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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

#321

Post by JJMcJ »

geraldhh wrote: post #277
JJMcJ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Ford went public around 1956, the man who ran that got $250,000, about $2.8 million today, with much higher taxes than today. But he also got a thank you letter from Henry Ford II, so he had that going for him. That was the largest IPO at the time, very complicated. I believe all the shares offered publicly were held by the Ford Foundation, for complicated tax and dynastic reasons. But the main point here is how…

are you saying that it was not proportional and thus unfair or that it was too much because he likely was just doing his job as an accountant?

That these kinds of financial activity were not as massively rewarded as they are today.

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

#322

Post by kcplate »

swozey wrote: post #287
kcplate wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unheard of to squat on domains to prevent them from being used for nefarious purposes. Not saying that is what he is doing, but unless he starts using them for racist purposes, I am not going to hold this against him.

Literally nobody asked your opinion of how he uses his domains. But thanks for your sage response. Please continue playing devils advocate in situations you're completely ignorant toward. It really benefits everyone.

Apparently you are unaware of how these sort of commenting forums work. Bless your heart.

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

#323

Post by kcplate »

swozey wrote: post #314
dakial1 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redditization of HN is impressive. Kcplate comment is totally fair and relevant, but it seems Swozey does not care about fair and relevant...

LOL "reddization of HN." I've been on HN for years before you. Maybe commenters should listen to the OPs better and stop playings devils advocate so much. Because especially in this specific scenario it is absolutely stupid. Yeah, we've got a guy with essentially a right wing militia fortress on the border of TX who owns blatantly illegal-immigrant racist trope domains and it's not related at all. Some engineer who c…

> Some engineer who commonly talks infrastructure is just making all of this up because he's bored on HN this weekend.

Well, it is the internet after all.

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

#324

Post by dang »

swozey wrote: post #298
satvikpendem wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes looking at someone's profile before replying is sure to get them on your side, keep it up!

[flagged]

Yikes - you've broken the site guidelines badly and repeatedly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that, and your posts have been well over the bannable line.

I'm not going to ban you because, fortunately, it doesn't look like you've made a habit of this in the past. That's good! but please go back to posting substantive, respectful things and don't veer in this direction again. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#325

Post by dang »

satvikpendem wrote: post #303
swozey wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You sure showed me.

You also broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread. Please don't get sucked into tit-for-tat flamewars, regardless of how bad some other comments are or you feel they are. That's also not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#326

Post by s1artibartfast »

cudgy wrote: post #248
s1artibartfast wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with pretty much everything you say except this. >Employees are merely, an often undesired, side-effect in the business of boosting stock prices. Employees are worse than a side effect, they're a cost center to be avoided if possible. You want to achieve your goals with as few employees as possible.

So you are not interested or see any value in providing jobs for your fellow citizens? At the least, don’t hire thousands of people over 1-2 years and then lay them all off. That shows poor ethical, leadership and management skills.

Not if those jobs cost more than they bring in.

I do think hiring a bunch of people and then firing a bunch of people is indicative of some sort of mistake. Nobody can perfectly predict the future. That said, when someone takes a job they know it's not a lifetime tenure position and has some risk.

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

#327

Post by ztrww »

empyrrhicist wrote: post #250
ztrww wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many super hard working and ultra educated people Both attributes seem to be somewhat tangentially related to being a highly successful CEO. There are plenty of examples of “super hard working” and educated CEOs running their companies to the ground and costing much, much more than just $200 million..

Pick your desired adjectives then. Or is the skillset somehow a magic property that only emerges when total compensation surpasses 100m?

I don’t think “skillset” is the right word either. It’s the financial outcome of the decisions the CEO makes which is the only thing that really matters. Which is notoriously hard to measure and impossible to do in advance. So companies tend to use various proxies when hiring like past experience and less useful ones like skills, education, character, personal connections, work ethic etc.

Obviously this system is very inefficient but nobody can deny that some CEO are better than others and that the best ones can make decisions which bring 10-100x or more money to the company than whatever they are paid.

So if the board of 100 billion company believes that a CEO they can hire for 100 million will increase growth/profits by more than 10 million CEO would it seems perfectly rational to pay him as much (they might be awful at picking the ’best’ person but that does not invalidate the core principle)

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

#328

Post by ztrww »

t8sr wrote: post #275
bushbaba wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 200 person swe org is not 200MM/year of cost at google

Anyone can sound confident on the internet, but you don't seem to have anything to back it up. In my experience, 1 million per SWE in the Bay Area is actually about right across the industry. You can look at public numbers to see that Google's revenue per __global__ employee is about 1.5 M and of that about 400 k is net income. SWEs in California make a lot more than the average global employee.

aren’t Google’s payouts for ads to websites/content creators/etc. included in their costs?

and of course all the other stuff the other comments mentioned and also including paying various contractors hired through other companies..

> Anyone can sound confident on the internet,

I’m not that sure about that

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

#329

Post by ztrww »

opportune wrote: post #195
bushbaba wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 200 person swe org is not 200MM/year of cost at google

In the highest comp regions (where new revenue generating projects almost always get staffed) it’s a common ballpark estimate of the allin cost of a SWE including all benefits, office, hiring, infra costs, ancillary roles. Consider that a senior SWE alone is pulling about $400k in direct comp. Also consider Google’s total spending per employee (not even just SWE) is about $1mm and many of those are not engineers or i…

> total spending per employee (not even just SWE) is about $1mm

Where did you get this figure? It doesn’t sound right at all..

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

#330

Post by ztrww »

effingwewt wrote: post #233
erik_seaberg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want our best decision makers launching and backing companies, not retiring because that's all they're able to do. Musk and Bezos need more competition.

JFC, stop putting them on a pedestal. I've said this before but it bears repeating: CEO's aren't special. Bob Iger came back to Disney to finish it off. Shit, look at Elizabeth Holmes. No one deserves that much of a multiple over the people actually creating products or value. When CEO's fail they get golden parachutes. When they get lucky they are praised as some sort of rare superhuman. The cult of CEO and HR needs…

I do agree in principle but it’s not that obvious to me if overall it would be much better if all the surplus went to the shareholders instead. At least CEOs generally have to actually work for that money..

> CEO's aren't special

some CEOs are terrible, a lot are mediocre and a few are indeed special and worth every penny they get and much more (from the utilitarian/rational point of the company’s shareholders). The problem is that it’s very hard to tell in advance..

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