141–150 of 543 posts
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None of which started during his reign, am i wrong?
Well he hasn’t ruined them. That’s the standard we’re talking here.
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?
It's left to the mindlessly ambitious or ppl who are placeholders to prevent the mindlessly ambitious from sitting in the chair.
We have passed the point of org complexity where the CEO does anything beyond ensuring no on totally insane takes over.
There are lot of such ppl who dieing to charge you for every search query or email you send. Think Larry Ellison or Rupert Murdoch types taking over Google.
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?
They are making tons of money. That’s what counts. Same for Ballmer at MS. Maybe they lost their magic but they were printing money.
Edit: I was looking at the wrong numbers. Google's profit has roughly quadrupled in the 8 years Pichai has been CEO. His compensation makes a lot more sense in that light.
CEO received compensation for good cost-cutting measures? What am I missing here?
CEO made bad decisions that many other companies avoided. CEO panicked and fired thousands unprofessionally. CEO received record compensation.
Can't we do a bit better than tabloid outrage fueled by just raw emotions? He did correct the course which was right thing to do. Hiring previously was also the right decision at that time, properly nobody knew covid scare would taper off so quickly and people would revert some of the newly found (and often wrong and unhealthy) habits. No panic anywhere, this is business as usual in every sense of that phrase. He received normal compensation, just its done every 3 years - before getting headfirst into outrage, maybe first read some facts?
I don't even get the outrage in this specific case - some, often under-performing (within given group) folks earning 300k + massive bonuses in stocks got fired, and either they 1) found immediately another well paid job; or 2) got already so rich they took 6/12 months sabbatical, plenty of HN posts about exactly this.
I mean good for them, heck good for everybody. Why the envy, desire for CEO to burn in hell or at least end up bankrupt homeless on streets? Nothing good ever comes from such an approach, just stupid short term populist moves for the simpler minds who don't think much ahead or in complex fashion.
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I am from Denmark where we have strong unions protecting our working class and lower middle class. That is a good thing. However what is the benefit of ultra high income FAANG employees unionizing?
One benefit is stronger labor protection from layoffs like these. Having labor be more powerful can also help when execs push for morally questionable projects. Lastly, FAANG employees are working class.
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...
Google can't build products, they didn't build anything useful since Search and Docs, so they won't be able to compete. Add a couple of years for consumers to catch on and migrate.
So I would give it 5-7 years in which the employees will slowly be demotivated by waves of layoffs, morale will tank, and accelerate the process. In that time, the upper mgmt will scramble to increase their bonuses to get as much as they can out of the sinking ship. In the end the company will face restructuring and be left with maybe 10% of the current size, trending downward.
... 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"?
Risk is unevenly distributed in corporations, and employees often have more to lose on a personal level
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Moreover, Bing, ChatGPT hasn't even made a dent in Google's search engine market share [0]. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
Surprising, given that ChatGPT has replaced between 50% and 75% of my searches by volume.
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Reputational risk does affect the supply of viable CEO candidates (here we are deriding Pichai for perceived Google failures), but it’s far from the only factor. The main reason CEO total comp is so high in big companies is to align the CEO with the interests of shareholders. Something the layoffs with likely also aligned with.
Guy has made 226M in a year. He won't have to work another day in his life. What reputational risk are you talking about?
The real people who “take all the risk” are the investors (and they obviously don’t take “all” the risk). Somehow this platitude started getting applied to executives, but that has always been based on a misunderstanding of how executive comp is typically structured.