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Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

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201–210 of 543 posts

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#201

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?

He has been CEO since 2015. Would it be a stretch to blame him for the current company culture of nurturing new products left and right just to kill them off after 3-5 years?

You could blame him for not changing the culture, but Google has a long history of killing off new products that precedes 2015

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you’re earning sky high base comp + stock + benefits at these places you’re not working class. You are incredibly out of touch.

The definition of working class is making their income from selling their labor as opposed to from capital.

Everything else is an implementation detail.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so to paraphrase, he is a bean counter.

I think he cares deeply about the company and its mission, he just lacks the ability to be a bold and decisive leader. This can be a good thing in some cases (he is good at building consensus for example), but can also be harmful.

A quick Google (natch!) suggests that the company mission is: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Does he "care deeply" about this? If we look at the direction they've taken in recent years, and the products they've launched (and/or killed) - how many of them demonstrate a "deep care" about this mission? How many of them are even tangentially related to this mission?

(The projects that Google undertook in the early days --Earth, Maps, Mail, digitising whole libraries, photographing the world for StreetView-- definitely showed a dedication to this mission statement.)

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand these comments. Are you suggesting Google is a charity? If they don't need some employees, should they be forced to keep them?

They should. Not out of charity, but out of labor protection. You take on a worker, you take on a responsibility.

Imposing that on companies by whatever means(legal, social) will lead to less hiring overall to make it low risk. As much as it sucks to get laid off, I am sure a lot of laid off folks who were hired in the last 2 years would be glad that they have Google on their resume. That will set them up for a good career, since Google is known for a rigorous interview process.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#206
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past 4 years, GOOG's net income and earnings per share have fallen quite a bit. Revenue has been pretty flat. I don't get why Pichai is so well paid. Ballmer actually did preside over some impressive growth when he was CEO of MSFT. Pichai has not. 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 tha…

Huh? Revenue 2019: $160bn Revenue 2022: $280bn Net income 2019: $34bn Net income 2022: $60bn

Hmm. I was going by this chart, looks like it may be wrong: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#207
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past 4 years, GOOG's net income and earnings per share have fallen quite a bit. Revenue has been pretty flat. I don't get why Pichai is so well paid. Ballmer actually did preside over some impressive growth when he was CEO of MSFT. Pichai has not. 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 tha…

Ballmer made bets on the windows phone, Zune, Bing (ads) etc in a bid to strengthen the moat around windows/Office. Most of these bets didn't pay, the strategy to build stuff to protect your core business does stymie company growth. I think Google has gotten itself into a similar position that Microsoft was in circa 2012.

Ballmer focused more on short term growth - pushing Windows, Office and related tools. The board was happy because revenues were up. They shouldn't have been happy. Tech companies have two choices: innovate or become irrelevant.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 risk is that all google failures, whether simply perceived or real, are publicly attributed to him. This is real and is one of many factors that influences the willingness of qualified candidates to seek CEO roles in the first place, let alone of very large, very well known companies. But it is certainly not the only factor, and it’s not even a very significant factor in most cases, when it comes to determining C…

So his ego gets hurt, but not his wallet? I wish I had that risk! Gimme!

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#209
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google would still be making a ton of money even with a CEO that did nothing. For a $226M compensation, we should be able to demand a bit more don't you think?

Who is "we" in your comment?

Maybe OP is a shareholder. Most people probably own some google stock via ETFs even if they didn't explicitly buy the stock.

Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant

#210
Pichai's Compensation from SEC Filing (p54) [0] is as follows - 1) Base Salary $ 2M, 2) Stock Awards $ 218M, 3) Miscellaneous $ 5.9M. The stock awards are based on Class C Google Stock Unit (GSU) and PSU (Performance Based Units). These are awarded if Google hits some targets which it did. It's basically a future looking contract which says "If you do X, we will pay X".

There are two parts to this conversation 1) Should CEOs be paid like this? and 2) Should Sundar have received the compensation? There should be no doubt about 2). That's a commitment made to Sundar. Part 1) of the conversation is a different one.

More information on p49 of the filing says this below

> 2022 CEO Equity Award for Sundar

> The Compensation Committee currently follows a triennial grant cadence for CEO equity awards. Sundar’s last equity award was granted in December 2019, and fully vested at the end of December 2022. In December 2022, the Compensation Committee granted a new equity award to Sundar to recognize his strong performance as our CEO.

> As with the 2019 award, the 2022 award consisted of both GSUs and PSUs. The on-target value of the award was unchanged from the 2019 award. However, relative to the 2019 award, the Compensation Committee made two design changes such that more of the award’s vesting is dependent on performance: (1) increased the proportion of PSUs to 60% of the total award from 43%; and (2) increased the performance requirement for on-target PSU payout to the 55th percentile from the 50th percentile of Alphabet’s relative total shareholder return (TSR). These changes further align Sundar’s compensation to long-term shareholder value creation and Alphabet’s stock performance relative to the S&P 100 over the applicable performance periods.

> The GSU portion of the award vests quarterly over three years in 12 equal installments beginning March 25, 2023. The PSU portion of the award includes two tranches. The PSUs will vest, if at all, based on Alphabet’s TSR performance relative to the companies comprising the S&P 100 over a 2023-2024 performance period for the first tranche (2022 Tranche A) and over a 2023-2025 performance period for the second tranche (2022 Tranche B), subject to continued employment on each applicable vesting date. The number of PSUs vesting will be determined after the end of each performance period based on the payout curve illustrated below. Depending upon performance, the number of PSUs that vest will range from 0%-200% of the target number of PSUs. Upon vesting, each PSU and GSU will entitle Sundar to receive one share of Alphabet’s Class C capital stock.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817923...

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