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

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141–150 of 357 posts

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

#141

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> (and, actually, he's worth much more). Bullshit. Fucking nonsense, bullshit. I fail to understand how thinking people could ever believe that this is true - it's got to be innumeracy and a healthy dose of propaganda. Would Google lose the now-equivalent of 200m annual if any one of the top 100 leaders within the corp ascended to the goddamned throne? Fuck no. It's nonsense to believe any one person is worth compens…

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.

If Sundar Pichai ever had to compete against other companies at the level of an NFL player, vs. be asleep at the wheel of Google’s money-printing advertising monopoly, he would immediately crumple. This is obvious in their fumbling all the AI stuff, half of which they invented.

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

#142

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…

Not to mention you can keep CEOs “aligned with shareholders” by firing them if they behave in ways that are misaligned.

CEOs usually don't join without a golden parachute, and shareholders seem to only care about immediate gains.

To see the insanity, Selipsky in Q1 AWS all hands was talking about growth of the rate of growth, i.e. second order. Not steady income, not income increasing (which is already exponential across years), but super-exponential; i.e. 20% , then 25%, then 30% growth.

Who cares about sustainable and organic growth! We have to milk those pesky engineers and all our customers!

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

#143
post #23

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And if you make them subject to "alternative minimum tax" where their stock based compensation is considered regular income for the year it is awarded based on the difference between the strike price and the market price, you "moderate" that process somewhat. But if you're a politician and your donors are all rich elites who really hated that aspect of AMT you get repeal it for them: https://www.bowlesrice.com/tax-cu…

> compensation is considered regular income for the year it is awarded based on the difference between the strike price and the market price Isn't that exactly how it works? Your grant price just determines your number of your shares. When your shares vest they get taxed as regular income for the entirety of the vest amount.

> When your shares vest they get taxed as regular income for the entirety of the vest amount.

This describes restricted stock units. Stock options are taxed differently.

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

#144

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

can we argue carbon footprint?

A tank is 1 mpg. I am guessing they are not driving more than 1 or 2 miles on an excursion. This is hardly harmful to the environment compared to other entertainment options.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you get guys like Bill McGuire who get caught backdating stock options. His punishment? A $1.6Bn golden parachute of course. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_W._McGuire#UnitedHea...

He did not get a golden parachute. He was compensated that amount over time. He grew a company from $400MM in revenues to $70Bn and was rewarded $1.6Bn for it. I fail to see any issue with this.

I mean, he broke the law. I'd consider every dime of his payout to be ill gotten gains.

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

#146
post #83

> 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 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…

that tank thing isn't a great example, even blue collar folk could pretty easily afford some of them. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than a Disneyland hotel!

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a $1.6T company. For a guy that runs it to earn $200 M a year is basically nothing. Can he do good enough of job? Great, he's then definitely worth it (and, actually, he's worth much more).

That “he runs” it is entirely made up as well. It’s a $1.6T company - one person doesn’t run the show. Is he worth more? Is he worth less? Literally all of this stuff is not anyone’s business outside of their company and their stakeholders. We can’t truly have a clue what doing a “good job” is with them, or what the compensation should be. They want to ruthlessly hire-fire talent - it’s all entirely on them as a comp…

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

#148

> 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 imagine the shareholders and board members that approve these pay packages are rational, self-motivated actors who believe that doing so is in their best interest.

Also, keep in mind that the terms are determined well in advance if these payouts, and tied to stock price or performance. So if the stock does well the amount can be very high, or if the stock does poorly then it can be (relatively) much lower.

And since layoffs hopefully mean that society is getting equivalent output (ads, I guess?) with correspondingly less input (labor), it’s not a sign of weakness or mistake when they are implemented.

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

#149
post #120

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>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.

Sure, but he decides how to allocate resources, make acquisitions, etc. across over 100k employees. If he decided to pull another Google+ he could easily destroy many tens of thousands of engineers’ worth of labor. And it’d only take him a few hundred hours to make that decision, set up the org to lead the project and delegate the execution to them. Putting those engineers on something that actually makes money and i…

None of that is really his call to make alone, upper management & the board also has influence & burdens much of the load. This idea that he's the only man in the room or on the planet that could do this position seems pretty absurd.

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

#150
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…

that tank thing isn't a great example, even blue collar folk could pretty easily afford some of them. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than a Disneyland hotel!

It's on a $50million dollar ranch, dude. Where are you shooting your new blue collar tank? Your backyard?
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