Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 327 posts

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#131

Post by eric-hu »

loeg wrote: post #122
gregdoesit wrote: post #11

Got to give it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for having their cake and also eating it. They control ~51% of voting power with shares thanks to owning ~85% of class B shares. They have had the benefit of someone else running the company for 8 years - and increasing the value of it - and now, when things are not looking great, it’s Sundar Pichai who gets the blame, and the focus on his compensation: and not those who s…

How is this different from any other public company, where employees are not the majority shareholders? Like, what is special about Page and Brin?

Neither of them have to be CEO. So Page and Brin can reward the CEO for being ruthless in a down market and also have Sundar be the scapegoat for them. The “cake” is their stock going up. “Eating it too” is the CEO scapegoat.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#132

Post by renewiltord »

cced wrote: post #124
gregdoesit wrote: post #11

Got to give it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for having their cake and also eating it. They control ~51% of voting power with shares thanks to owning ~85% of class B shares. They have had the benefit of someone else running the company for 8 years - and increasing the value of it - and now, when things are not looking great, it’s Sundar Pichai who gets the blame, and the focus on his compensation: and not those who s…

How can we account for inflation when we say market cap increased by $xB? How can we differentiate an actual increase in value as opposed to currency debasement?

You measure it as beta against something broad like the total market or the S&P500.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#133

Post by loeg »

eric-hu wrote: post #131
loeg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different from any other public company, where employees are not the majority shareholders? Like, what is special about Page and Brin?

Neither of them have to be CEO. So Page and Brin can reward the CEO for being ruthless in a down market and also have Sundar be the scapegoat for them. The “cake” is their stock going up. “Eating it too” is the CEO scapegoat.

This situation doesn't seem different from any other board of directors. Who cares about Page and Brin?

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#134

Post by [deleted] »

sqldba wrote: post #67
misssocrates wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't taking the blame part of why CEOs get paid millions of dollars? 226 of them in this case. Pichai signed up for it and is objectively a winner too.

I’ll take some blame for $226m. What you’ve said is nonsensical. Being the victim of some harsh words forgotten the next day while never having to work another day in your life is not any kind of responsibility.

[deleted]

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#135

Post by geraldwhen »

0zemp2c wrote: post #56
comprev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about being overpaid. Similar to other professions - engineering and medicine for example - we have a career which requires a dedication to constant learning. We build systems which allow companies to generate billions in revenue and deserve a slice of the pie.

> we have a career which requires a dedication to constant learning 95% of that is chasing dumb fads, pop cultures, pointless shiny objects, technology fetishes

Yup, but that’s the job. I have an organizational mandate to change deployment stacks every 18 months.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#136

Post by beebeepka »

aaomidi wrote: post #37
segasaturn wrote: post #21

While I agree that CEOs are overpayed, I think the same applies to software engineers. Software Engineering has been a pay/perk bubble for years that was due for a correction, and like when Elon cut the free gourmet lunches and coffees for Twitter staff, I'm sure the Google engineers will survive. Meanwhile Google's "raters", the army of workers who do the hard work of moderating and testing Google's platforms are ge…

Except engineers bring value. If engineers are to be paid less, then where should the profit go?

Profits go up. Sh*t goes down.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#137

Post by runarberg »

gregdoesit wrote: post #11

Got to give it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for having their cake and also eating it. They control ~51% of voting power with shares thanks to owning ~85% of class B shares. They have had the benefit of someone else running the company for 8 years - and increasing the value of it - and now, when things are not looking great, it’s Sundar Pichai who gets the blame, and the focus on his compensation: and not those who s…

It might just be me, but aren’t they all filthy rich, excessively profiting from their workers, handing them selves extreme wealth, while cutting their workers off from this wealth.

This is exploitation. The owning class for the owning class. The rich benefit and the workers are left exploited. Larry, Sergey, Pichai, they are all participating and benefiting at the cost of the workers. Any in-fighting and rivalry is at best a spectacle. At the end of the day, they all go home to the wealth, earned by their workers but enjoyed by the owners, and the owners alone, whether you call them bosses or shareholders, they are all simply exploiters.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#140

Post by unpopular42 »

segasaturn wrote: post #65
ceejayoz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think they could find a competent CEO for, say, $100M?

You don't think you could find a competent software engineer for $80k?

No chance if the competitor next door pays $300k
Post reply on HN