If your company over-hired while you were CEO and then performed layoffs to correct for the over-hiring, your compensation should be *0* and you should be put on a PIP.
Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
521–530 of 543 posts
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rank and file employees owning hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars of shares is not unheard of in companies like Google. It’s obvious that you havent worked in the tech industry because you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake. You’re conflating two things: earning a decent salary and having power with management. Current Google engineers have good salaries, but they hold no power with management. Their posi…
> 1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake.
It doesn't matter. Compared to the average person, they will still reap a lot of the benefits of rising stock value. Given that stock is a major part of compensation, owning $1 million or more dollars worth of shares is more common than you think, but how should you know? You haven't worked in tech, and judging from your comments it doesn't seem like you've even joined the work force yet.
> I highly recommend you look at other industries. How many people are earning 500K? Not many. Do you really believe software engineers are so special? No. We existed in a specific period of time: explosive economic growth, coupled with low interest rates, coupled with low supply of software engineers. The industry is maturing. Money is no longer free. Tens of thousands of software engineers are pumped out of universities every year. The writing is on the wall. The lifestyle software engineers have come to enjoy is under threat. Why will software look any different than any other professional industry?
We are talking about circumstances in the past and present ie right now, and not in the far off future of 10-20 years from now. It is nonsensical to unionize when both the pay and benefits are decent. When this changes, then behaviour will naturally change.
> From this conversation, I get the impression you’re not even particularly intelligent. Get over yourself.
Given all of the convoluted logic from your comments, that applies more to the person you see in the mirror rather than myself. You live in an ivory tower; you need to experience the real world first before you double down on a subject that you're not very familiar with.
You're also too overconfident. It's not merited.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#523The upper management at Google are so lucky that the company is filled with timid people who are averse to change and didn't unionize. Now they can safely siphon the profits for another several years until they inevitably drive the company into the ground when the ad revenue dries up, and they move to similar positions at other places with healthy revenue streams. And the rank-and-file Googlers will defend this becau…
I don’t understand how Americans have been brainwashed into thinking getting fired is the end of the world and doing anything to “rock the boat” is being mean to the company.
Especially SWEs at FAANG. Y’all absolutely minted money the last few years. You get months and months of severance. Do you realize that most of us make “only” $130k as seniors and don’t get any stock bonuses or severance? If I made $300k/year I’d have YEARS of expenses in an emergency fund. Unionizing would be a win-win. Either I become a unionized employee or I take a 1-year sabbatical.
You guys blew it.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s very difficult to just up and move a company. When the employees are unionized, the company is not able to leverage the knowledge of some workers to facilitate the transition. If the reason not to unionize is that the company will just move, how much job security do you have without the union? As soon as it’s cheaper to do your job elsewhere, your job will be gone. At least with a union, you have a hope of prote…
> It’s very difficult to just up and move a company. This makes sense for factories, but it’s a weak argument for knowledge workers. There’s a lot less physical infrastructure and we’ve literally just proven that remote work is effective for entire organizations within the last 3 years. > As soon as it’s cheaper to do your job elsewhere, your job will be gone Did you not read my previous comments? The second a union…
> Did you not read my previous comments? The second a union is created is the same second it’s cheaper to move elsewhere for knowledge workers. You’ve even validated this argument with your “engineers from other places are good enough” line
I did read your comment. If the company is perfectly free to close up shop and move, then what is applying upward pressure on your wage? Nothing. You can expect your wage to continually fall until it is inline with other college-educated professionals. You don't even need to be licensed to be a software engineer, and many influential engineers aren't even college educated. It's just not that hard of a job. Median college educated salary is $80,000, which is in-line with mechanical and civil engineering salaries. You can expect software engineering salaries to settle around there absent any intervention from labor.
One issue I have with your argument is that you are providing hypotheticals. "Hypothetically, software businesses will relocate when faced with unionization." But software companies are already paying an extreme premium for labor. That premium implies it's not possible to find the required talent elsewhere. There also are unionized software shops, e.g. game developers, so it's not a given that businesses will automatically be relocated.
Essentially my argument is one along the lines of preparing for a rainy day. The best time to save is when times are good so you can spend when times are bad. Times have been good for software engineers. Now the times are changing. Those who haven't saved are in for a rough ride.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can argue till your blue in the face that it opens doors and another can just as easily argue that it closes doors for reasons not worth discussing. My point had nothing to do with either argument as it not interesting to me. My criticism was in the statement regarding the interview process validating the value of an ex FAANG employee over their experience from working at FAANG.
> another can just as easily argue that it closes doors for reasons not worth discussing Why is that not worth discussing? Because there aren't any or are pretty weak?
Because it expands this discussion into yet another area I never intended to address.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
> my own mail server This is hardly reproductible. I guess that the standard place people go after gmail is fastmail. But getting a free equivalent is hard (at least I do not know any). I could host my mail but this is hard work and monitoring.
Agreed. Gmail, GDocs, and GAnalytics have been the hardest replace. I can't find a reasonable free alt. to those.
You can give HedgeDoc (https://hedgedoc.org/) a try as a replacement for Google Docs.
It is the one that works best for concurrent editing IMO (but it is markdown which can be a problem for some)
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok. Can we agree that some people are expected to be more perfect than others? Say the janitor versus the brain surgeon? Or the CEO versus the staff software engineer?
Sure, different people can be expected to have different capabilities. But I don not see how that relates to the context of this comment chain. Specifically being able to predict the future a few years during and after an unprecedented pandemic.
Who’s job is it to predict the future hiring needs at companies? The staff software engineer or the CEO’s and executives? This is a primary role of a CEO and failure to predict this is a failure of their primary role.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s very difficult to just up and move a company. This makes sense for factories, but it’s a weak argument for knowledge workers. There’s a lot less physical infrastructure and we’ve literally just proven that remote work is effective for entire organizations within the last 3 years. > As soon as it’s cheaper to do your job elsewhere, your job will be gone Did you not read my previous comments? The second a union…
> Did you not read my previous comments? The second a union is created is the same second it’s cheaper to move elsewhere for knowledge workers. You’ve even validated this argument with your “engineers from other places are good enough” line I did read your comment. If the company is perfectly free to close up shop and move, then what is applying upward pressure on your wage? Nothing. You can expect your wage to conti…
> I did read your comment. If the company is perfectly free to close up shop and move, then what is applying upward pressure on your wage? Nothing.
Keeping in my that we are talking about Google and companies like it; historically, investors such as angels and VCs want to minimize risk when investing in volatile startups. How do you do this when investing in knowledge based companies? One way is by past accomplishments of the founders, but a more common method is by looking at their credentials. You invest based on an individual’s university alma mater and previous employers. The institutions matter. The more exclusive the better. There’s less criticism on your judgement if you hire from Stanford and MIT. Fast forward. When a company matures, this mentality of hiring stays within its cultural DNA whether or not they admit it. There are a finite number of those graduates from those schools with those majors.
> It's just not that hard of a job.
It’s a much harder job than being an armchair economist. This is not accurate at all. You should just stop being very wrong with overconfidence. The only thing you’re achieving is constantly reminding me that economics isn’t a real science that it pretends to be. It has no repeatable theoretical model, hence all of the contradictory conclusions.
> You can expect software engineering salaries to settle around there absent any intervention from labor.
It may happen in the next 10 - 20 years, but that’s not reality at the moment or in the past.
> One issue I have with your argument is that you are providing hypotheticals. "
Wow, the kettle likes calling the pot black. Most if not all your arguments are also hypotheticals.
> That premium implies it's not possible to find the required talent elsewhere.
See my first paragraph for the reason
> Essentially my argument is one along the lines of preparing for a rainy day.
If we remember the original argument being that Google engineers should unionize, this is just stupid. Time and effort are finite resources. By the time the day of reckoning comes, and I agree that it will one day, our generation will be either retired or transitioned because we have a half life. Most engineers transition to other positions like management and other job functions by their early to mid 40s, or even much sooner. Unionizing now isn’t logical because it interferes with maximizing our gains now and in the immediate future ie promotions and immediate job stability. Seriously, before you double down on theory, maybe you should start a career first in the tech industry before you keep making terrible assumptions.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you. What people seem to forget is that Google simply did one thing even just marginally better back in the 90s and has been riding that heavy train ever since. All the other stuff, even YouTube is also essentially just dumb luck and a function of that initial success, not to mention that Google was going to shut YouTube down before someone made the case for making it an ad platform, which should have be…
> Google was going to shut YouTube down before someone made the case for making it an ad platform, which should have been obvious to Google of all organizations even at that time. Where in the world are you getting this from?
Same, I've never heard this before either.
Re: Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I don't. Definitely don't envy their lives, after working with them. They all keep working from the few I know, it's a certain kind of person. Almost a curse. Even with hundreds of millions. One is doing django alongside me almost 12hr/day... lol... I know some retired policemen/public workers and they're doing handsomely. Went hunting one time and this guy was decked out, asked him "what do you do?!" Turns out h…
How old were those police officers when they retired?
Usually late 40s.
20yrs gets you 50% of your salary for the rest of your life on top of whatever else you saved. 3% more every year you stay on.
The guy I met hunting was in his 50s and has 30+ years in the force. He's getting like 70k/yr lol
Same with my highschool gf's dad.