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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

#261

Post by refurb »

Fatnino wrote: post #253
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…

There really needs to be an upper limit on how much wealth a person is allowed to amass. Half a billion seems fair. After that the tax bracket needs to be taxed at 100%

Why do half a billion?

Let's make it $500,000. Nobody needs more than that.

Right? I'm being serious. You can live a luxurious life on $500,000 per year.

Oh wait, well compensated tech people make more than that, so let's pick a higher number!

"A rich person is someone who makes more than me"

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

#262

Post by mathverse »

Fatnino wrote: post #253
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…

There really needs to be an upper limit on how much wealth a person is allowed to amass. Half a billion seems fair. After that the tax bracket needs to be taxed at 100%

That's impossible because that amount of money is not to buy material things but influence. It's a circular problem with no solution.

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

#263

Post by mathverse »

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,…

Maybe they do but consequences for bad actions are not 1000x average employee. They actually get a golden parachute when they screw up, destroy a company and lives of thousands of people.

So rewards and consequences are not at all proportional like you are trying to imply.

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

#264

Post by jerojero »

charles_f wrote: post #105
23B1 wrote: post #91

I've been working on a solution for this, have pitched a handful of investors and every time I'm met with blank stares, probably because what I'm proposing would cut into their own dividends. I know this comment will get lost in the sauce, but if you know an investor who is brave, cares about staving off the forthcoming proletarian revolution, I'd love to hear your ideas.

I don't know one but I'm curious to hear about it

You know how the USA has a President? Switzerland has 7.

What is the role of the CEO? Is it to make decision? Is it to be a public facing role, a representative of the company as a whole? These can all be replaced with collective bodies coming from the firm itself.

There's a lot of structures of governance that decentralise the power of the firm and they work pretty well. But the current system is not really viewed as a problem for the people who participate in it. The boards, the CEOs, etc. these are not positions that truly need talent and shrewdness these are positions that exist for people to aspire to. This way, the bulk of the people in the firm have a clear structure to look up to. It's not that Sundar Pichai does work worth 225M a year, it's simply that he happens to be in the position of the CEO of Alphabet. It can be anyone (anyone in those upper circles).

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

#265

Post by refurb »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #133
opportune wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I'm pretty a lot of CEO compensation is in options? Company does poorly and they take a massive compensation hit.

Seems like incentives are pretty aligned?

If Sundar leads a company that goes from being worth $340B to $1,500B today (+$1.2T dollars), him getting $1B of that doesn't seem that out of place?

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

#266

Post by refurb »

rubicon33 wrote: post #178
opportune wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Honest to god, how hard do you think his job really is?

It's like a plumber coming over and hitting a pipe with a hammer and charging you $300. You paid $5 for the effort and $295 for the knowledge of where to hit the pipe.

I mean how hard is software engineering? Should people be paid $500k? Garbage collectors work harder than most FAANG engineers I know.

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

#267

Post by mathverse »

firecall wrote: post #255
Fatnino wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really needs to be an upper limit on how much wealth a person is allowed to amass. Half a billion seems fair. After that the tax bracket needs to be taxed at 100%

No, we need to fix the mechanisms that have allowed so much wealth to accrued by individuals. Companies need to be taxed correctly. They need to give back to the societies that built the social structures that allowed them to be created and thrive.

I would somehow tax inactive capital. Capital that is not directly invested in a company or pays for employees. Everything laying around or on the stock market should be heavily taxed.

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

#268

Post by scaramanga »

mathverse wrote: post #262
Fatnino wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really needs to be an upper limit on how much wealth a person is allowed to amass. Half a billion seems fair. After that the tax bracket needs to be taxed at 100%

That's impossible because that amount of money is not to buy material things but influence. It's a circular problem with no solution.

Throwing them down a well would solve it, no?

If throwing them down a well would solve it, then can you think of a less extreme solution, like for example, sitting them down to let them know that they have to give up their political power?

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

#269

Post by ljlolel »

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…

Wow, the address of that Tank website is Uvalde Texas where that horrendous shooting happened

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

#270

Post by ohgodplsno »

somsak2 wrote: post #228
ohgodplsno wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very long term >5 years That is so laughably short sighted that you could not have given a better example as to why CEOs are all the same.

Average CEO tenure is less than 7 years, not sure how you'd practically be able to accomplish any kind of compensation plan on a longer time horizon. What is the person supposed to do in the meantime, life off of savings?

They will have to live off of a salary, like all their employees below.

A dreadful thought, I know. Living like the proles do, ew.

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