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Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

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Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#211

Post by lonelappde »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #31
ergothus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm skeptical that all people at these levels are that driven by their compensation. All of your arguments make sense...except that we see people at these levels take actions to increase their compensation so frequently, even at the risk of their reputations. I don't know about Pichai personally, nor can I explain WHY the mega-rich are so interested in getting richer when it can't possibly change their day-to-day o…

For some it is a competition. If you are on Forbes' top 10 it can be a sport to "beat" others on that list and rank up. Some (see Bill Gates) see that that competition is of little value and look for ways to spend their fortune in "sensible" ways.

It's silly to say that the person who spent decades scheming his way to to the top that list at the expenses of an entire industry, is not "seeing the value in that competition”. He just mellowed out when he got old and his wife convinced him.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#213

Post by scarface74 »

chrischen wrote: post #205
scarface74 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that, but the companies I’m referring to - the VC backend companies and the YC backed public companies aren’t cash flow positive.

Yes but my point is that if they're reporting profits it'd mean they'd have run out of things to spend money on (R&D, employees, product dev, etc). The whole point of VC funding is that so much money will go towards product dev that they'd need external funding.

And how does that apply to a public tech companies that are still losing money like PagerDuty, Dropbox, Mongo, and ElasticCo?

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#214

Post by alain94040 »

andrekandre wrote: post #123
xur17 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that already what is happening at FAANG companies? According to levels.fyi, a senior developer at Facebook and Google is at ~$360k in total comp. After working 5 or 10 years, you could easily have $1M in savings (perhaps a bit more challenging given the cost of living where these companies are located, but still possible).

yea, that is definitely true that they are compensated very well, but i was thinking in a more “equitable” way considering the insane profits they are generating if you added say half the profits to employees and half the stock as well, they could become multi-millionaires even sooner.... maybe it’s just my bias, but i feel like if those employees were really empowered by their earnings they would be more entrepreneu…

An engineer at Google started a new ambitious project and the rewards were structured similarly to doing your own startup. After the math was done, his payment added up to $600M.

Anthony Levandowski then left for Uber and the rest is history.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#215

Post by vizzah »

wpasc wrote: post #4

This reminds me of a talk I watched with Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt. I know Thiel is controversial, but he was well-meaningly digging at Google for running out of ideas and no longer innovating. The criticism was something like "You have so much cash on hand but no ideas to invest in. However, you can't pay a dividend because the second you do, you're admitting you've run out of ideas and are no longer innovating".…

So just do stock buybacks (as Alphabet increasingly does) without admitting there's nothing else to invest in.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#216

Post by [deleted] »

georgewsinger wrote: post #198
adventured wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does Elon know that Google as a whole doesn't? It's not what he knows per se, it's what he does, it's the source of his motivation for being and doing. It's that invention and innovation is most often driven by individuals - whether acting together or in solitary - in pursuit of something that matters to them. You saw this throughout the industrial revolution. You saw it at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. You saw it…

Weird that this is downvoted.

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#217

Post by tim333 »

georgewsinger wrote: post #198
adventured wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does Elon know that Google as a whole doesn't? It's not what he knows per se, it's what he does, it's the source of his motivation for being and doing. It's that invention and innovation is most often driven by individuals - whether acting together or in solitary - in pursuit of something that matters to them. You saw this throughout the industrial revolution. You saw it at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. You saw it…

Weird that this is downvoted.

I think maybe the downvoters feel the Google guys do care. Though it seems more

>We are excited about… Getting more ambitious things done. Taking the long-term view. Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish.

that they are into empowering the organisation rather than being into particular bits of tech like iPhones or rockets.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#218

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

stygiansonic wrote: post #187
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #185

I’ve always wondered what Apple does with all the cash it has and this seems like a great place to ask. What do companies do with it all? Is there an article that goes into the details? Is it invested? In what? Hoarded in a bank vault? What precautions are in place for such large amounts?

Check out Braeburn Capital: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital

Thank you very much.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#219

Post by chrischen »

scarface74 wrote: post #213
chrischen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but my point is that if they're reporting profits it'd mean they'd have run out of things to spend money on (R&D, employees, product dev, etc). The whole point of VC funding is that so much money will go towards product dev that they'd need external funding.

And how does that apply to a public tech companies that are still losing money like PagerDuty, Dropbox, Mongo, and ElasticCo?

They have the same obligation to shareholders to increase future profits, not to hoard cash, which is what income tax discourages.

Re: Alphabet overtakes Apple to become most cash-rich company

#220

Post by chrischen »

tzakrajs wrote: post #154
chrischen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profitability=tax

I would call income tax a good problem to have, one which these companies don't have

A company like Dropbox does not need to keep its headcount to maintain their current product and extract profits (of which they lose a big chunk to corporate income tax). If they wanted to show profit they can easily tighten, focus, and get rid of R&D and new product development.
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