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

southernillinoisnow.com

181–190 of 357 posts

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

#181

> 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…

The entire purpose of compensation like this at the highest levels is to ensure that no other possible group could incentivize you to betray in any way the board or shareholders

Think about it like they are paying based on the question of: how much does it cost to keep this person protecting all of our Crown Jewels AND will never support unionization or anything that gives meaningful power to employees?

The bigger the risk to shareholders if something goes wrong with the stock, or if the CEO defected to a competitor, the more pay they offer.

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

#182
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.

What were they? Aren't most core Google products on rails, even getting slightly worse over time? And the non-core products just get buried in the desert.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So just to be accurate, his yearly compensation is more like $75 MM. But do you know he doesn't get a new "3 year vesting stock award" every year? It seems like he was paid 3% less the year before. That's normally the approach with vesting schedules like this, to stagger them, so there's never a "good time point" for him to leave.

CEOs at his level dont just leave on a whim. They have multi year transition plans.

[flagged]

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

#184
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never heard that before either, but personally, I would prefer not to travel to wherever immigrants are called roaches.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google as it grew basically had two tiers of outcomes for insiders. The inner circle of insiders like Sundar and Susan had Google grow “under” them so they stayed near the top. A lot of this inner circle has either retired or left, isn’t fit to run the company (some of the purely technical folks) because of their skills, or was forced out because they did bad controversial things (there’s a joke that Sundar won by de…

I agree, but I think this reveals how dual class voting structures lead to market failures which is already well studied. The founders believe he is 1% better, but what do the markets believe?

I mean, nobody has really solved succession planning in any industry, and tech is still quite young. And the markets often guess wrong about which successors will do well. See: Disney and its failure to get a decent successor to Bob Iger

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

#186
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?

HostGator

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

#187
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

Keep in mind Google executive compensation appears to be biannual (his compensation in 2021 was 6M). Overall, his compensation for the past 2 years is less than .05% of Google's revenue during the same period. If the performance of a Google CEO even slightly better or worse Pichai going to have a much larger impact on Google than 225M. I'm sure plenty of the top 100 leaders at Google would be better than Pichai, but…

You've inadvertently highlighted the actual problem - our economic system allows for megaliths like Google to exist and dominate, and we can't help but measure everything against them.

Like, run the clock forward and imagine Google monopolizes half of GDP. Should the CEO be compensated as a percentage of that? It's a fallacious view - how many super hard working and ultra educated people could be recruited to that post for, oh, say a cool 1M per year with a good retirement plan and no stock nonsense. Tons - a huge list of people who don't have the right connections to sit atop the money pyramid.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

Why's it so hard to believe that a worse CEO for one year would result in a 0.01% lower market cap? Given that framing, 200m is a very drastic under estimation.

It's not hard to believe. What's hard to believe is that you couldn't possibly find a better CEO for a much more modest compensation package.

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

#189
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what was this company he sold for so much?

HostGator

That's incredibly impolite but I don't really care. In the future there might be reasons people don't directly name call something that should be a huge hint for you to not do it yourself to them. You aren't swooping in like a white knight answering some searing question, you're potentially throwing someone under the bus, CTO guy. You should know better.

You literally added it after I posted my own response. I hope you're proud answering the $10mil question when I clearly wasn't going to.

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

#190
post #184
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Never heard that before either, but personally, I would prefer not to travel to wherever immigrants are called roaches.

I haven't heard that word being used in years living around there and also being hispanic.

To me it just looks like parent is cherry-picking some domains to try and put words in their mouth.

If the person owns roaches.com out of hundreds of domains then you're going to try to make it racist so the owner looks racist?

I never understood why trying to make innocent things racist isn't considered racist itself.

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