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

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431–440 of 543 posts

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

#431
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I observe Google Photos is quite popular. It's from 2015.

Because of android lockins. Not because it's a great product imo.

Have you used it? The search is so good, I never have to dig through photo grids anymore.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the smartest people have decided money isn’t everything?

Money isn't everything. Time is. For someone currently earning $225,000 this would save them a thousand years of hard work. A thousand years. You don't have to think money is everything to understand how earning $225 million in a short time will help you with all the things you do care about, whether it's retiring early, spending time with kids, supporting charity, pursuing hobbies, doing independent research, or tak…

Lol, you can spend plenty of time on what you want without millions .. come on!

Especially if you have a cozy 200k 40hr/wk 6 weeks of vacation blah blah blah gig

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

#433
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…

Many people in these roles are very ambitious, driven and frankly close to sociopathic or in extreme cases psychopathic:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-p...

For them money and people are basically numbers, and more money means more power.

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

#434
post #331
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft? They’ve been IBM for 20 years.

Microsoft would have become IBM, if not for Satya Nadella. He completely rejuvenated Microsoft after Ballmer's reign. Microsoft successfully transitioned into cloud computing with Azure, Office 365, and Teams. They dramatically improved their image among developers/open source with WSL, Typescript, VS Code, and their GitHub acquisition. Now it seems they caught Google completely off guard with respect to AI productiz…

Steve Ballmer stepped down in 2014. If we're giving credit to CEOs for things that happened while they were CEO (which isn't really valid), Azure was launched in 2010 and Office 365 was launched in 2011, both during Ballmer's tenure.

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

#435
post #291

I mean are you surprised by this? Companies do not exist for the benefit of labor, they exist for the benefit of shareholders. Why is this even considered news?

“they exist for the benefit of shareholders” How does paying a CEO so much money benefit the shareholders? Do you honestly feel there aren’t millions of people that could do his job (and likely better) for a fraction of what he was paid?

CEOs are usually shareholder. And they hire these people to act in the interest of the shareholders.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-se...

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

#436
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the employees are shareholders? If the profits are going to shareholders then employees are directly benefiting

That's really irrelevant. Even if compensation was entirely in cash, they'd likely still be shareholders through index fund investing, e.g. most 401k options would invest in the company. Does that mean employees working at an S&P 500 company should never unionize because technically they're shareholders? Employees at Google are made shareholders because its cheaper for the company than paying cash. Employees form an…

> Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union.

Maybe this would work if the employees have some sort of monopoly like the people who work at the ports. However, with knowledge workers there’s a threshold when it’s simply cheaper to move states or even countries.

Employees who are well compensated also do not have an incentive to form a union.

You’re still wrong. What’s your next proposal? Investment bankers should unionize?

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

#437

Sundar is an example of what happens when you promote from within and rule out anyone with enemies. You get nice guys whom everyone "likes." The comment about sociopathic almost-CEO's is spot on. Tony, Andy, Anthony, and Vic all would have been terrible CEO's. On the other hand, Bill Coughran, Alan Eustace, Udi Manber, or Patrick Pichette would have been decent, at the very least. Maybe even very good.

Nadella is a very good counter example for that. I think one difference is that Ballmer set up Nadella much better in his final years (both by removing alternative power centres like Sinofsky, and kick starting projects like Office on iOS which solely get credited to Nadella)

Possibly you're right. I'm not as familiar with MS-internal politics.

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

#438

... And getting caught flat-footed against Microsoft (and Adobe, but but not as loudly) in the precise field Alphabet is supposedly the insurmountable leader. Remind me again how big-co CEOs assume "all the risk"?

They are still employees, not owners.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's done great good: for himself, stuffing his wallet. He's played the game well, squirrelling his way to the top, and siphoning off his fill. For all the Alphabet stuff, and hiring the smartest engineers on the planet, I've yet to hear of a single Google breakthrough beyond their search. They're still just ad salesmen. Only other useful things they've done that most people would be aware of is refining Microsoft's…

The so coveted Transformer architecture came out of Google for one... I don't like what Google has become but I can't deny them the amazing work that both DeepMind and Google Brain have done over the years.

Yes they have done great work and discovered some really cool stuff, but they have not been able to commercialize it. That's what a CEO/management chain should ultimately be measured by, not whether they've built a great Xerox style research PARC.

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

#440
post #343
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?

There is no "we". Google's purpose is not to advance peoplekind. The shareholders decide on the compensation of the CEO, that's literally it.

And yet here we are, on the front-page of HN discussing exactly this.

These responses asking who "we" are feels like (bad) attempts at justifying the hilariously inefficient salary, as if "it's none of your business" is the best counterargument to why they should be paid so much but provide so little.

Also, I and I'm sure many others here are shareholders, if that matters.

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