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

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

#281

Post by scarface74 »

jrockway wrote: post #278
scarface74 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you run into a lot of great software engineers that didn't spend at least that many hours working on their own projects? Despite the HN bubble, most developers go to work, do their jobs and go home and don’t think about “side projects”

Yeah, but how do you get your first job? Doctors don't have a job when they go to 12 years of medical school. That's to get the job.

Well, I got my first for pay opportunity because a college about a hour and a half away from mine saw a HyperCard stack I wrote and posted on AOL - it was an improved Eliza clone. He wanted to integrate it into a HyperCard based Gopher server that was in 1994.

Then that led to an internship in 1995 at another company and I got a job there in 1996.

I haven’t written a single line of code “for fun” since then. The only reason I have any type of open source presence now is because my current job has a very straightforward open source process that allows us to get approved to put reusable artifacts from customer engagements on the corporate open source Github organization (https://github.com/aws-samples) under an MIT license.

That means I am free to fork it once it gets approved so it shows up on my own profile.

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

#282

Post by v1l »

serf wrote: post #182
v1l wrote: post #168

It's funny to me that no one complained about Sundar's pay when things were going swimmingly well.

why is that funny at all? It didn't coincide with layoffs at that time. One of the first things that someone that gets laid off tries to do is understand the reasons for the conditions that prompted the lay-off. One could -- somewhat reasonably -- divide the number of yearly salaries into 226 million and become quite outraged. Is a single CEO worth that many jobs? That's the true question that creates outrage, not wh…

> Is a single CEO worth that many jobs?

This question is a sign of not understanding how business works.

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

#283

Post by chrischen »

runarberg wrote: post #227
chrischen wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see any reason to suggest that the CEO’s pay here is some failing of the market. Google’s owners felt it was appropriate to pay the CEO that amount, and it doesn’t really affect the pay or well being of Google’s other employees, who are/were some of the highest paid already.

From a class perspective, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, they are all equally guilty of exploitation. Board of directors agree pay their CEOs excessive salary, and the CEO in turns keeps this money away from the workers and away from the customers. Stock prices remain high, bank accounts in Panama fill up, workers gets fired, bosses get rich. For me “Market rate” is just something the owning class tells us…

Well under your definition the whole capitalist system is just masked exploitation. If that’s the case then I don’t think this is any more egregious an instance of exploitation than the every day income disparities already happening.

What benefit does a board of directors have over helping out the CEO (an employee as well) vs customers and employees?

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

#284

Post by bazmattaz »

dann0 wrote: post #116
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some companies, yes. In other engineering-driven companies it's the other way around. In many organizations, marketing is just asking customers what they want. E.g. ask a farmer from the turn of the century, they'd have said "I want a horse that pulls harder and eats less oats!" They'd never have said "I want a tractor!" It's Engineers that conceive of tractors.

Hard disagree. Marketers conceive of tractors. They are the ones by talking to the customers and knowing what they need. They are the ones that know that one engineer has been working on a high power engine, and other on rugged, high traction trailers. Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

I would’ve agreed with you if you had swapped marketers for product managers.

Marketers coming up with ideas and dictating those ideas to engineers is just wrong

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

#285

Post by ta1243 »

easytiger wrote: post #92
ta1243 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone work for $250m but not work for $150m? Or at that level of wealth work for free. Surely it's just for keeping score

Mr Buffett is 92 years old and works every day and is worth approx $120 billion. In the past 70 years hes had more money than needed for him to decide to give it all up. Why hasn't he?

So his salary is irrelevant, whether he is paid $1 or $1b a year makes no difference to his lifestyle.

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

#286

Post by birksherty »

dann0 wrote: post #116
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some companies, yes. In other engineering-driven companies it's the other way around. In many organizations, marketing is just asking customers what they want. E.g. ask a farmer from the turn of the century, they'd have said "I want a horse that pulls harder and eats less oats!" They'd never have said "I want a tractor!" It's Engineers that conceive of tractors.

Hard disagree. Marketers conceive of tractors. They are the ones by talking to the customers and knowing what they need. They are the ones that know that one engineer has been working on a high power engine, and other on rugged, high traction trailers. Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

> Purely engineering firms fail in the long run as they drift away from what buyers want and chase interesting things because they think they know better.

Eh, it's not about purely engineering. Many businesses who are not related to engineering fails exact same reason. They only care about short time growth and loses. Happens all the time.

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

#287

Post by birksherty »

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…

May be evading taxes by cheating is a great thing to get praised.

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

#288

Post by doctor_eval »

scarface74 wrote: post #228
dataangel wrote: post #41

So if they paid him 0$ they could have kept 500-1,000 out of those 12,000 employees? And that's assuming none of his pay was redistributed to any of the employees they kept. That's the thing with these gigantic numbers, they always look really impressive, but when you divide them by the actual number of employees involved it's not a huge per-employee benefit. Not saying it's fair, just that if you stare starry eyed a…

Seeing that Google has failed at every single initiative outside of ads, employees aren’t what they need. They need a vision.

As I get older and (hopefully) wiser, I’ve come to the conclusion that vision is about 50% of success, and getting that vision to market - execution - is the other 50%.

The moment you lose the vision or drop the ball, you’re doomed.

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

#289

Post by benhurmarcel »

comprev wrote: post #33
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…

I disagree about being overpaid. Similar to other professions - engineering and medicine for example - we have a career which requires a dedication to constant learning. We build systems which allow companies to generate billions in revenue and deserve a slice of the pie.

> Similar to other professions - engineering and medicine for example

Those other professions don't get paid nearly as much though

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

#290

Post by pas »

shtopointo wrote: post #169
gregdoesit wrote: post #11

Got to give it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for having their cake and also eating it. They control ~51% of voting power with shares thanks to owning ~85% of class B shares. They have had the benefit of someone else running the company for 8 years - and increasing the value of it - and now, when things are not looking great, it’s Sundar Pichai who gets the blame, and the focus on his compensation: and not those who s…

Yes, and he gets paid royally to be the one that gets criticized.

And? How do we know how happy are they?
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