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

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

#131
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a guy a decade ago who spent 8-10 years building a company to sell it for $300-400 million and he hasn't worked a day since. Owns a 30k acre ranch that a bunch of friends/family live on. Learjets. Villas in the islands, things like that. I can't think of one thing he hasn't done or is limited financially in doing. Last time I saw him he had a $120k watch on, some type of Hublot big bang. And Pichai gets…

Why is that trash? I would love to drive and shoot a real tank as a civilian.

His ranch is on the MX/TX border and he owns domains (to resell) such as roaches.com, illegal.com, molest.com, etc. Take with those what you will of the sort of person he is. That's just the few I remember otoh. He has hundreds.

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

#132

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022, which marked a staggering 3,474% increase from the previous year, making him the nation’s highest-paid CEO, according to Equilar data. There’s a whole rabbit hole to go down, but CEO compensation is not well defined. In this case it’s likely that Pichai was granted options with a multiyear vesting schedule, plus perhaps performa…

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Sundar, like many other Google insiders, almost certainly has so much money he could just retire and live a life of luxury if he wanted to. And almost certainly he could probably choose a position within Alphabet with less responsibility like Chief Product Officer. To me it’s almost certainly a matter of the founders thinking he’s the best person in the world for the job of CEO and paying him a ton to justify the res…

> it’s easily worth it

but is it really? How do we accurately measure CEO performance? We can barely measure developer productivity in any sort of meaningful fashion. Blowing $200m on what is effectively a faith based assessment seems a bit questionable.

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

#134
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that trash? I would love to drive and shoot a real tank as a civilian.

His ranch is on the MX/TX border and he owns domains (to resell) such as roaches.com, illegal.com, molest.com, etc. Take with those what you will of the sort of person he is. That's just the few I remember otoh. He has hundreds.

One of those is not like the others (it's roaches.com).

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

#135
post #66

> 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…

Just to be fair, for 90% of the world, the kinds of compensation many hacker news readers have (a Silicon Valley engineer who gets a high base plus bonus plus equity) would also be considered “holy guacamole, whatever is the angle I look at it … does not make any f_ing sense”

If you look at the cost of living in SF and what you get, it starts to make sense. What is the equivalent argument for hundreds of millions?

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on NFL player Josh Allen having a $250MM contract? I fail to understand why there is more controversy over CEO pay than athletes.

I don't follow sports, but at least those people are doing actual, physically comparable things with clear connections to revenue (more like music artists than CEOs). Maybe that analogy is more apt than you intended though, in that the valuations are made for shallow human/society reasons that are quite decoupled from reality.

There are many players who don't live up to their $100MM+ contracts. I fail to understand why physicality should be relevant to high compensation.

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

#137
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a guy a decade ago who spent 8-10 years building a company to sell it for $300-400 million and he hasn't worked a day since. Owns a 30k acre ranch that a bunch of friends/family live on. Learjets. Villas in the islands, things like that. I can't think of one thing he hasn't done or is limited financially in doing. Last time I saw him he had a $120k watch on, some type of Hublot big bang. And Pichai gets…

Why is that trash? I would love to drive and shoot a real tank as a civilian.

- Ecological impact

- finances that could feed/house/treat people

- reinforces militant/gun culture

- wear on roads

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

#138
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>If you are running something worth over $1 trillion that makes hundreds of billions of dollars per year it makes sense though, right? But he isn't running it. He has legal control over it, but in terms of sweat equity he only gets 24 hours in the day like everyone else and you can't tell me he somehow converts that to 1000x the labor of an average, capable, willing, working employee.

Jobs and Nadella certainly did contribute more than 1000x the labor of a [...] employee.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is that you want the CEO to be aligned with the shareholders, and therefore you incentivize them with high salaries. Who cares about future shareholders or consequences for that matter when you earn 225MM ? Go move to some country that doesn't tax capital gains, sell it all, and live on 4% of it, which is 9MM per year; live like a king, buy absurd amounts of land and multiply your passive income. Obscene is…

You can't move countries to avoid capital gains.

Why not? I know in Poland I am not taxed until I sell the stock; and if I am out of the country for X amount of time, I am not considered a taxed resident.

I am fairly certain the US is different, but I know that I can do that in Europe.

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

#140
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His ranch is on the MX/TX border and he owns domains (to resell) such as roaches.com, illegal.com, molest.com, etc. Take with those what you will of the sort of person he is. That's just the few I remember otoh. He has hundreds.

One of those is not like the others (it's roaches.com).

Either I'm missing a joke or you need to travel more. Calling mexican immigrants roaches is a thing.
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