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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

#171

Post by ralph84 »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #148
melenaboija wrote: post #26

> 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 sinc…

The shareholders have all delegated their voting rights to money managers who don’t care as long as they keep getting a percentage of assets under management and the board members are all obscenely paid executives at other companies who don’t care as long they keep the executive pay cartel going.

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

#172

Post by jjtheblunt »

swozey wrote: post #83
melenaboija wrote: post #26

> 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…

what was this company he sold for so much?

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

#173

Post by rpastuszak »

tester756 wrote: post #155
pravus wrote: 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? 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.

> and you can't tell me he somehow converts that to 1000x the labor of an average, capable, willing, working employee. Yes, I can't tell you that because CEO isn't about labor. I can tell you that impact of decisions of the CEO that I work for is at least 1000x bigger than mine. If you don't believe that I don't know what to tell you. CEO is not about writing lines of code, he doesn't write 1000x more LoC than I do,…

I think this misses one important point though: why would any human being need this amount of money and could these resources be allocated better? If we look more broadly than a single employee or a single business entity fwiw, this feels like a huge waste of resources.

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

#174

Post by Sai_ »

anurag6892 wrote: post #163
Quarrelsome wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

when dealing with 1%, what is the need for accurate measurements? they calibrate his pay to other CEOs in tech and other industries, and that is good enough.

> calibrate his pay

It’s circular dependency if ever there was one.

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

#175

Post by blackbear_ »

t_serpico wrote: post #116
Calavar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is somewhat naive. The growth mindset pervades the entire economy, and virtually everyone's interests are bound into it one way or another. Yes, of course there are people who prioritize lifestyle over chasing money. No one will debate that. But if those people's retirement plans are dependent on a 401k or drawing payments from a pension fund and not just cash savings, then they are amongst the growth-ob…

To add on to this, unbridled capitalism also leads to more goods and services affordable for the average consumer. This makes the idea of taking a lower paying job appealing because you can still live a fairly comfortable life.

> more goods and services affordable for the average consumer

The one key missing ingredient for this is competition. Without competition there is just a monopoly/cartel, leading to rent seeking behavior and products/services with too low quality and too high prices.

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

#176

Post by abeppu »

sinatra wrote: post #66
melenaboija wrote: post #26

> 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”

Honestly, I get that.

I work at a company with engineers mostly in the US and in an EU country, and my understanding is that, though our salaries in that EU country are top of the range, they are still meaningfully lower than for US engineers. The international talent pool is very good, and available at considerable savings. While I am glad I have my job, and that companies still seem willing to pay Bay Area salaries, I don't fully get why.

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

#177

Post by bmitc »

sinatra wrote: post #66
melenaboija wrote: post #26

> 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”

That is a fair critique and overall true. But it also highlights the pay of these CEOs to be so absurd as to be barely comprehensible. It makes me wonder what types of personalities these people are. If I even had that salary for a year, max three, I'd retire and spend time learning and doing non-profit and foundation work.

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

#178

Post by rubicon33 »

opportune wrote: post #111
mycentstoo wrote: post #78

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…

Honest to god, how hard do you think his job really is? How much of it simply comes down to just brokering connections afforded to him by his position? It's not like he's responsible himself for generating truly novel and useful engineering deliverables. I seriously struggle to see how he possesses some talent that warrants his pay, vs. just being a lucky sob in a world where boards will shell out ridiculous checks on faith alone that if they don't, earnings will suffer.

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

#179

Post by warning26 »

jvmfjvfjvf wrote: post #98
jtode wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two kinds of people: one type is very talented and perhaps overpaid, the other has connections and has never done a shred of actual productive work in their life.

Sundar Pichai managed many successful Google products before he became CEO.

And after he became CEO, he has presided over exactly zero successful Google products!

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

#180

Post by swozey »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #172
swozey wrote: 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…

what was this company he sold for so much?

A webhost that was encroaching on godaddy popularity back then (nowhere near that now)
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