7 ms·
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 c
by gregdoesit 3y ago
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 set/approved this compensation.
The biggest winners of Pichai’s leadership have objectively been the shareholders: Google’s market cap increased by ~$890B since he took over as CEO in 2015, tripling the market cap/stock price of the company.
Larry and Sergey run this show: they simply hired someone else to do it for them. When things go well: they profit. When not so well - like now - someone else is on the hook and is the person criticised for how things go at Google; and it’s not them.
- xnx 3y ago> The biggest winners of Pichai’s leadership have objectively been the shareholders: Literally his job. End of story.
- lannisterstark 3y ago>it’s Sundar Pichai who gets the blame Unpopular opinion, but he should. Google has pretty much been uninventing cesspool since he became the CEO. The only thing that are up are profits.
- tehlike 3y agoGoogle performed only slightly better than QQQ in the past 5 years, and performed significantly worse than AAPL. Tim Cook doesn't get that comp, if that's what you mean.
- ddol 3y agoDoesn’t Laurene Powell Jobs still hold 5.5% of AAPL through the Steve Jobs Trust?
- callalex 3y agoDid you reply to the correct comment?
- roflyear 3y agoI thought he got paid more?
- reaperducer 3y agoI 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/apple-ceo-tim-cook-2022-compensation-1235287916/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/app...
- justrealist 3y agoNot sure I'm following. They aren't getting new equity grants, they're de-facto out of the picture and just riding the valuation. They have 51% voting power but it's not obvious they are actively making decisions, rather than just holding onto power in just-in-case. Sundar is getting new equity grants based on his "performance". That's not the same.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y agoLarry and Sergey hired Sundar to do a job (make money for shareholders aka Larry and Sergey). If Sundar doesn’t want to do that job anymore they’ll find someone else to do it better. If I’m ignoring morality and just pretending I own the company and want to be richer, my opinion would be: if I think there is someone out there who will do a better job than my CEO and they are available, hire them no matter how much it costs. Whatever I’m paying them is peanuts compared to their impact on the company’s market cap. Nowhere in my option space is “keep the same sub-par CEO but pay them less”, that’s penny-wise and pound-foolish thinking.
- axlee 3y agoDo you truly think there is no one on earth who could do a better job than Pinchai for, let's say, $80M a year? $40M a year? $30M a year? $10M a year? Why is there downward pressure on wages for everyone except for this particular position?
- hgsgm 3y agoHis pay is huge, but not huge when spread across 12K people. You couldn't keep them employed on $250M/3yrs
- axlee 3y agoI don't really understand the point you are trying to make.
- AgentOrange1234 3y ago
- misssocrates 3y agoIsn't taking the blame part of why CEOs get paid millions of dollars? 226 of them in this case. Pichai signed up for it and is objectively a winner too.
- sqldba 3y agoI’ll take some blame for $226m. What you’ve said is nonsensical. Being the victim of some harsh words forgotten the next day while never having to work another day in your life is not any kind of responsibility.
- tasuki 3y ago> What you’ve said is nonsensical. These are strong words, and you didn't back them up at all. The comment you're replying to did not mention responsibility at all. Responsibility and blame are different things. If I were a little less charitable I'd have said your comment was nonsensical.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- danaris 3y agoThat would only hold water if they ever actually had to face consequences. Do well? Get a massive bonus! Do poorly? Get a massive bonus! Do incredibly poorly? Leave with a golden parachute (aka massive bonus).
- enjo 3y agoI will gladly take the role of whipping boy off of Sundar's hands.
- yowzadave 3y agoExactly—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.
- quickthrower2 3y agoA week would be enough, then I would retire.
- quitit 3y agoWhile all valid points, the current outrage is driven by the spiking CEO pay while making significant cut backs, this is all set against a wider landscape of belt tightening, a looming recession and the observation that CEOs are earning historically high pay ratios. Those high ratios led Apple shareholders to request a pay cut of their CEO, and that was without poor performance or firing workers.
- DamnYuppie 3y agoMy take on the OP’s comment was that his salary and bonuses are controlled by the board. As Sergei and Larry have majority control he would not have gotten this without their explicit approval.
- loeg 3y ago> [Pichai]'s salary and bonuses are controlled by the board That is true of any CEO pay, though.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoYour argument does not negate OP's argument.
- loeg 3y agoI don’t understand what OP is arguing but would be interested to find out.
- stuaxo 3y agoWho is on the board ? Often CEOs float around between boards, they are almost never going to decrease the pay or not raise it, unlike how it works for the rest of us.
- bell-cot 3y agoToo often correct. But in a case where Founder1 and Founder2 have absolute majority voting control, the Board is extremely unlikely to play such "obviously we'll vote to give each other raises" games. They are sitting in those cushy Board seats - or not - at 1 & 2's whim.
- loeg 3y agoHow is this different from any other public company, where employees are not the majority shareholders? Like, what is special about Page and Brin?
- eric-hu 3y agoNeither of them have to be CEO. So Page and Brin can reward the CEO for being ruthless in a down market and also have Sundar be the scapegoat for them. The “cake” is their stock going up. “Eating it too” is the CEO scapegoat.
- loeg 3y agoThis situation doesn't seem different from any other board of directors. Who cares about Page and Brin?
- cowsandmilk 3y agoWith controlling the majority of the votes, other shareholders have no ability to vote out the board. This isn’t about them being on the board. It is about their absolute control of saying who is on the board.
- throwaway09223 3y agoWhy would other shareholders vote out the board? There's no reason to think their interests wouldn't align with Page and Brin. Do you think Blackrock has substantially different motivations? Like, come on.
- danaris 3y agoLet me introduce you to a new concept. I call it "Not Everyone Is Motivated Solely By Money."
- throwaway09223 3y ago
- cced 3y agoHow can we account for inflation when we say market cap increased by $xB? How can we differentiate an actual increase in value as opposed to currency debasement?
- renewiltord 3y agoYou measure it as beta against something broad like the total market or the S&P500.
- cced 3y agoIf the currency gets debased and money flows into the market wouldn’t it also just debase the S&P500 equally?
- PeterisP 3y agoIt would debase the S&P500 equally, so any difference between Google's performance and S&P500 performance is clearly caused by something else then inflation/debasement/etc.
- runarberg 3y agoIt might just be me, but aren’t they all filthy rich, excessively profiting from their workers, handing them selves extreme wealth, while cutting their workers off from this wealth. This is exploitation. The owning class for the owning class. The rich benefit and the workers are left exploited. Larry, Sergey, Pichai, they are all participating and benefiting at the cost of the workers. Any in-fighting and rivalry is at best a spectacle. At the end of the day, they all go home to the wealth, earned by their workers but enjoyed by the owners, and the owners alone, whether you call them bosses or shareholders, they are all simply exploiters.
- b112 3y agoThe rich benefit and the workers are left exploited. Good grief. The highest paid workers on the planet, work for google. You should spread this communist blather at the proper place, coffee shops where workers aren't paid a living wage. Not people able to retire wealthy, is they invest their salary coreectly. Talk about entitlement.
- hgsgm 3y agoGoogle runs coffeeshops with low paid workers.
- ikiris 3y agoThis is why this country sucks, no one wants people to be paid adequately if it's more than they make. Talk about crab bucket mentality.
- Dylan16807 3y agoYou can have a standard for maximum fair wage without it being some kind of personal irrational gripe.
- ikiris 3y agoThose wages are what middle class is due to inflation. Stop wanting everyone to be as poor as you god damn. I want employees to make as much as they can, not all the wealth concentrate in a capital class. WTF is wrong with people?
- shtopointo 3y agoYes, and he gets paid royally to be the one that gets criticized.
- pas 3y agoAnd? How do we know how happy are they?
- rjzzleep 3y agoDo 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 blame. I don't think that Google's market cap increased by ~$890B because of Pichai, it increased despite him.
- MrSqueezles 3y agoYes. 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...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tmaly 3y agoYou can’t really blame Sundar, his job is to keep the shareholders happy.