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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

#301

Post by ceejayoz »

PeterisP wrote: post #297
ceejayoz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think they could find a competent CEO for, say, $100M?

They probably could find "a competent CEO", but that's not the bar, and it doesn't make sense to do so, because of the oversized impact and risks. If you're 99% certain that a person is as competent as the current CEO and 1% they're a dud like Carly Fiorina, then saving a measly $100m is not worth the enormous risk. And if you've got a candidate that makes you certain that they would be even slightly more competent t…

You can't be certain of any of this, though, without a time machine to do some A/B testing.

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

#302

Post by xiphias2 »

xtracto wrote: post #269
xiphias2 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people (including me) left their home country, family and lot of times their possible dating life with a person who speaks their own language to be able to work at Google. For me it wasn't just about salary, but I really believed in the vision Eric Schmidt was selling (don't be evil). Since then Google is just going down in morals and renegged on its own promises.

I'm sorry you did. 20 years ago when I was young and naive I was very strong in ideologies too. In my case it was Linux and open source. I defended it blindly for a time. As I've grown up, now at 40 I understand more things about the world. In the case of private companies, I learned long ago not to get enamoured with them. Unless I am the owner, I work only for my paycheck. I've been in great companies, and some of…

Actually Google was amazing in those times and didn't fire anybody in the 2008 recession that I lived through. Eric Schmidt was focusing on a vision where we can do great things, 20% project was real (I had one), which of course just meant extra work, as it didn't help in promotions (something I had to learn of course as an idealist).

I would do this part again, but what I didn't realize at that time is that with 5x higher salary than before I should have spent much more money on balancing the disadvantages of living in a place where the local language is impossible to learn (Swiss German in Zurich).

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

#303

Post by roflyear »

reaperducer wrote: post #111
roflyear wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought he got paid more?

I thought he got paid more? According to this†, he made $99.4 million last year, but will get $49 million this year. That's 80% less than Pichai. † https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/app...

No it isn't, Pichai will make about $75m/yr.

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

#304

Post by runarberg »

chrischen wrote: post #283
runarberg wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are not wrong. Books have been written about how the whole capitalist system is just masked exploitation—including a very famous one by one Karl Marx in 1867. But you must see the scale at play here. When bosses are getting millions upon millions of dollars, hundreds of millions even, and shareholders are in the billions, this is capitalism turned to eleven (and don’t get me wrong capitalism turned to 1 is still bad for workers).

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

Note I say workers. Even though a CEO is technically “employed” by the company, they are still very much a boss, a part of the owning class, and part of the problem. When the pitchforks come up, they will very much be directed at CEOs. This is why CEOs help out their fellow bosses and shareholders. Class solidarity is very much a reality for the owning and ruling classes.

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

#305

Post by MrSqueezles »

rjzzleep wrote: post #187
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…

Do they? I'm sure they run something, but I'm not sure they're the ones telling Pichai constantly which services to cut. To launch Stadia, to kill Stadia, to get Pichais buddy to take over Google Pay, to fire Pichais buddy who runs Google Pay. Maybe they are micromanaging nightmare bosses, I wouldn't know. But from all I have seen, from the very start of Pichais tenure, he definitely deserves a huge chunk of the blam…

Yes. This is correlation, not causation. He has been focused on diversification away from ads and hasn't been performing especially well.

His pay is likely set years in advance, based on performance metrics. Sundar is riding the ads wave to huge payouts in spite of his massive failures, Google Plus, Stadia, devices, especially ChromeOS tablets, mismanaging Cloud, and on, and on...

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

#306

Post by yowzadave »

enjo wrote: post #42
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…

I will gladly take the role of whipping boy off of Sundar's hands.

Exactly—I think Larry and Sergey are overpaying their CEO, not just for moral, "it's unfair to pay the boss while we fire the employees" reasons, but for business reasons: what's the cost of a replacement-level CEO? Is Sundar really firing Google employees more effectively than anyone else who might take that job? As noted in sibling comments, he gets paid significantly more than Tim Cook.

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

#307

Post by xnx »

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…

> The biggest winners of Pichai’s leadership have objectively been the shareholders:

Literally his job. End of story.

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

#308

Post by hnfong »

fsckboy wrote: post #202
gregdoesit wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they will not get the same quality CEO

Hah!

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

#309

Post by hnfong »

adrr wrote: post #209
next_xibalba wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can't just give people "stuff" to do without a clear direction.

You need strong leaders with vision and commitment. And if the leaders can't stomach the risk of failing hard, well, that's how you end up with Google of the past ~15 years.

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

#310

Post by hnfong »

singleshot_ wrote: post #156
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.

Every time I hear this horse argument I picture a horse that is as strong as 1000 horses and goes 300 miles per hour and I get really sad that they invented cars instead of just giving people what they wanted.

But remember the horse shit you'd need to deal with.
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