity - which is what happened here.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#157
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define "several years"? Google's revenues are at all-time highs, and still growing (albeit slowly). Seems pretty far from anything drying up...

Yes, as long as it takes for competitors to build products that are more useful in access to knowledge than Google Search (here GPT + Bing is the most visible threat, but it could be anyone), and that capture your attention better than YouTube (TikTok is the biggest competitor in this space, but again, it could be anyone). Google can't build products, they didn't build anything useful since Search and Docs, so they w…

I agree with you. What people seem to forget is that Google simply did one thing even just marginally better back in the 90s and has been riding that heavy train ever since. All the other stuff, even YouTube is also essentially just dumb luck and a function of that initial success, not to mention that Google was going to shut YouTube down before someone made the case for making it an ad platform, which should have been obvious to Google of all organizations even at that time.

Frankly, Google is like the guy who invented a thing early in life and has been living off the royalties that just flood in, but has absolutely no touch with reality and is convinced of his own greatness as an illusion of that single act so many decades ago. And his kids are even worse and more rotten and spoiled.

They all just don’t know it yet.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#158
post #62

Same story at Meta where people in the C-suite got very high bonus and equity refresher based on outstanding individual performance. You'd expect them to be somehow accountable. The common answer there was that they did well at their job, and aren't responsible for decisions leading to the layoffs. And nobody is responsible. Basically, it was right to hire so many employees (good economic prospects) and then it was r…

[flagged]

> Sounds like those people are suckers.

The power dynamics at play here distort reality so I wouldn't call them suckers but fooled. I don't know why every time this is brought up the default awnser is to assume they had any say in the matter. People (as a group not a person) can behave irrational which is what the call for protection is about.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#159
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google would still be making a ton of money even with a CEO that did nothing. For a $226M compensation, we should be able to demand a bit more don't you think?

> we should be able to demand a bit more Are you a major shareholder?

[deleted]

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#160
I'll come back to what I always come back to with these compensation issues. You can make the claim you need to pay exceptional amounts to get the best people. You cannot claim that applies to a CEO who is in the middle of an incredibly costly round of layoffs because instead of being exceptional, he followed the herd and over-hired during the pandemic. It is extremely clear at this point that the attitude of the big tech companies during the pandemic was stupid (with some minor exceptions), and that their attitude today is gutless.
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