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Sundar Pichai received $226M compensation, boosted by a triennial stock grant
- pabs3 3y agoThe world needs more companies structured as worker-owned co-operatives.
- ketzu 3y agoWhat do you think is stopping them from doing that right now?
- jimsimmons 3y agoReality
- dontlaugh 3y agoLack of capital.
- prepend 3y agoThe world needs more workers to create these operatives.
- rychco 3y agoThere is no human being on God’s green earth that could possibly provide enough value to deserve $226M compensation.
- blululu 3y ago12,000 Googler’s fired this year and somehow the Googler with the lowest skills/bills ratio remains. At least he took full responsibility for his failures as a leader while handing out pink slips.
- carlycue 3y agoSomeone please call Ja Rule so he can make sense of this man’s salary…
- slantaclaus 3y agoThis sounds like a comment on reddit
- bluescarni 3y agoAs if typical HN comments were any better than typical reddit comments...
- izacus 3y agoIn many subreddits the comments have surpassed stupidity I see here years ago.
- LightBug1 3y agoYeah, it does. But I laughed, so ...
- fernandotakai 3y agothis whole thread is like a reddit thread, which is sad. so many hot takes with no sources, and almost no actual discussion.
- alcover 3y agoThis feeling is often dismissed as illusion but I dare say that it is a reality. I've been here 10+ years, first as a lurker. It is devolving. Some threads are still brilliant but the amount of low-effort replies has been steadily growing. I didn't use to abandon thread so much. Now I'm tired of skipping greyed-out blocks.
- extasia 3y agoI don't get it?
- ignoramous 3y agoThe (editorialised) title [0] is classic Anchoring [1], me thinks. Google did not fire folks because they were making losses. At some level, they got rid to appease Wall Street given their shrinking profit margins. I mean, here's a business that brings in revenues of £500M / day (over £150M / day net); an astonishing amount. Anchor against that? Never let the less spectacular get in the way of a click bait, I guess. [0] The original title was something along the lines of, Sundar earned $226M while laying off thousands [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)
- capableweb 3y agoWhy doesn't Wall Street want to give rid of Sundar Pichai then as it's obvious he's dropping the ball and have been for the last years
- mqus 3y agoMaybe google didn't fire them because things didn't go well, but still, having to fire people (instead of reallocating them to better-fitting positions or not hiring intge first place) is a management failure for me, in a scale which a CEO resigning(or at least lowering their income/bonuses) would be justified. But maybe this is just a difference in opinion.
- mihaic 3y agoWhat if hiring them in the first place was the mistake? What are your options in that case?
- capableweb 3y agoCEO fucked up, get rid of him/her. Why'd you hire so many people if you don't need it? Sounds like C-suite made the wrong call, in that case.
- redeeman 3y agoyes, CEO fucked up, should he now fuck up more by not firing them? you come home from the grocery store, you bought frozen goods. you are unpacking, and think you're done, so you sit down in your couch to relax, a couple of minutes later you realize you forgot to put the frozen stuff in the freezer, do you just go "oh well i dun fucked up, nothing to be done here, i'd best just admit defeat and let my wife fire me from grocery duty"
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- passwordoops 3y ago... And getting caught flat-footed against Microsoft (and Adobe, but but not as loudly) in the precise field Alphabet is supposedly the insurmountable leader. Remind me again how big-co CEOs assume "all the risk"?
- supriyo-biswas 3y agoThis is true for small or medium sized private businesses; shareholder run, large corporations, not so much.
- capableweb 3y ago> Remind me again how big-co CEOs assume "all the risk"? Does anyone seriously believe this? I see it all the time as a "comeback" against CEOs, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone arguing that they actually are the ones that assume all the risk.
- flangola7 3y agoIs this a serious question? Pichai will not experience hardship in any circumstance. His access to a roof, food, healthcare, quality of life, etc. are not in danger, now or in the future. The worst possible outcome for him still leaves many more zeroes in his personal finances than the vast majority of employees will ever see at any point in their life.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- darkerside 3y agoStraw man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
- rvnx 3y agoZuckerberg took "full responsibility" in the last round of failures too. Though he isn't injecting his money back into the company. Full responsibility, but not too much.
- throwawayzzo 3y ago[dead]
- haunter 3y ago“While Firing Thousands” That’s not the original title just added by OP for drama. It’s an editorialized title. “Alphabet CEO’s Pay Soars to $226 Million on Huge Stock Award” It’s a Bloomberg article not the Guardian
- abudabi123 3y ago> “While Firing Thousands” While correcting for the mistake of inflated bloat from recruiting? Industry wide pattern is emerging useless hires.
- vitus 3y agoIf it were simply a correction for the recent hiring spree, then people with 10+ years of tenure on production-critical teams would not have been let go.
- pydry 3y agoIt seems more likely that they're playing the same wage suppression game they were back when they were fined $400mln for conspiring with Apple. This is freeing up resources for stuff like this stock grant.
- kevinh 3y agoAnd who would have been responsible for the inflated bloat?
- belter 3y agoUnder metrics of revenue and profit there is no reason to change the CEO: Annual Revenue of Google from 2002 to 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-revenue/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl... Annual Net Income Generated by Google from 2001 to 2015: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266472/googles-net-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266472/googles-net-incom... Under metrics of leadership and fending competition there is no reason to keep the CEO: "Killed by Google" - https://killedby.tech/google/ https://killedby.tech/google/ "Alphabet shares dive after Google AI chatbot Bard flubs answer in ad" - https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-of... "Google Cloud still operating at a loss despite revenue, client wins" - https://www.ciodive.com/news/google-cloud-revenue-Q2-2022/628283/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/google-cloud-revenue-Q2-2022/62...
- elbowjack65 3y agoMoreover, Bing, ChatGPT hasn't even made a dent in Google's search engine market share [0]. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
- qtzaz 3y agoCEO received compensation for good cost-cutting measures? What am I missing here?
- sidcool 3y agoCEO made bad decisions that many other companies avoided. CEO panicked and fired thousands unprofessionally. CEO received record compensation.
- rocket_surgeron 3y agoCEOs serve the board and the board serves the shareholders. Employees are irrelevant in this scenario, replaceable units whose purpose is to produce. Are either of the two relevant parties mad at the CEO? If you want employees to matter beyond the cold calculus of dollars per beating heart per quarter, Alphabet ain't inside that kinda system. Unions could help (because they explicitly acknowledge the $ per soul metric and seek to exploit it for the souls' benefit) but the U-word is a bad word to libertarian techbros.
- zzen 3y agoTons of tech companies were firing employees in 2022, so much so Apple was far and wide an exception in just keeping the same numbers. Feels more like an economic cycle / preparing for the worse rather than result of bad decisions on behalf of Pichai. And yes - firing employees to protect the efficiency of the company is (an unpopular) part of a CEOs job.
- noisy_boy 3y ago> CEO made bad decisions that many other companies avoided. Like what? Over-hiring? Many other companies avoided? Like which big ones? Amazon, Microsoft etc.? > CEO panicked Sounds like hyperbole > fired thousands unprofessionally How do you fire thousands professionally? I thought ensuring market and shareholder satisfaction was the top priority for CEOs and they get paid to make those unpopular decisions as/when deemed fit?
- 3y ago
- SanderNL 3y ago“Programmer got a raise while support staff was fired” We all have different jobs. I guess he did OK enough to receive whatever they agreed upon in advance.
- 28304283409234 3y agoYes, but _he_ worked really hard.
- panny 3y agoAll the fired xooglers seemed to praise their former employeer on social media, so they seem to accept that they deserved to be fired. It's hard to be mad at the CEO, when the people who lost their jobs displayed no anger.
- alanfranz 3y agoSources?
- jerrygenser 3y agoThe ones I know that did not post on social media did not want to be fired. Consider the selection bias of people posting on social media. Also consider people would want to be positive on social media to keep their future employment prospects.
- panny 3y ago>The ones I know that did not post on social media did not want to be fired. If they were mad about it, they would have posted, wouldn't they? Silence is violence and all that.
- mejutoco 3y agoI do not understand that logic. How does being mad about it imply posting on social media? If anything, it is easy to see an incentive not to post negative things online, as you can see on LinkedIn everyday.
- ksec 3y agoActual Title: Alphabet CEO’s Pay Soars to $226 Million on Huge Stock Award. @sine_break, [1], > please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bombardier6789 3y agoIf you ever have been in leadership interviews then you will know that firing people is one of the quality one needs to evaluate or prove. This is just business as usual for these roles and a lot of people shy away from these roles due to "responsibilities" such as this.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoInteresting way to frame it. It would seem the position only attracts "hangmen"? I suppose that is (one of the many reasons) why I am not currently sailing in my yacht across the Pacific.
- jstummbillig 3y agoWe don't celebrate CEOs when they are on hiring sprees – and we really, really shouldn't. I understand that people are emotional over job security. The downside weighs more heavily, as per usual. Alas.
- jackmott 3y ago[dead]
- lordnacho 3y agoOh come on, you can always find someone who will do it. Try to think of a company that does something odious that somehow can't find candidates to be CEO. Now note that Google has a mostly positive reputation in society at large.
- amelius 3y agoAm argument or system taken to its extreme falls flat. Where are the limits of capitalism?
- jackmott 3y ago[dead]
- prettyarsehole 3y ago[flagged]
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoI mean are you surprised by this? Companies do not exist for the benefit of labor, they exist for the benefit of shareholders. Why is this even considered news?
- malermeister 3y agoBecause while that's the status quo, it shouldn't be. Labor is entitled to all it creates.
- redeeman 3y agopeople are entitled to have their contracts honored. If you dont want to produce 100x value for the big bad company, then you must be free to not. I believe you do have that freedom. So go do something else? tend to your own crops, make your own software. you are entitled to freedom, which everyone should have, but not other peoples enterprises
- cudgy 3y ago“they exist for the benefit of shareholders” How does paying a CEO so much money benefit the shareholders? Do you honestly feel there aren’t millions of people that could do his job (and likely better) for a fraction of what he was paid?
- FollowingTheDao 3y agoCEOs are usually shareholder. And they hire these people to act in the interest of the shareholders. https://www.barrons.com/articles/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-sells-stock-1b269e9 https://www.barrons.com/articles/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-se...
- jmyeet 3y agoNever forget: - Meritocracy is a myth; - There is no value without labor; - The only risk CEOs are assuming is the nightmare scenario of becoming a worker; - The company is not your friend. There is no loyalty; and - The people paying the price for any bad decisions of a company (eg The metaverse) are rarely the people responsible.
- HopenHeyHi 3y ago- Adulting is hard I mean a tad overly cynical but vaguely true. Is this really such an epiphany for people? I never understood where does the idea that your employer is your friend even come from? Wait until you find out the etymology of the word salary! These structures exist to make money. If they stop making money they die and all the jobs go with them and nobody gets paid anymore. If they stop growing they die. Companies need money like you need oxygen. And if they don't die, if they figure it out and grow big, it is like the goose that layed the golden egg. All it has to do, all it can do, is waddle around and keep on laying golden eggs and shitting everywhere.
- andrewstuart 3y agoI 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?
- hammyhavoc 3y agoLet's be honest, the trust from these demographics towards Google wasn't great even prior and hadn't been for a while.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoGoogle was previously known for being engineering-oriented and was respected for that by the developers. Now it seems that all it is known for is empire-building, dropping products, and features for the sake of features.
- hammyhavoc 3y agoYup. But this was a problem even prior to the current CEO. It's an established culture.
- s1k3s 3y agoDid he make them money?
- andrewstuart 3y agoThe only thing he has done is not destroy the Google cash firehose. The advertising cash firehose is perhaps the only thing that matters at Google. But, having been severely caned by ChatGPT and left flat footed on AI i think it’s reasonable to say even that firehose is now at risk.
- 3y ago
- yodsanklai 3y agoSame story at Meta where people in the C-suite got very high bonus and equity refresher based on outstanding individual performance. You'd expect them to be somehow accountable. The common answer there was that they did well at their job, and aren't responsible for decisions leading to the layoffs. And nobody is responsible. Basically, it was right to hire so many employees (good economic prospects) and then it was right to fire them (bad economic prospect). This view is acceptable if you consider people are disposable and the human cost to be zero. Which of course is the case from the corporation point of view since this human cost isn't tracked by any metrics meaningful for the company. These layoffs feel wrong. I know people who were devoting their life to their job, were working in very profitable companies, were exceeding expectation for their level, were working on project that were sold to them as critical by management.... and they were fired overnight without notice (and some of them continue to lick ass on Linkedin on how great was their company). I know it's not a popular idea in American business-centered culture, but there should be restrictions as to why you can layoff employees.
- qtzaz 3y ago[flagged]
- consp 3y ago> Sounds like those people are suckers. The power dynamics at play here distort reality so I wouldn't call them suckers but fooled. I don't know why every time this is brought up the default awnser is to assume they had any say in the matter. People (as a group not a person) can behave irrational which is what the call for protection is about.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoIf a company hired me, provided for my healthcare and my retirement benefits, and paid me well, I would also lick ass publicly frankly. I’m incentivized towards being a sucker. This goes double if I’m disabled or have dependents who are disabled. Triple if I’m on a visa. I can’t afford to lose my healthcare benefits or a high paying job.
- kubb 3y agoThe 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 because they think they caught God by the ankles with their 150k/year salary, that they feel they don't deserve because of their impostor syndrome.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoBoth can be true. But I happen to think your right that the employer/worker balance has tipped way too far in favor of the employer in the last half-Century.
- 0xDEF 3y agoI am from Denmark where we have strong unions protecting our working class and lower middle class. That is a good thing. However what is the benefit of ultra high income FAANG employees unionizing?
- malermeister 3y agoOne benefit is stronger labor protection from layoffs like these. Having labor be more powerful can also help when execs push for morally questionable projects. Lastly, FAANG employees are working class.
- code_runner 3y agoif you’re earning sky high base comp + stock + benefits at these places you’re not working class. You are incredibly out of touch.
- occz 3y agoThe distinguishing factor for being working class/owner class is whether or not you make the majority of your income from your labour, or from your capital. Incredibly well-paid working class, but working class all the same.
- sys_64738 3y agoHe's compensate to maximize shareholder returns, not to keep people in a job. The people are employed for the same reason and when their RoI is below the threshold then you need to right the ship. This is what a CEO is partly there to do.
- malermeister 3y agoWhich, while true, is a really shitty system, as evidenced by the headline.
- Zetice 3y agoIt’s a lot less shitty than everything else we’ve tried, it’s not like we know of a better way to run an economy…
- fourseventy 3y agoThe employees were paid for their work. It's a business not a charity.
- malermeister 3y agoAgain, not the point. I get that is how the system currently works. Point is, it shouldn't be.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ketzu 3y agoAs I can't read the article, I searched around a bit and read [1] on frobes. > Pichai's compensation included stock awards of about $218 million and a basic salary of $2 million, the filing showed. Pichai's stock award is paid every three years. (The additional 6million were security spent by the company.) His compensation next year will be much lower, the same as the last two years: > The 2022 pay is compared to $6.3 million in 2021 when he didn’t receive the grant. So he effectively got 73million per year in stocks. Or around ($73mil/$106stockprice=) 690k stock / year. [1] https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/innovation/technology/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-gets-over-%24200m-in-2022 https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/innovation/technology/googl...
- expertentipp 3y agoIs there a chance these sociopaths will run out of obedient desperate employees? At some point they will employ exclusively timid dependables, run by rigid ruthless procedures and the whole thing will be like a fortress with all gates unlocked.
- spencerchubb 3y agoThis title implies that Pichai is greedy and disenfranchising the employees. This is true, but at the same time: I would be extremely grateful to have worked at Google and be laid off. That's almost a non-problem.
- arkitaip 3y agoTell that to the thousands of googlers who are struggling on the job market right now.
- spencerchubb 3y agoI find it hard to imagine that someone could be an ex-Google employee and struggle financially. Unless they were financially irresponsible. Being a Google employee for any amount of time is a huge privilege
- bedhead 3y agoEntrepreneurial reward for managerial risk.
- fxtentacle 3y agoI'm surprised that Bloomberg is getting less and less pro-business and more mainstream.
- aikinai 3y agoThe headline was written by the poster and doesn’t match the original article.
- iamnotsure 3y agoSo he got the stick, where is the carrot?
- paulsutter 3y agoIf anything the issue is that Google remains vastly overbloated. The large tech companies have been hoarding very skilled people and letting their abilities atrophy, trapped by high pay. It’s bad for Silicon Valley, bad for the individuals, and bad for progress.
- oblio 3y agoBad for individuals? A decent number of them are able to retire at 35-40. That's awesome for individuals.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paulsutter 3y agoYes because the majority are working on nothing useful and they know it
- clemailacct1 3y agoThat’s pretty subjective to the person. Some folks are very happy working on something that may be perceived as useless but gets to retire at a really young age.
- fwegwegweq3223 3y agoPichai has absolutely deserved the money. He invested so much efford to destory Google!
- stanwesley 3y agoFunny how everyone here assumes they could do a better job than Sundar.
- vjk800 3y agoWhat 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 care which sum you get? Does Sundar Pichai actually look at his paycheck and say "Oh boy, I got $226M instead of the measly $150M [0] I got last year, hard work sure is paying off, I better keep at it." [0] I made that number up
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- counttheforks 3y agoThey're the CEO so they can get away with making themselves bonkers rich
- kevinmchugh 3y agoIt definitely works better when the compensation is mostly in equity - which is what happened here.
- twoodfin 3y agoThis hypothesis is testable in the market, and there are any number of investors—including private equity firms and activist investors—on the lookout for feathered-nest C-suites and other misaligned executive incentives. There was a great little aside a couple months ago on the Odd Lots podcast[1] about investors forcing a radical change in oil company executive incentive compensation that had been draining shareholder value for decades. [1] https://overcast.fm/+5AWMJLBNw https://overcast.fm/+5AWMJLBNw
- pembrook 3y agoThere’s been a bunch of studies that track CEO performance when the CEO has gone on to lead multiple orgs. No surprise, CEO performance has no persistence and is statistically random. Also higher compensation does not lead to faster EPS growth for investors over time. Average comp for execs has skyrocketed 10x the past few decades due to equity compensation - yet companies aren’t growing 10x faster than they were before equity comp became so en-vogue. My personal opinion: all execs should be paid in cash and incentivized purely with fixed cash bonuses. That’s basically how corporate America worked pre-1980s. Gifting a big percentage of a company to someone who was employee #3076 is just plain theft from public investors.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SilverBirch 3y agoI'll come back to what I always come back to with these compensation issues. You can make the claim you need to pay exceptional amounts to get the best people. You cannot claim that applies to a CEO who is in the middle of an incredibly costly round of layoffs because instead of being exceptional, he followed the herd and over-hired during the pandemic. It is extremely clear at this point that the attitude of the big tech companies during the pandemic was stupid (with some minor exceptions), and that their attitude today is gutless.
- ulfw 3y agoHe's a Google lifer. It's not like you have to go out and poach him from somewhere else.
- jimsimmons 3y agoClassic HN shitting on a mild mannered exec who doesn’t speak BS every interview It’s like the tech community suffers has some daddy issues with Google. Somehow it has to be this magical company that does everything right. They have to not squeeze search ads for money. but at the same time they’ve been just been doing research into AI and not releasing profitable products. I guess what other CEOs realize is perhaps the fact that reality doesn’t matter as long as you inject your personality into every conversation and distract people from reality
- pjmq 3y agoHis comp should have been negative the salaries of those he over-hired and subsequently had to fire. Like that comp is roughly 1000 employees worth...
- tchalla 3y agoPichai's Compensation from SEC Filing (p54) [0] is as follows - 1) Base Salary $ 2M, 2) Stock Awards $ 218M, 3) Miscellaneous $ 5.9M. The stock awards are based on Class C Google Stock Unit (GSU) and PSU (Performance Based Units). These are awarded if Google hits some targets which it did. It's basically a future looking contract which says "If you do X, we will pay X". There are two parts to this conversation 1) Should CEOs be paid like this? and 2) Should Sundar have received the compensation? There should be no doubt about 2). That's a commitment made to Sundar. Part 1) of the conversation is a different one. More information on p49 of the filing says this below > 2022 CEO Equity Award for Sundar > The Compensation Committee currently follows a triennial grant cadence for CEO equity awards. Sundar’s last equity award was granted in December 2019, and fully vested at the end of December 2022. In December 2022, the Compensation Committee granted a new equity award to Sundar to recognize his strong performance as our CEO. > As with the 2019 award, the 2022 award consisted of both GSUs and PSUs. The on-target value of the award was unchanged from the 2019 award. However, relative to the 2019 award, the Compensation Committee made two design changes such that more of the award’s vesting is dependent on performance: (1) increased the proportion of PSUs to 60% of the total award from 43%; and (2) increased the performance requirement for on-target PSU payout to the 55th percentile from the 50th percentile of Alphabet’s relative total shareholder return (TSR). These changes further align Sundar’s compensation to long-term shareholder value creation and Alphabet’s stock performance relative to the S&P 100 over the applicable performance periods. > The GSU portion of the award vests quarterly over three years in 12 equal installments beginning March 25, 2023. The PSU portion of the award includes two tranches. The PSUs will vest, if at all, based on Alphabet’s TSR performance relative to the companies comprising the S&P 100 over a 2023-2024 performance period for the first tranche (2022 Tranche A) and over a 2023-2025 performance period for the second tranche (2022 Tranche B), subject to continued employment on each applicable vesting date. The number of PSUs vesting will be determined after the end of each performance period based on the payout curve illustrated below. Depending upon performance, the number of PSUs that vest will range from 0%-200% of the target number of PSUs. Upon vesting, each PSU and GSU will entitle Sundar to receive one share of Alphabet’s Class C capital stock. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817923000736/lgoog2023_def14a.htm#lgooga023 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817923...
- known 3y ago[dead]
- tinyhouse 3y agoI don't like those titles. What his salary has to do with firing people? That is what CEOs in such companies make (there aren't many Googles out there). It's reasonable to question why a single employee in a company should make so much money, but it has nothing to do with firing people.
- osigurdson 3y agoIt is interesting, founders that are able to create billion dollar companies are extremely rare. Rarer still it seems are non-founder CEOs that are able to make an impact.
- sub7 3y agoGoogle, FB, MSFT all have the same problem - way too many overpaid, under-working employees who either give no shits or are in systems where giving a shit doesn't work I'd have fired harder and double cleaned the house
- prepend 3y agoI wonder how much less his compensation would be had they only laid off 11,000 employees instead of 12,000. Or how much less had they not fired anyone ?
- Invictus0 3y agoUnless you're a Google investor, who cares?
- ms512 3y agohttps://archive.is/CiFqr https://archive.is/CiFqr
- dumpster_fire 3y agoHaha, 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.
- yoyo_io 3y agoAh! A McKinsey alum
- yoyo_io 3y agoAh! A McKinsey alum.
- jgalt212 3y agoSundar's #1 job has been to keep the FTC at bay. He's done a pretty good job at that.
- deepzn 3y agoCan society thrive with more equitable compensation for all citizens, and workers alike or would that damage the incentive to produce "more or better" products which is said to inevitably boost productivity/GDP, etc? Especially with AI coming forward, the case for UBI seems strong. But is it a fundamental desire for humans to be self-serving or selfish, or would UBI just add a base safety net for people, and we could still continue with unequal total comps, and that at least seems like a good first step. [As far as I know, many people agree income inequality is the widest it's ever been, and is a bad thing for society]
- AlbertCory 3y agoSundar is an example of what happens when you promote from within and rule out anyone with enemies. You get nice guys whom everyone "likes." The comment about sociopathic almost-CEO's is spot on. Tony, Andy, Anthony, and Vic all would have been terrible CEO's. On the other hand, Bill Coughran, Alan Eustace, Udi Manber, or Patrick Pichette would have been decent, at the very least. Maybe even very good.
- sainez 3y agoOff topic. But huge shout out to Udi Manber for one of my favorite CS books: Introduction to Algorithms, A Creative Approach.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI didn't even know he wrote that. Here he is, introducing Bob Mankoff, the longtime cartoon editor of the New Yorker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kogikw3InpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kogikw3InpY I helped out on this talk, but Udi apparently knew Bob somehow, so he introduced him.
- crop_rotation 3y agoNadella is a very good counter example for that. I think one difference is that Ballmer set up Nadella much better in his final years (both by removing alternative power centres like Sinofsky, and kick starting projects like Office on iOS which solely get credited to Nadella)
- AlbertCory 3y agoPossibly you're right. I'm not as familiar with MS-internal politics.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoAnd this is why the economy is a meme. Google is doing terribly and he’s getting paid 226m for what?
- newbie578 3y agoI still don't understand why do Boards continue giving these kind of compensation levels for C level execs... Let's be honest, a 15 million compensation won't make a difference between 225 million.. It would be better to take the 225 million and make it a potential 1 million bonus to 225 engineers, I guarantee you would have better results.
- phendrenad2 3y agoI have a crazy theory that CEO salaries must be high because evolutionary forces favors companies with high CEO salaries. Rich people prefer to hang out with other rich people, so if you don't pay your CEO enough, they won't get invited to hang out with potential big investors. In a sense, you could say that CEOs are professional rich actors, given a stipend by the corporation to go play rich and infiltrate the rich world, and bring back loot.
- SaintSeiya 3y agoIf he had taken a pay cut like Tim Cook, he would still be filthy rich and well compensated and thousand of google employees had kept their job. But we all know how he's "entitled" to it.
- shottask 3y agoI've lost respect for him completely now. I feel like the only ones who would still respect him are his fellow IIT/Stanford/Wharton grads but there's just nothing to like about the guy. Ask yourself if he has ever done anything useful in this field, and the answer will always be no. He's never founded anything, innovated anything technical and has just been a yes man to Larry and Sergey.
- chank 3y agoC-Level comp should take a hit if they have to do layoffs for any reason. These people should definitly reap it when business is good, but not when it's doing poorly regardless of why. C-Level incentives have tunnel vision to few metrics. Screw 10x developers, these people need to be a 100x and be accountable considering the comp packages they get.
- e-clinton 3y agoMost annoying part of the $226M is that he’ll pay a lot less taxes percentage-wise than the average Google employee.
- candyman 3y agoEchos of Steve Ballmer who alienated many whiffed on cloud and mobile (!). Google has killed their search with advertising and promotion to the point where results are useless. Product management has been terrible for the things I use over a 10+ year period. Based on recent employee accounts of the culture and mindset there it's a mess. I don't know who this guy is, maybe he's just been a caretaker of a place that was already on this path but he doesn't seem to have done anything to improve it. And he's getting paid over $200M? No wonder working people get angry.
- gymbeaux 3y agoIf 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.