Live data from Hacker News

CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

southernillinoisnow.com

71–80 of 357 posts

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#71

> Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022 I know this has been discussed here and 225MM is like the salary of 1000 employees making 200K for only one year, it is stock which is volatoile, that the salary of a CEO is impossible to measure, bla bla bla. But holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it 225MM pear year does not make any f_ing sense to me and it is si…

If you are running something worth over $1 trillion that makes hundreds of billions of dollars per year it makes sense though, right? You can argue even a mediocre CEO could do ok, and I’d agree, but at the same time you could easily justify paying huge amounts of money to get a CEO who will only perform better by 1%/year.

To me it’s really the size of the big tech companies that’s mind boggling. The fact companies that didn’t, or barely, even existed 25 years ago can make hundreds of billions of dollars is just insane.

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#72

> Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022 I know this has been discussed here and 225MM is like the salary of 1000 employees making 200K for only one year, it is stock which is volatoile, that the salary of a CEO is impossible to measure, bla bla bla. But holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it 225MM pear year does not make any f_ing sense to me and it is si…

[deleted]

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is truly a product of the computer age, to come up with self-centered ego BS like this. You do not acknowledge different industries or business models, distribution of physical goods or market brand activity, let along "things that take more that one person to do" .. This is a rote recital of an inner dialog of an ill "investor" CEO who might as soon throw his secretary off of a bridge than give a bonus for winter…

Never in history have companies hired more employees for the sake of having more employees. This isn't a new modern or even libertarian hypothesis. Do you think people in 1000 bc hired more employees than they needed just maximize headcount. Of course not. You want enough to get the job done and not more.

People in 1000 BC is maybe not the best example here considering practically the entire population of Egypt was tasked with building or supporting the building of the pyramids among many other projects.

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#74
post #16

It's become tiresome, reading things that pretend this is not business as usual.

If I kicked a puppy every day for 20 years, it would be “business as usual" if I were to kick a puppy today. That doesn't make it okay to kick puppies.

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#75

I am extremely skeptical that at the higher levels of CEO pay there is any marginal utility. I just don’t think the improved management quality you get from an additional $1M is actually making the company more than $1M in profits. Seems like a failure of markets

When Ford went public around 1956, the man who ran that got $250,000, about $2.8 million today, with much higher taxes than today. But he also got a thank you letter from Henry Ford II, so he had that going for him.

That was the largest IPO at the time, very complicated. I believe all the shares offered publicly were held by the Ford Foundation, for complicated tax and dynastic reasons.

But the main point here is how little the manager of the offering received. Imagine that today. $2.8 million would be nothing.

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#76
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't move countries to avoid capital gains.

What often happens is that corporation in high tax country has subsidiary in low tax country that they find a way to funnel profits too. Not sure on details myself. It has to be done just right. I believe Ireland and the Netherlands are often host countries. Now this is different than money laundering, which is big time illegal, of course.

I think you're talking about the double Irish corporate inversion loophole, which applied to multinational companies, and was closed 10 years ago.

As a US individual you get taxed no matter where in the world you live, and you must pay capital gains on all of your assets before giving up citizenship

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#77
post #16

It's become tiresome, reading things that pretend this is not business as usual.

Maybe it's a good thing to repeat it again and again so we can see how ridiculous it is. Sometimes people really need to be hit on the head.

Why is it ridiculous when NFL and NBA players have $500MM contracts? Why shouldn't Google be allowed to pay these large contracts too?

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#78

> Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022 I know this has been discussed here and 225MM is like the salary of 1000 employees making 200K for only one year, it is stock which is volatoile, that the salary of a CEO is impossible to measure, bla bla bla. But holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it 225MM pear year does not make any f_ing sense to me and it is si…

I wish I understood why so many options are granted in the first place. If they offered 10,000 fewer options, would performance be any worse? Wouldn't a lot of people be vying for that same position and couldn't the company use that to drive down compensation? Couldn't a company in fact, trade on the idea that the extra power and prestige offsets the need for additional stock compensation? And how much of the stock price change can be reduced to a CEO's impact anyways? If it can't be reduced, then why care so much as to overcompensate for their impact in the first place?

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#79

I am extremely skeptical that at the higher levels of CEO pay there is any marginal utility. I just don’t think the improved management quality you get from an additional $1M is actually making the company more than $1M in profits. Seems like a failure of markets

$1mm/year is such a drop in the bucket for a company making $100,00mm/year it almost doesn’t matter.

It’s not about the marginal benefits of paying the same guy just a tiny bit more anyhow, it’s about paying that guy enough that he doesn’t just decide to retire, or run a competing company, or start his own. Imagine if you think some guy is the most qualified person in the world to run your company, even if they only do a 1% better job growing revenue than the second best or “average”, when your revenue is measured in the hundreds of billions it’s easy to justify paying them such huge quantities of money.

Re: CEOs’ pay climbed before layoffs at tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft

#80

> Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022 I know this has been discussed here and 225MM is like the salary of 1000 employees making 200K for only one year, it is stock which is volatoile, that the salary of a CEO is impossible to measure, bla bla bla. But holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it 225MM pear year does not make any f_ing sense to me and it is si…

225MM is not salary. It is stock compensation based on performance.

A distinction without a difference. Nobody is getting cash in that amount
Post reply on HN