Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 327 posts

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#201

Post by decafninja »

google234123 wrote: post #165
kevstev wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in Algo trading at a bank. Banks do not pay SWEs that work in algo trading well. I left finance to work in tech and got a 50% bump right off the bat. And I was well paid on my team- the h1s and kids out of school were not breaking 100k. I know the guy sitting in my old seat and 10 years later he is maybe getting that 50% more while I have 4xed. He works 50-60 hour weeks like I did as well and I rarely go pas…

Algo trading and even general swe at the top places (e.g. citadel) will pay better than the top tech firms.

The top finance firms like Citadel, Jane Street, Two Sigma, and the like have the best paying tech roles, but also comparatively much fewer of them than FAANG and the top tech companies. They're also extremely difficult to get into. I don't remember where but I read someone saying it's easier to get an offer from all letters of the FAANG pantheon than it is to get an offer from Jane Street.

Also different banks pay better or worse. Goldman is the top of the hierarchy and pays competitively with a mid tier tech company depending on your team and role. JP Morgan is second place.

The rest of the pack (BoA, Citi, UBS, WF, others) probably can't compete with most tech companies.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#202

Post by fsckboy »

gregdoesit wrote: post #26
justrealist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'm following. They aren't getting new equity grants, they're de-facto out of the picture and just riding the valuation. They have 51% voting power but it's not obvious they are actively making decisions, rather than just holding onto power in just-in-case. Sundar is getting new equity grants based on his "performance". That's not the same.

Larry and Sergey have 51% voting power. They are the ones deciding how much Sundar is paid. Put it the other way: if they don’t want to pay him that much: they have the power to do so. As the ultimate owners of the company by shareholder votes, they approved the compensation of Sundar, and are the decision makers.

no, they need to compete with other companies for the talent pool of CEOs. There is a market for such leaders, and if they drop the pay too low they will not get the same quality CEO, and they won't incentivize the CEO they have to the same extent.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#203

Post by chronic94939 »

pdntspa wrote: post #38
segasaturn wrote: post #21

While I agree that CEOs are overpayed, I think the same applies to software engineers. Software Engineering has been a pay/perk bubble for years that was due for a correction, and like when Elon cut the free gourmet lunches and coffees for Twitter staff, I'm sure the Google engineers will survive. Meanwhile Google's "raters", the army of workers who do the hard work of moderating and testing Google's platforms are ge…

Show me another profession that can have such a dramatic impact on the bottom line where your work makes the company 100x-1000x your salary. If anything SWE are underpaid, we should be getting a slice of total business unit revenue. With my last job doing SWE for a bank, I know for a fact that my code saved the company hundreds of thousands dollars just from one project, and I know for a fact that some of my other co…

> Show me another profession that can have such a dramatic impact on the bottom line where your work makes the company 100x-1000x your salary.

High frequency trading / propriety trading firms (buy-side) make FANG TC look like public teacher TC.

400-600K USD for 22-year old new grads. With 5 YOE, TC of $1M+ is not uncommon . If you do really well, $10M+ annual TC is possible with 5-10 YOE.

Even mid-career employees get fixed % cut of company profits. I’m not even talking about the company partners either.

So yes, FANG SWEs are underpaid.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#204

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

hgsgm wrote: post #184
axlee wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you truly think there is no one on earth who could do a better job than Pinchai for, let's say, $80M a year? $40M a year? $30M a year? $10M a year? Why is there downward pressure on wages for everyone except for this particular position?

His pay is huge, but not huge when spread across 12K people. You couldn't keep them employed on $250M/3yrs

Perhaps not all of them, but you could certainly choose to keep some.

On the other hand, perhaps you could. Just dividing the numbers out doesn’t account for whatever value they’re producing.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#205

Post by lvl102 »

supernova87a wrote: post #195
lvl102 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did Tim actually accomplish though? He’s there to essentially “keep” what Apple already established under Steve Jobs. Nadella made some big decisions to completely remake Microsoft. By the way, return (not including dividends) is about the same between AAPL and MSFT since Nadella took over on February 2014 which is simply amazing if you think about the differences between the two companies.

You probably don't know or don't care, but there is more to running a company than producing a new hardware product line (which is important of course too). Under Tim Cook, Apple's business functions (procurement, manufacturing, operations, financing, retail) had an incredible change in efficiency and cash generating capability. Also, you may notice that Apple Services are an incredibly large and profitable business…

You probably don’t know or don’t care, but most of Apple’s current logistic/infrastructure was built under Steve. Steve’s connections in China played a big role in accomplishing that.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#206

Post by kevstev »

decafninja wrote: post #201
google234123 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algo trading and even general swe at the top places (e.g. citadel) will pay better than the top tech firms.

The top finance firms like Citadel, Jane Street, Two Sigma, and the like have the best paying tech roles, but also comparatively much fewer of them than FAANG and the top tech companies. They're also extremely difficult to get into. I don't remember where but I read someone saying it's easier to get an offer from all letters of the FAANG pantheon than it is to get an offer from Jane Street. Also different banks pay b…

Agree. Worked in the first group as well and it paid well and legit valued it's employees. The hours became a bit abusive at the end so I followed one of my bosses there to a firm he went to. But that's how I made the jump to 4x.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#207

Post by stuaxo »

loeg wrote: post #123
DamnYuppie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on the OP’s comment was that his salary and bonuses are controlled by the board. As Sergei and Larry have majority control he would not have gotten this without their explicit approval.

> [Pichai]'s salary and bonuses are controlled by the board That is true of any CEO pay, though.

Who is on the board ? Often CEOs float around between boards, they are almost never going to decrease the pay or not raise it, unlike how it works for the rest of us.

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#209

Post by adrr »

next_xibalba wrote: post #120
falcolas wrote: post #66

Google’s board has spoken, and the price of their stock today matters more than the company’s future. If I was an employee who cared about Google’s vision, or what other services they could offer the world, the I’d probably be angry at the squandered opportunity too.

Google is acting rationally. The products produced by these massively compensated employees in their 10s of thousands have failed to meaningfully add value beyond Search. Other Bets, X, Brain, DeepMind, etc, etc. All have failed over the last 20 years. Just good money after bad. So, the rational thing to do is cut costs and harvest profits. How many product managers, marketers, TPMs, DEI personnel, and layers and lay…

Do you think the failure was tactical failures or strategic failures? Other companies seem to bring new categories of business with success. Why could Microsoft launch a game platform and be successful but google couldn’t? Why is an e-commerce company leading cloud computing?

Re: Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

#210

Post by runarberg »

anony23 wrote: post #163
runarberg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might just be me, but aren’t they all filthy rich, excessively profiting from their workers, handing them selves extreme wealth, while cutting their workers off from this wealth. This is exploitation. The owning class for the owning class. The rich benefit and the workers are left exploited. Larry, Sergey, Pichai, they are all participating and benefiting at the cost of the workers. Any in-fighting and rivalry is…

Here's the world's smallest violin to those poor Google engineers who have some of the highest compensation in tech.

First of all, I don’t care if they are well payed, their bosses and shareholders are still taking more profits than they deserve.

Second, Google’s workers famously include many many contractors who do not get the same benefits as Google’s direct employees. This is exploitation.

Third, the exploitation runs deeper than just google workers. Their customers include companies which are paying a bunch of money to use their services. This is money which otherwise could have gone to the developers of those customers. Those workers are also exploited by google’s bosses and shareholders.

Post reply on HN