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

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

#301

Post by daniel_reetz »

eastbound wrote: post #246
mft_ wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? (…

I don’t find the world information on Google when I search. Gmail works much better. It does, indeed, organize the world’s information, the world’s private and corporate information. But the only who can really search through it is the CIA. Maybe we’re not the real customers ;)

The notion of organizing private information (VS the public internet) helped me shift my perspective a bit, thank you. It also dramatically amplified my feelings about other Google products, like Drive, which do an absolutely terrible job organizing and making private information accessible. It's almost maliciously bad.

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

#302

Post by AmericanChopper »

CPLX wrote: post #170
AmericanChopper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I’ve said is 100% factually correct. The bulk of his pay comes from performance incentives (defined by internal, non-share-price-related performance metrics). In the past he’s had a seperate incentive package based on how google stock did benchmarked against the S&P100 index. I don’t know if he still has that, but he’d still be performing well against that metric if he did. Google stock is up about 100% fr…

No it’s not. It was in the 70 something range in early 2020 and lately it’s been 90 something. And regardless you still have to demonstrate support for your conclusion, which is that his compensation is aligned with shareholders. It’s not. What we actually have here and with CEO pay in general at large organizations is what’s pretty well known as a principal/agent problem, where the manager class sets the rules for t…

It was ~$55 in March 2020, and most recently closed at $105. But the two key points you seem to be missing are:

1. Not all incentive packages are tied to share price. Many of them are tied to other metrics that the (shareholder elected) board decide are appropriate. This is where the bulk of Pichai’s comp comes from.

2. When they are tied to share price, they tend to be benchmarked. In this case Pichai’s share price incentives have been benchmarked against the S&P100, against which Google has been doing perfectly well. The reason for this is because directors generally don’t task CEOs with preventing economic downturns, and they typically want any incentives they create to be as effective under those conditions as they would be at any other time.

The shareholders are absolutely setting the rules for the executives here.

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

#303

Post by echelon »

adastra22 wrote: post #14
tjpnz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remind me again how big-co CEOs assume "all the risk"? That's a fairytale almost as preposterous as the tooth fairy.

When I was a kid I put a tooth under my pillow and I woke up to find a dollar bill. That right there is more evidence for the tooth fairy than you’ll ever find in favor of CEOs assuming risk.

> That right there is more evidence for the tooth fairy than you’ll ever find in favor of CEOs assuming risk.

I quit my $400k/yr fintech job to be CEO of a company whose primary customers use our tool to make Trump and Biden video game memes on TikTok.

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

#304

Post by josefx »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #232
serverlessmania wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally, nothing good, the chore of Google business is losing ground, Chrome losing more and more users in favor of Edge, Google search taking a hit since OpenAI and Microsoft partnered together to bring AI to search, serial acquisition and sunsetting of products, worse bureaucracy in the whole tech industry, and the list goes on!

Chrome is sitting near all-time highs in market share: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268254/market-share-of-i... . Search hovers around ~90% for the last several years: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share Google Cloud is growing faster than Azure & AWS for the last few years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/967365/worldwide-cloud-i... . Cloud was at ~4% market share 5 years ago, now it's a…

The statista statistics are almost immediately covered by a subscribe for access popup. Search seems to be doing as you say in general, but also is loosing share on desktop to bing, where edge would be the most relevant competing browser.

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

#305

Post by precompute »

vjk800 wrote: post #130

What I don't get about CEO compensations is, do they even work? Like I get that you're a high impact person and you should have the proper incentives to lead the company in the right direction, but do the crazy compensations actually achieve that? Like is there any difference between $100M and $200M? Both of those numbers are way higher than anyone and their children can use in their entire lifetimes, why do you even…

It's about status, not money. If the CEO of a $T company like google doesn't get a lot of money AND doesn't have a charitable reason not to, he's going to lose respect and it's likely he won't be able to make the deals he should've otherwise been able to. When you're in upper management your salary and perks make your position and are responsible for effective output.

At least, this is how people that make all that money think. Yes, it's a huge waste, but who's instituting the other kind of social structure that doesn't reward socio / psychopathy anyway?

The paragraph above is an easy way to discount any and all criticisms. It could be worse, ya kno?

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

#306

Post by dumpster_fire »

Haha, man I had a 35 year finance plan to save enough for retirement and children's education, with a target value amounting to just north of a week of working as Pichai.

Why do we even have a C suite? Can we have a company run with direct democracy instead of monarchy? A true Borg hive mind company. No appointments, no stack rankings, no levels. People get paid by the scope of work they do.

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

#307

Post by mekoka »

juujian wrote: post #111
andrewstuart wrote: post #59

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?

Satya Nadella took the helm at Microsoft in 2014, right after Ballmer and basically brought the company back from the brink of irrelevancy. Even if we can't point to Pichai as the person responsible for Google's dysfunction, he had time to steer the ship.

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

#308

Post by d23 »

kubb wrote: post #245
chaostheory wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, having a counterpoint with a relevant data point that you missed is “weak” you are ignorant, making your argument weak and just plain wrong. Should people no longer point out when comments are really wrong? You’re also over generalizing while being completely incorrect ie making shit up

You didn't provide a "relevant data point". The base salary for an L3 (rank-and-file) SWE in the Bay Area (which is one of the highest paid areas in the US) is 140K on levels.fyi. You've compared this to the total comp which includes stock (that tanked recently), and a bonus (which isn't guaranteed). You're asserting that you're right and I have no idea what I'm talking about baselessly and being agressive and rude.…

> bonus (which isn't guaranteed)

You're again showing that you're uninformed. The bonus is guaranteed for everyone that doesn't get the lowest level of performance evaluation.

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

#309

Post by Rexxar »

nxm wrote: post #285
Xelbair wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so to paraphrase, he is a bean counter.

He’s the Steve Balmer of Google

Steve Ballmer was not a technologist but he had something more than a been counter despite all his flaws.

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

#310

Post by riceart »

hobofan wrote: post #219
LadyCailin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term, sure. But they are not a monopoly.

Maybe not in legal terms. However a 90% market share in a market where the majority of consumers never evaluates switching to a competitor, gives you so much leeway in execution, that there isn't much difference to a monopoly.

> never evaluates switching to a competitor

Again: “short term, sure”

Unless you have a convincing case for why “never” evaluating switching will last forever.

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