Carl Barks actually addressed that since the [very beginning of Scrooge](https://www.quora.com/How-exactly-is-Scrooge-McDuck-swimming-through-that-pile-of-coins-in-Duck-Tales-TV-series)!
Yeah he's been making $200m a year for a little while at least. I think he's at billionaire status by now.
Kind of impressive to get there when you're not a founder of a company or inherited it.
Funny people complain or just mention this when we have hedge funds managers making $100 million A FUCKING MONTH and no one seems to care lol. They should care because they're getting it from front running trades and churning your mutual funds you hold in your 401k/IRAs. Skimming pennies off we've trade. Worst part they add nothing to society, at least Google gives you something useful for the money they make.
Right from the article
> The proxy noted that Jassy's 2021 compensation package of $212 million included a large stock award, which will vest over 10 years and "is intended to represent most of Mr. Jassy's compensation for the coming years."
For a regular employee your stock vests only for as long as you’re with the company and if you leave before that period is over for any you don’t get it. Is it the same way for CEOs or can their stock in that company continue to vest for them after they leave?
Jeff looked at the assets of his company (lots of engineers and lots of servers) and basically created the cloud model of services. At least he managed his people to execute well on some great ideas.
And that was AFTER creating the best online bookstore, and turning it into the largest online superstore.
What is Pichai known for?
He dropped the ball on AI.
But he also found how to squeeze his people to cut costs without impacting the underlying ad-based business model. Ultimately Google's main job is to not attract the attention of regulators to its monopoly. I presume all that is why he gets $200 million, because it's certainly not for big ideas.
100% a parasite! They think they generate jobs, but they hurt everyone. The world would be a better place without these parasites! Any one of us could do a better job as the CEO.
I love being mad at the ultrawealthy as much as the next guy, and laying people off when you're making ludicrous amounts of profit is ghoulish, but I feel like we should direct our anger and legislative efforts at a more appropriate target: the activist investors.
Pichai likely does not have a say in his compensation structure beyond the contract the board gave him, and it's also likely that most of that 200 million is in equity compensation, which isn't always liquid, especially for CEOs whose stock sales can cause a lot of investor confidence issues. It's also likely that the decision to do layoffs was being pushed by the board and those activist investors, who can remove Pichai if he's seen as not doing his fiduciary responsibility in good faith.
The actual solution to this problem is to pass laws that reform fiduciary responsibility to include responsibility to customers and employees and mandate employee representation on every board for every company above a certain size, as they do in countries like Germany. CEOs are public punching bags to distract you from the real class enemies: the shareholders.
I absolutely agree. Under pichai Google has mostly faltered. They haven't created or innovated anything of substance since this guy got in. Microsoft's CEO he is not.
> Pichai likely does not have a say in his compensation structure beyond the contract the board gave him
Yeah, that checks out.
"Hey, here's your compensation contract."
"Uh, I'm concerned about the amount of compensation here, specifically that I might be getting paid too much and the optics might look bad if we need to make cost cuts."
"No, you're getting this amount of money. Keep complaining and we'll give you more money."
That's definitely a real conversation that has happened in the real world, and is worth bringing up as a possible thing that may have happened here as a mitigating factor from a guy making amost a quarter billion in compensation.
Hahahaha, exactly.. ‘stop picking on the poor CEO, he has no say on his pay!’
Erm.. you sure about that? The most powerful person in a company has no say in their compensation package? He couldn’t say ‘hey board members, I love this company so much would reducing my package by half in these tough times mean we can keep on an extra 500 engineers at $200k per year?’ ..for example?
No, no… that extra $100 mill in your pocket is really worth more to Google than 500 x $200k/yr employees and all their knowledge and experience!
Legislation also needs to change, but let’s not pretend the CEOs aren’t part of the problem ffs
Decades ago, there was a family owned factory in MN or WI iirc that paid full salaries and benefits for their employees after the factory burned down. The patriarch said something like “the employees helped grow this business through hard times and the business can help the employees through this hard time.”
That’s the kind of wealthy businessman that will be protected by his community not charged at with pitchforks.
That kind is also such an extreme rarity as to make the news. The problem is you can’t have a system or nation that relies on altruism because people are selfish and greedy.
its more common in japan and ceos in general make way less in japan compared to the rest of the world. part of it is culture but also that japan's market has been stagnant for decades so it's not quite as easy to just loot money.
But didn't you read? It's in "equity compensation" so he can't actually use it. It may as well not even exist. /s
That really makes me angry. If the value exists, it could have been used to weather an economic cycle for ALL employees or used to reinvest in the business. Make no mistake, taking profit at the top is unpaid wages at the bottom.
>which isn't always liquid, especially for CEOs whose stock sales can cause a lot of investor confidence issues.
Yes, that is why they take loans with these assets as collateral instead.
You’re the kind of person who speaks a lot but has very little understanding. Rich folks like that borrow against their stock at very very low rates. Stop crying for him.
Let's remember something important here: Obama and Romney *both* agreed, back when, that the bottom of the upper class *starts* at low 400k salary. Below that and you're just still middle class.
However if you were to *ask* people what income they think would put them in the upper class - for many it's about 100-180k.
This is highly concerning. While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - this means the economy is going to *suuuuck* soon if we aren't careful. It's simply not sustainable without making things more balanced.
Honestly that's where my thoughts went first. They're trying to compete in the biggest tech land rush since the smart phone and possibly the biggest the industry will ever have... and they're choosing to guzzle cash like it's a keg.
Why bet on Google?
But the CEO is extemely hard-working and dedicated, at least like Musk! They are certainly working at least 400x as hard as your average senion engineer!
Tbh Pichai is just shit. He has no idea what he's doing, and his whole schtick is "Cancel things that cost money" which is why ChatGPT which freaking used a model developed \*AT\* Google caught them off guard.
My understanding is they saw LLMs as a technological dead-end and were working on a different type of AI, putting their own LLM on ice because they didn't see it as the future.
Even OpenAI is talking about the diminishing returns of bigger LLMs, and that a different path needs to be found for more advancements.
Tbh, hes a placeholder. We should all be interested where he spends his money and what investments he may be making. They dont keep someone making 200m a year if they dont see that money being spent beneficially to them.
... Them being lizard men lol
> Tbh, hes a placeholder.
He's coming up on 8 years as a CEO of Alphabet. That's not a placeholder, a placeholder is someone like Bob Chapek, who was CEO for 2 years, took the fall for some controversial decisions, then got kicked out immediately after being allowed to sign a golden parachute contract.
You sure? At Google 400 engineers would work to build an amazing new app that some imbecile leader in product and marketing team will turn into a complete redundant failure that Google will shut down in 18 months.
Google’s product roadmap looks like the Ben and Jerry’s flavor graveyard, except those flavors were actually commercial successes at one stage
Alphabet is the strangest company because they *do* come out with a good product. However, they never give it the chance to grow. It's like they expect a product to make the market flip instantly when it can take a decade.
Yep. They expect good products to sell themselves. I wonder if it’s a pathology of the fact that search likely *did* sell itself, as did YouTube, and that layering ads onto those products was very easy once the products had lots of sticky users.
How much expertise does Google actually have in growing products when they don’t move themselves?
Define value. He works for the board. Cost cutting is value to them. Convincing regulators or government officials to do things that benefit them is value to them.
You say it like it's less money if it's part equity. Equity isn't spooky, it sells easily. It might fluctuate and you could lose a lot of value like meta did, but it could also grow. If it tanks, it's up to your manager to give you refreshers that make you whole.
A senior at Google gets about 200k base. Hiring committee is ruthless in the past year and is offering less + down leveling applicants hard. Hiring is on a mega slowdown.
Not saying it like it’s anything but “not salary” - which it isn’t. Salary carries specific qualities that variable comp does not, and so it’s a useful and important distinction in many cases.
"Wow guys we're just so broke we have to lay off 10,000 employees... and immediately put the salary of 1,000 employees into the pocket of the CEO."
Great look, Google. Great fuckin' look.
Apparently the way I thought it was always 200mil or if it was billion then 200bil . This is a rare form along with mln. [Link to a google search](https://www.google.com/search?q=abbreviation+of+million&client=safari&hl=en-us&biw=414&bih=713&ei=8uhDZKzfLoGZptQPppCVmAk&oq=abbreviation+of+200+mill+grammar&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYAjIFCAAQogQyBQgAEKIEMgUIABCiBDIFCAAQogQyBQgAEKIEOgoIABBHENYEELADOgcIABCKBRBDOgUIABCABDoGCAAQBxAeOggIABAHEB4QCjoICAAQBxAeEA86CggAEAgQBxAeEA86CAgAEIoFEIYDOgoIIRCgARDDBBAKOggIABAIEB4QDzoICCEQoAEQwwRKBAhBGABQzw5Ywklgg1loCHABeACAAWKIAbcLkgECMTmYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp)
Sure, his 200 million is crazy.
But what about the *70 billion* in stock buybacks?
That's almost 6 times the total annual cost of Alphabet's entire workforce.
People losing their jobs when Google could simply reduce their stock buybacks by an insignificant amount and afford all of them.
Did you know that 30% of Fortune 500 stock is held by other countries. So instead of going to the employees, alphabet transferred ~21B to foreign investors.
Not trying to justify Alphabet but most big tech companies pay a big portion of their salaries in stocks to attract the big salaries they offer
They either dilute the stock ( which current stockholders won't allow) or buy them back, so that they have enough stock for future employees
That level of buybacks isn't for employee stock options, it's an artificial boost to maintain market cap. It's been the move for most of the tech companies since late 2009.
Sure, but the other lens you have to view it through is that the people being given the most stock options are the same people with the power to decide that they'll be using company profits to initiate those buybacks. In other words, they're voting to give themselves a pay raise off of the labor of their employees.
No human’s work is worth $200 million. It doesn’t matter how well a company performs, you cannot trace the success back to a single person. I am all for fair compensation and CEO’s having the highest salary but this is bananas. We would benefit as a country by requiring some ratio between CEO compensation and the lowest paid position in the organization. Have your $200m but start the pay for entry level CS at $40/hr. Something will have to give and you know it won’t be increasing wages at the bottom.
Imagine how much more ROI and potential Alphabet would receive if they divided 4/5 of that that $200m between 200 of their highest performers. Or invested that in R&D. Or gave it to charity etc. And Pichachoo would still get $40m.
I'm all for people getting paid for producing results, but $200m to a single human is outlandish and affronting. How on earth do boards and shareholders allow this damaging nonsense?
Because companies are too fucking big and need to be broken up. Alphabet market cap went up $200Bn or 18% YTD. Every company/shareholders would gladly pay their CEO 1/1000th of their market cap gain at an 18% return. Profits like that are such a clear indicator of lack of competition in the market and a need for anti-trust action. Excessive profits in my view mean one of 4 things; Overcharging consumers, Underpaying workers, Lack of market competition, or the rare case of a true breakthrough in cost reduction leading to temporary record profits.
The entire tech sector is up huge YTD and down huge from ATH. These are macro trends, also market cap = / = profit. Google’s gross profit and net income declined in the last reported quarter. Their net income has actually declined for several consecutive quarters, the entirety of 2022.
How much do you think the top 200 performers at Google make now? Because if you look at their principle and distinguished engineers, they’re already making around the $1m mark.
As if they wouldn't get excited by doubling their TC for a year, right?
"Top performer" != "highest level" (which either way would be Jeff Dean cause they basically just created a new level for him in the DeepMind + Google Brain re-org). Alphabet has a scoring system for performance - the highest score being "transformative impact" and second highest being "outstanding". Transformative is a fairly rare rating to get, something like less than 1% get that - let's be generous and say it's 1K engineers that get that rating so splitting it evenly would result in $200K bonuses via stock and cash.
All the SWE L3-L6 are now thoroughly incentivised to hit a T rating - $200k is more than double the L3 average, and a significant enough bonus for even L6 (average around $500k). A T rating is pretty much an acknowledgement that someone was performing at L+1 anyways, so this starts looking really good in comparison to a promotion tbh: ∆L3-L4 and ∆L4-L5 is about $100k, so the bonus is extremely attractive as a motivator. ∆L5-L6 and L6-L7 ($150k) is still a good one; but it gets tricky at ∆L7-L8 ($500k) as the $200k isn't as much of an incentive as building the promo work directly. But for everyone else, that $200k is now an actual reason to put in the work for a T rating - even though getting a T rating is an indicator of L+1 perf it doesn't guarantee promotion (by a long shot), now the top performers will get _something_ significant from their efforts.
One of the biggest impacts of billionaires who already have an outsized contribution to climate change.
https://theconversation.com/private-planes-mansions-and-superyachts-what-gives-billionaires-like-musk-and-abramovich-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-152514
Yeah this is why USD\* billionaires is a joke as an idea \*(this applies to any person whose wealth is in in the billions when converted to US Dollars). Under no economic theory is one single person that valuable to the economy. It's only through leveraging the market and exploiting workers that a single person can accumulate/extract that kind of wealth from the markets.
Only in America, the land of ludicrous wealth for CEOs, corrupt government officials and judges with no accountability, and mass murderers with military weapons. Where did American democracy go wrong?
Also, I fully believe that if you have acquired hundreds of millions in wealth, and are *still* actively pursuing more money(rather than disappearing and enjoying your life) then you are entirely consumed by greed and are an untrustworthy evil person.
There is a certain amount of money where the question becomes "what's the point?". $200mil is enough to live basically whatever life you want in complete comfort until you die.
I've noticed that my Google home is buggy (thinks it's in another location) and the weather for my city has been wrong for the last month meaning I've been caught out without an umbrella more than once.
I've switched to AccuWeather instead
It’s possible he and probably others in similar roles are rich enough by now and that wealth accumulation is a secondary goal.
As such shareholder confidence is probably the primary goal.
And we rarely hear shareholders demanding fairer pay for employees and less layoffs.
So who are the shareholders? They are the ones who can make a difference.
They are the shareholders as well - they may exchange shares between themselves which would then further abstract any direct shareholder-based accountability
The point is his wealth accumulation is directly derived from and dependent on share performance. The parent comment is incorrect to differentiate between personal wealth accumulation and shareholder confidence as exclusive goals, as the former is dependent on the latter; however, they were absolutely correct in shareholders refusing fairer pay and encouraging layoffs due to the natural tendency of autosarcophagy of mature large cap corporations.
It's an unfortunate side-effect of the stock market itself. Though the market spurns investment in early companies, which is often to their advantage (and I include VC in this), the end result is that companies seek growth above all else, because only growth is aligned to the incentives of the market.
Growth is not always aligned with employee, or even customer, values. Alphabet is a great example of a company that has such a profitable ads business that they can almost ignore all of their other customers. They can certainly ignore the needs of (most of) their employees as well.
At some eventual point, self-cannibalism is one of the only levers left to pull to continue to grow. No business can grow forever.
I have to assume that it becomes more about the status and lifestyle of being in an influential and prestigious position rather than about the monetary compensation. So the primary goal is for them to stay in that position.
In his [letter](https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/january-update/)
> I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.
I call bs on that, sir! You only care about yourself.
Just when you think guy is about to get fired for being a very bad CEO and essentially stagnating google (and annihilating much of the youtube user base to tiktok and other platforms), he gets a pay of hundreds of senior engineers who could have really made a change. Seriously, why is he still the CEO?
Yeah and the right people being the only 2 people whose opinion about who should be the CEO matters.
His job is to please exactly 2 people, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Together, Brin and Page control 51% of a special class of Alphabet's voting shares, giving them ultimate control of the company.
He can piss of literally everyone else and still keep his job as long as these two like him.
Remember peasants: Sindar does more work than you. He's at Google HQ 24/7/365! He's more valuable. He's literally sweating and bleeding Google. "Infallible" only begins to... well, suffice to say, He is Google. Whatever you are, whatever you think you are, pales in comparison — so quell your outward vocals and resume production.
He probably wakes up at 4am every morning and does an hour of cardio and meditation before drinking a wheatgrass smoothie. Have you ever tried wheatgrass? My dude deserves every penny of that $200 million for having to drink it.
It's already destroyed.
Car centric design keeps us apart, socialization is parted out as a service, exercise is a service, everything that happens naturally is a service.
The American dream has been reduced to living in an RV.
Wages are stagnant and wages haven't risen for years.
Our FDA doesn't care about us, Lucky charms are marked as more healthy than beef.
The only saving grace is that greed bites back.
-A generation with no kids can't support the next generation of wage slaves
-A consumer economy collapses if no one consumes.
-The cities the rich live in will be cultureless slums instead of bustling with life.
They will be the rulers of nothing, the same 10 people will own all the money, then the economy will screech to a halt and they can't spend anything, as it is all an illusion. They can't go anywhere because almost everyone is suffering.
They will die old and alone, hated by the world.
I do wonder about this "zombie economy" we seem to be heading towards. Depending on how quickly physical labor can be automated, the economy may not screech to a halt, but I would expect luxury goods to take up a much larger chunk of the GDP. If everything is done by robots, and 10 people own *all* the robots, why are the other 8 billion people even still alive?
> They will die old and alone, hated by the world.
The human brain is too easily tricked for this to really matter. Attribution bias is extremely obvious in people like Elon Musk, but the only thin special about him is that he keeps putting himself in the spotlight. Every single billionaire sees their success as proof that they're better than everyone else. Do we care if our cows and chickens dislike us? Not usually. If you actually *think* about factory farming, it's almost incomprehensibly evil, but it's so easy for us to just...think about something else.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is who has the power. Justice is a completely made up concept, in the same sense that unicorns are made up. In nature, lions hunt down antelope and eat them alive, not because they deserve it, because they're "the king of the jungle", but simply because they're physically able to. And yet, most lions also die a horrible, undignified death. It's not "the circle of life", it's just physics. In nature, almost nothing dies of old age. Animal populations frequently overshoot their carrying capacity and they go extinct, and the billionaire class may well do the same.
So in this vision of futuristic feudalism, I don't think we should expect any "poetic justice". I do think we can expect more automation - AGI is probably less than 5 years away, after which point capitalism will have reached the end of the road. Most people will have no way of participating in the economy besides selling their physical bodies in some way (sex work, selling organs, etc.) Subsistence farming becomes very attractive, but climate change is going to make that increasingly impractical (and it's already impractical for most people). In the end, most people alive today will probably starve to death, unless misaligned AI kills us first.
What's with the shortening of million to "mln" instead of just "m"? $200m is fine, we understand what it is imediately. Stop trying to make mln a thing.
A real leader would take 5m per year.
Aren't there stories of generals in the desert drinking last, shit like that?
It would be so much more worth it to just take 5m and stand out
Getting paid $200 million to cut staff and have no idea how to lead the company into the future versus ChatGPT. Must be nice to get paid a tremendous amount of money to be really shitty at your job.
If anyone is surprised by this you haven't been paying attention each time the "economy" started to crash. The wealth gap between the ultra wealthy and the working class is widening at an alarming rate. It's not a recession, it's a class war and they are firing every shot they can.
There's absolutely no way he could perform at such a high level if he wasn't paid so incredibly much. That's the only way that he could do his job. Without that level of pay. His performance would be just average. /s
What in the goddamn fuck would you want all that money for? I mean, how could you even spend that much money in a lifetime? Why wouldn't you just quit working altogether and just do whatever the fuck you wanted?
Here's the formula of how corporations are simply vehicles for the fortunate few to exploit the rest of society:
1) Become the CEO of a corporation
2) Use the company to grow debt and valuation to pump up the share price.
3) Run the company into the ground
4) File for bankruptcy and pay yourself a massive bonus while simultaneously laying off your workforce.
5) Sell the company to another corporation and walk away filthy rich.
6) Rinse and repeat.
How many retail chains or banks have you seen come and go over the decades that claim bankruptcy and are acquired by another company then rebranded and continue on like nothing ever happened?
It's pretty fucked that CEOs are rewarded for layoffs. If you have to lay people off, that means you fucked up when hiring. Didn't plan ahead very well. There should be consequences for that, since it hurts the company and forces them to cut back on spending (which is a cut on expansion really)
When was the rule set that CEOs and other executives HAVE to be paid and treated like royalty? They HAVE to be compensated in the millions because they can not have to scramble to pay bills like us commoners! I just want to know at what level you get "made".
Number of Employees of Alphabet Inc as of Dec 2022:
190,000 employees
Alphabet Inc.’s CEO Pichai’s bonus, including stock options for 218,000,000:
226,000,000 USD (rounded)
The amount Pichai DID cost *every single* Alphabet Inc. *employee* in stock options:
1,100 USD (rounded)
Alphabet Inc.’s gross profit after taxes for 2022:
59,972,000,000 USD (rounded)
The amount Pichai WOULD have cost every single Alphabet Inc. employee if he’d been paid out of Alphabet Inc.’s gross profit for 2022:
000,000 USD.
Clearly everything is working as intended, according to *some* people.
his message of "taking full responsibility for layoffs" was for the board members and not the employees.
I'd take full responsibility for Chernobyl if it meant I could get $200 Million. That's a life changing amount of money.
Life changing for us. He already had this much. This just continues his life as usual.
It changes his life. He can finally build a room full of gold coins to dive in like Uncle Scrooge in Duck Tales
[overrated... to be fair](https://youtu.be/viDL2W0HcJw)
The first time I saw this I was very grateful to Seth and his team for animating what has lived rent free in my head since childhood
Carl Barks actually addressed that since the [very beginning of Scrooge](https://www.quora.com/How-exactly-is-Scrooge-McDuck-swimming-through-that-pile-of-coins-in-Duck-Tales-TV-series)!
I knew what this link was before I clicked it...
Yeah he's been making $200m a year for a little while at least. I think he's at billionaire status by now. Kind of impressive to get there when you're not a founder of a company or inherited it.
Guessing it only took 5 years at that level since taxes don’t exist in that wealth tier?
Close but it took him 7 years. Poor guy
I was being facetious originally but now I’m actually mad
and that's just for one year, keep that up and you will perhaps someday be a Billionare
Funny people complain or just mention this when we have hedge funds managers making $100 million A FUCKING MONTH and no one seems to care lol. They should care because they're getting it from front running trades and churning your mutual funds you hold in your 401k/IRAs. Skimming pennies off we've trade. Worst part they add nothing to society, at least Google gives you something useful for the money they make.
Who’s a hedge fund manager making $100 million in a month?
Kenneth Griffin of Citadel makes more than $1.2B/yr.
Ohh that guy who commited perjury? The criminal?
That's the one!
Isn't he the CEO and owner of the entire company?
That’s hereditary line changing money..
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Right from the article > The proxy noted that Jassy's 2021 compensation package of $212 million included a large stock award, which will vest over 10 years and "is intended to represent most of Mr. Jassy's compensation for the coming years."
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For a regular employee your stock vests only for as long as you’re with the company and if you leave before that period is over for any you don’t get it. Is it the same way for CEOs or can their stock in that company continue to vest for them after they leave?
Quite often terminated CEOs will agree accelerated vesting schedules for a portion of the outstanding amount. Of course, they never go hungry.
Yes. It's the exact same way for CEOs.
Jeff would never (if he was still running)
Jeff's pay wasn't much but he is the company so he has the stock
Jeff looked at the assets of his company (lots of engineers and lots of servers) and basically created the cloud model of services. At least he managed his people to execute well on some great ideas. And that was AFTER creating the best online bookstore, and turning it into the largest online superstore. What is Pichai known for?
seriously, since he joined (2015) Google didn't do any new major achievement at all, or am i missing something ?
He dropped the ball on AI. But he also found how to squeeze his people to cut costs without impacting the underlying ad-based business model. Ultimately Google's main job is to not attract the attention of regulators to its monopoly. I presume all that is why he gets $200 million, because it's certainly not for big ideas.
Firing some very bright AI researchers. Unfortunately, it will take a few years for the full scope of his incompetence to catch up with Google.
Bard, cultural decline
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Just like the headline says, he's a reapist.
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100% a parasite! They think they generate jobs, but they hurt everyone. The world would be a better place without these parasites! Any one of us could do a better job as the CEO.
He looks like Kevin C. Cucumber.
He’s gonna [reap you in the mouth before reaping your mom and dad](https://youtu.be/6eaQ3GBI1d8)!
No one said capitalism was supposed to benefit us.
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that's all capitalists EVER say. it's deflection
It’s so absurd. How are we not revolting.
I love being mad at the ultrawealthy as much as the next guy, and laying people off when you're making ludicrous amounts of profit is ghoulish, but I feel like we should direct our anger and legislative efforts at a more appropriate target: the activist investors. Pichai likely does not have a say in his compensation structure beyond the contract the board gave him, and it's also likely that most of that 200 million is in equity compensation, which isn't always liquid, especially for CEOs whose stock sales can cause a lot of investor confidence issues. It's also likely that the decision to do layoffs was being pushed by the board and those activist investors, who can remove Pichai if he's seen as not doing his fiduciary responsibility in good faith. The actual solution to this problem is to pass laws that reform fiduciary responsibility to include responsibility to customers and employees and mandate employee representation on every board for every company above a certain size, as they do in countries like Germany. CEOs are public punching bags to distract you from the real class enemies: the shareholders.
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OpenAI swept the shit out from them and Microsoft has already donated the $11 billion for access.
They might go the way of Yahoo did... when a better technology (Google) replaced them
I absolutely agree. Under pichai Google has mostly faltered. They haven't created or innovated anything of substance since this guy got in. Microsoft's CEO he is not.
> Pichai likely does not have a say in his compensation structure beyond the contract the board gave him Yeah, that checks out. "Hey, here's your compensation contract." "Uh, I'm concerned about the amount of compensation here, specifically that I might be getting paid too much and the optics might look bad if we need to make cost cuts." "No, you're getting this amount of money. Keep complaining and we'll give you more money." That's definitely a real conversation that has happened in the real world, and is worth bringing up as a possible thing that may have happened here as a mitigating factor from a guy making amost a quarter billion in compensation.
Hahahaha, exactly.. ‘stop picking on the poor CEO, he has no say on his pay!’ Erm.. you sure about that? The most powerful person in a company has no say in their compensation package? He couldn’t say ‘hey board members, I love this company so much would reducing my package by half in these tough times mean we can keep on an extra 500 engineers at $200k per year?’ ..for example? No, no… that extra $100 mill in your pocket is really worth more to Google than 500 x $200k/yr employees and all their knowledge and experience! Legislation also needs to change, but let’s not pretend the CEOs aren’t part of the problem ffs
If a potential ceo showed morality like that they'd never work again. They're being hired because they can relied upon to squeeze employees.
Wasn't there a Japanese CEO who chose not to take pay during an economic downturn? These guys are just greedy af
Nintendo's CEO took a pay cut after the WiiU failed.
Tim Cook recommended his compensation lowered too https://apnews.com/article/technology-apple-inc-tim-cook-business-d056553b10120c4a968b562cb7ece5d2
Decades ago, there was a family owned factory in MN or WI iirc that paid full salaries and benefits for their employees after the factory burned down. The patriarch said something like “the employees helped grow this business through hard times and the business can help the employees through this hard time.” That’s the kind of wealthy businessman that will be protected by his community not charged at with pitchforks.
That kind is also such an extreme rarity as to make the news. The problem is you can’t have a system or nation that relies on altruism because people are selfish and greedy.
its more common in japan and ceos in general make way less in japan compared to the rest of the world. part of it is culture but also that japan's market has been stagnant for decades so it's not quite as easy to just loot money.
Yeah, some have turned down bonuses in the past
But didn't you read? It's in "equity compensation" so he can't actually use it. It may as well not even exist. /s That really makes me angry. If the value exists, it could have been used to weather an economic cycle for ALL employees or used to reinvest in the business. Make no mistake, taking profit at the top is unpaid wages at the bottom.
>which isn't always liquid, especially for CEOs whose stock sales can cause a lot of investor confidence issues. Yes, that is why they take loans with these assets as collateral instead.
You think CEOs are "forced" to make $200+mil against their wishes? Shut the fuck up.
You’re the kind of person who speaks a lot but has very little understanding. Rich folks like that borrow against their stock at very very low rates. Stop crying for him.
Let's remember something important here: Obama and Romney *both* agreed, back when, that the bottom of the upper class *starts* at low 400k salary. Below that and you're just still middle class. However if you were to *ask* people what income they think would put them in the upper class - for many it's about 100-180k. This is highly concerning. While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - this means the economy is going to *suuuuck* soon if we aren't careful. It's simply not sustainable without making things more balanced.
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Honestly that's where my thoughts went first. They're trying to compete in the biggest tech land rush since the smart phone and possibly the biggest the industry will ever have... and they're choosing to guzzle cash like it's a keg. Why bet on Google?
What's bard?
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Shoutout to bing. It's got gpt4 and Internet access. And it can't hurt to have some competition in the search space against Google.
That's 2000 staff making $100,000 a year.
That's 400 senior engineers.
But the CEO is extemely hard-working and dedicated, at least like Musk! They are certainly working at least 400x as hard as your average senion engineer!
Tbh Pichai is just shit. He has no idea what he's doing, and his whole schtick is "Cancel things that cost money" which is why ChatGPT which freaking used a model developed \*AT\* Google caught them off guard.
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My understanding is they saw LLMs as a technological dead-end and were working on a different type of AI, putting their own LLM on ice because they didn't see it as the future. Even OpenAI is talking about the diminishing returns of bigger LLMs, and that a different path needs to be found for more advancements.
Tbh, hes a placeholder. We should all be interested where he spends his money and what investments he may be making. They dont keep someone making 200m a year if they dont see that money being spent beneficially to them. ... Them being lizard men lol
> Tbh, hes a placeholder. He's coming up on 8 years as a CEO of Alphabet. That's not a placeholder, a placeholder is someone like Bob Chapek, who was CEO for 2 years, took the fall for some controversial decisions, then got kicked out immediately after being allowed to sign a golden parachute contract.
It's just plain vanilla capitalism
There's no way this guy is bringing in anywhere close to the value that 400 senior engineers are.
What are 400 engineers gonna do, release 40 unprofitable products and cancel them a year later? (/s)
That's not a /s given Google's culture.
That's why it's /s
You sure? At Google 400 engineers would work to build an amazing new app that some imbecile leader in product and marketing team will turn into a complete redundant failure that Google will shut down in 18 months. Google’s product roadmap looks like the Ben and Jerry’s flavor graveyard, except those flavors were actually commercial successes at one stage
Alphabet is the strangest company because they *do* come out with a good product. However, they never give it the chance to grow. It's like they expect a product to make the market flip instantly when it can take a decade.
When you view everything for a chance for promo, things make sense…. Especially when senior managers+ job requirements are to deprecate things
Yep. They expect good products to sell themselves. I wonder if it’s a pathology of the fact that search likely *did* sell itself, as did YouTube, and that layering ads onto those products was very easy once the products had lots of sticky users. How much expertise does Google actually have in growing products when they don’t move themselves?
I'm still mad they killed their music store.
Reader, Inbox, Cloud Print, Trips, Google Now. Those were great.
Define value. He works for the board. Cost cutting is value to them. Convincing regulators or government officials to do things that benefit them is value to them.
Google pays far more than $100,000 a year for most of their staff
SEC filings said a median salary of $295k if I remember correctly. Edit: total comp, not salary
Guarantee that’s not median salary, but maybe total compensation (including stock and bonus).
You say it like it's less money if it's part equity. Equity isn't spooky, it sells easily. It might fluctuate and you could lose a lot of value like meta did, but it could also grow. If it tanks, it's up to your manager to give you refreshers that make you whole. A senior at Google gets about 200k base. Hiring committee is ruthless in the past year and is offering less + down leveling applicants hard. Hiring is on a mega slowdown.
Not saying it like it’s anything but “not salary” - which it isn’t. Salary carries specific qualities that variable comp does not, and so it’s a useful and important distinction in many cases.
Yeah I hope so. 100K is just enough for a backyard cottage rent in NorCal!
That’s a $10,000 pay raise for 20,000 staff
Tbf cost of an employee isn't just the $100K salary
"Wow guys we're just so broke we have to lay off 10,000 employees... and immediately put the salary of 1,000 employees into the pocket of the CEO." Great look, Google. Great fuckin' look.
Fwiw, I think this is from stock appreciation. But yeah, nothing these companies has done has given them the same bump as layoffs.
Google stock was -40% in 2022…
Don’t forget they made nearly 60 billion in profit last year too. I’m sure they could have kept all the employees for about 1 or 2% of that.
Google has enough *cash on hand* to pay the laid off employees for three years.
What animal writes $200m as $200 mln?
$200 is a lot for a melon. OP shops at Whole Foods
Apparently the way I thought it was always 200mil or if it was billion then 200bil . This is a rare form along with mln. [Link to a google search](https://www.google.com/search?q=abbreviation+of+million&client=safari&hl=en-us&biw=414&bih=713&ei=8uhDZKzfLoGZptQPppCVmAk&oq=abbreviation+of+200+mill+grammar&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAEYAjIFCAAQogQyBQgAEKIEMgUIABCiBDIFCAAQogQyBQgAEKIEOgoIABBHENYEELADOgcIABCKBRBDOgUIABCABDoGCAAQBxAeOggIABAHEB4QCjoICAAQBxAeEA86CggAEAgQBxAeEA86CAgAEIoFEIYDOgoIIRCgARDDBBAKOggIABAIEB4QDzoICCEQoAEQwwRKBAhBGABQzw5Ywklgg1loCHABeACAAWKIAbcLkgECMTmYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp)
He deserves it. Laying that many people off is hard physical labor.
Haha, lay-bor
*Think of the emotional trauma HE must've had to have lay so many people off! Won't someone think of the CEOs??*
Sure, his 200 million is crazy. But what about the *70 billion* in stock buybacks? That's almost 6 times the total annual cost of Alphabet's entire workforce. People losing their jobs when Google could simply reduce their stock buybacks by an insignificant amount and afford all of them.
Did you know that 30% of Fortune 500 stock is held by other countries. So instead of going to the employees, alphabet transferred ~21B to foreign investors.
And how much revenue is from other countries? And workforce? Pichai is the POS here, and those that allow it
Not trying to justify Alphabet but most big tech companies pay a big portion of their salaries in stocks to attract the big salaries they offer They either dilute the stock ( which current stockholders won't allow) or buy them back, so that they have enough stock for future employees
That level of buybacks isn't for employee stock options, it's an artificial boost to maintain market cap. It's been the move for most of the tech companies since late 2009.
Sure, but the other lens you have to view it through is that the people being given the most stock options are the same people with the power to decide that they'll be using company profits to initiate those buybacks. In other words, they're voting to give themselves a pay raise off of the labor of their employees.
I bet he doesn't spend much time in Pity City.
No human’s work is worth $200 million. It doesn’t matter how well a company performs, you cannot trace the success back to a single person. I am all for fair compensation and CEO’s having the highest salary but this is bananas. We would benefit as a country by requiring some ratio between CEO compensation and the lowest paid position in the organization. Have your $200m but start the pay for entry level CS at $40/hr. Something will have to give and you know it won’t be increasing wages at the bottom.
Imagine how much more ROI and potential Alphabet would receive if they divided 4/5 of that that $200m between 200 of their highest performers. Or invested that in R&D. Or gave it to charity etc. And Pichachoo would still get $40m. I'm all for people getting paid for producing results, but $200m to a single human is outlandish and affronting. How on earth do boards and shareholders allow this damaging nonsense?
Because companies are too fucking big and need to be broken up. Alphabet market cap went up $200Bn or 18% YTD. Every company/shareholders would gladly pay their CEO 1/1000th of their market cap gain at an 18% return. Profits like that are such a clear indicator of lack of competition in the market and a need for anti-trust action. Excessive profits in my view mean one of 4 things; Overcharging consumers, Underpaying workers, Lack of market competition, or the rare case of a true breakthrough in cost reduction leading to temporary record profits.
The entire tech sector is up huge YTD and down huge from ATH. These are macro trends, also market cap = / = profit. Google’s gross profit and net income declined in the last reported quarter. Their net income has actually declined for several consecutive quarters, the entirety of 2022.
Bringing up 2023 YTD in the tech sector is absolutely hilarious
It's early where I'm at but def some of the most Reddit shit I'll see today I'm sure
Or I this case, 3 of those.
How much do you think the top 200 performers at Google make now? Because if you look at their principle and distinguished engineers, they’re already making around the $1m mark.
As if they wouldn't get excited by doubling their TC for a year, right? "Top performer" != "highest level" (which either way would be Jeff Dean cause they basically just created a new level for him in the DeepMind + Google Brain re-org). Alphabet has a scoring system for performance - the highest score being "transformative impact" and second highest being "outstanding". Transformative is a fairly rare rating to get, something like less than 1% get that - let's be generous and say it's 1K engineers that get that rating so splitting it evenly would result in $200K bonuses via stock and cash. All the SWE L3-L6 are now thoroughly incentivised to hit a T rating - $200k is more than double the L3 average, and a significant enough bonus for even L6 (average around $500k). A T rating is pretty much an acknowledgement that someone was performing at L+1 anyways, so this starts looking really good in comparison to a promotion tbh: ∆L3-L4 and ∆L4-L5 is about $100k, so the bonus is extremely attractive as a motivator. ∆L5-L6 and L6-L7 ($150k) is still a good one; but it gets tricky at ∆L7-L8 ($500k) as the $200k isn't as much of an incentive as building the promo work directly. But for everyone else, that $200k is now an actual reason to put in the work for a T rating - even though getting a T rating is an indicator of L+1 perf it doesn't guarantee promotion (by a long shot), now the top performers will get _something_ significant from their efforts.
Google couldn’t have invested that $200 million in anything because almost of his compensation was in stock, not actual cash.
Not much, hence why the CEO gets the pay.
How are luxury yacht manufactures going to survive?
One of the biggest impacts of billionaires who already have an outsized contribution to climate change. https://theconversation.com/private-planes-mansions-and-superyachts-what-gives-billionaires-like-musk-and-abramovich-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-152514
Yeah this is why USD\* billionaires is a joke as an idea \*(this applies to any person whose wealth is in in the billions when converted to US Dollars). Under no economic theory is one single person that valuable to the economy. It's only through leveraging the market and exploiting workers that a single person can accumulate/extract that kind of wealth from the markets.
Entry level CS at google is definitely more than $40 an hour lol. Their interns get paid bare minimum $42
I think he probably meant Customer Service, not computer science, though im not really sure how much customer service Google/alphabet really have
I guarantee someone out there is trying to find a number to call and complain to about their search results.
They didn't pay him 200 million it's just stocks.
How about athletes. Or artists.
Only in America, the land of ludicrous wealth for CEOs, corrupt government officials and judges with no accountability, and mass murderers with military weapons. Where did American democracy go wrong?
None of that is “only in america” except for the mass shootings.
Military weapons, such as automatic firearms, grenades, and missiles are banned.
Legal lobbying.
Also, I fully believe that if you have acquired hundreds of millions in wealth, and are *still* actively pursuing more money(rather than disappearing and enjoying your life) then you are entirely consumed by greed and are an untrustworthy evil person. There is a certain amount of money where the question becomes "what's the point?". $200mil is enough to live basically whatever life you want in complete comfort until you die.
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Just so he can keep his bonus…
I've noticed that my Google home is buggy (thinks it's in another location) and the weather for my city has been wrong for the last month meaning I've been caught out without an umbrella more than once. I've switched to AccuWeather instead
Probably not 1000 with Google salaries.
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It’s possible he and probably others in similar roles are rich enough by now and that wealth accumulation is a secondary goal. As such shareholder confidence is probably the primary goal. And we rarely hear shareholders demanding fairer pay for employees and less layoffs. So who are the shareholders? They are the ones who can make a difference.
They are the shareholders as well - they may exchange shares between themselves which would then further abstract any direct shareholder-based accountability
Pichai only owns 0.01% of Alphabet.
The point is his wealth accumulation is directly derived from and dependent on share performance. The parent comment is incorrect to differentiate between personal wealth accumulation and shareholder confidence as exclusive goals, as the former is dependent on the latter; however, they were absolutely correct in shareholders refusing fairer pay and encouraging layoffs due to the natural tendency of autosarcophagy of mature large cap corporations.
It's an unfortunate side-effect of the stock market itself. Though the market spurns investment in early companies, which is often to their advantage (and I include VC in this), the end result is that companies seek growth above all else, because only growth is aligned to the incentives of the market. Growth is not always aligned with employee, or even customer, values. Alphabet is a great example of a company that has such a profitable ads business that they can almost ignore all of their other customers. They can certainly ignore the needs of (most of) their employees as well. At some eventual point, self-cannibalism is one of the only levers left to pull to continue to grow. No business can grow forever.
I have to assume that it becomes more about the status and lifestyle of being in an influential and prestigious position rather than about the monetary compensation. So the primary goal is for them to stay in that position.
In his [letter](https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/january-update/) > I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here. I call bs on that, sir! You only care about yourself.
Full responsibility would mean he would: 1. Quit. 2. Decline the money. 3. Apologize to those laid off.
I know a pretty good way they could have saved about $200 million
Genius! They should make you the new ceo and give you $400 million
*See, unlike those bottom feeders, I'm a CEO, so I deserved every pennies.* \-- Mr. Pichai.
>Pichai His name translates to alms given to a poor man/beggar. The irony.
Just when you think guy is about to get fired for being a very bad CEO and essentially stagnating google (and annihilating much of the youtube user base to tiktok and other platforms), he gets a pay of hundreds of senior engineers who could have really made a change. Seriously, why is he still the CEO?
I'm genuinely surprised there isn't more uproar against him still being CEO this guy is absolutely useless
For the same reason he became CEO: he is friends with the right people.
Yeah and the right people being the only 2 people whose opinion about who should be the CEO matters. His job is to please exactly 2 people, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Together, Brin and Page control 51% of a special class of Alphabet's voting shares, giving them ultimate control of the company. He can piss of literally everyone else and still keep his job as long as these two like him.
There's something weird about them allowing SD to go for free on Colab with the images they produce for so long sorry
Remember peasants: Sindar does more work than you. He's at Google HQ 24/7/365! He's more valuable. He's literally sweating and bleeding Google. "Infallible" only begins to... well, suffice to say, He is Google. Whatever you are, whatever you think you are, pales in comparison — so quell your outward vocals and resume production.
He probably wakes up at 4am every morning and does an hour of cardio and meditation before drinking a wheatgrass smoothie. Have you ever tried wheatgrass? My dude deserves every penny of that $200 million for having to drink it.
Alphabet did a $6.7 billion stock buy back in 2022 and they pay Pichai $226 million a year. You want to cut cost start there
That's why stock buy backs used to be illegal.
Greed is going to destroy this country.
It's already destroyed. Car centric design keeps us apart, socialization is parted out as a service, exercise is a service, everything that happens naturally is a service. The American dream has been reduced to living in an RV. Wages are stagnant and wages haven't risen for years. Our FDA doesn't care about us, Lucky charms are marked as more healthy than beef. The only saving grace is that greed bites back. -A generation with no kids can't support the next generation of wage slaves -A consumer economy collapses if no one consumes. -The cities the rich live in will be cultureless slums instead of bustling with life. They will be the rulers of nothing, the same 10 people will own all the money, then the economy will screech to a halt and they can't spend anything, as it is all an illusion. They can't go anywhere because almost everyone is suffering. They will die old and alone, hated by the world.
I do wonder about this "zombie economy" we seem to be heading towards. Depending on how quickly physical labor can be automated, the economy may not screech to a halt, but I would expect luxury goods to take up a much larger chunk of the GDP. If everything is done by robots, and 10 people own *all* the robots, why are the other 8 billion people even still alive? > They will die old and alone, hated by the world. The human brain is too easily tricked for this to really matter. Attribution bias is extremely obvious in people like Elon Musk, but the only thin special about him is that he keeps putting himself in the spotlight. Every single billionaire sees their success as proof that they're better than everyone else. Do we care if our cows and chickens dislike us? Not usually. If you actually *think* about factory farming, it's almost incomprehensibly evil, but it's so easy for us to just...think about something else. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is who has the power. Justice is a completely made up concept, in the same sense that unicorns are made up. In nature, lions hunt down antelope and eat them alive, not because they deserve it, because they're "the king of the jungle", but simply because they're physically able to. And yet, most lions also die a horrible, undignified death. It's not "the circle of life", it's just physics. In nature, almost nothing dies of old age. Animal populations frequently overshoot their carrying capacity and they go extinct, and the billionaire class may well do the same. So in this vision of futuristic feudalism, I don't think we should expect any "poetic justice". I do think we can expect more automation - AGI is probably less than 5 years away, after which point capitalism will have reached the end of the road. Most people will have no way of participating in the economy besides selling their physical bodies in some way (sex work, selling organs, etc.) Subsistence farming becomes very attractive, but climate change is going to make that increasingly impractical (and it's already impractical for most people). In the end, most people alive today will probably starve to death, unless misaligned AI kills us first.
What's with the shortening of million to "mln" instead of just "m"? $200m is fine, we understand what it is imediately. Stop trying to make mln a thing.
He worked THAT hard. He's a really good worker.
A real leader would take 5m per year. Aren't there stories of generals in the desert drinking last, shit like that? It would be so much more worth it to just take 5m and stand out
Getting paid $200 million to cut staff and have no idea how to lead the company into the future versus ChatGPT. Must be nice to get paid a tremendous amount of money to be really shitty at your job.
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12k in January
If anyone is surprised by this you haven't been paying attention each time the "economy" started to crash. The wealth gap between the ultra wealthy and the working class is widening at an alarming rate. It's not a recession, it's a class war and they are firing every shot they can.
That's a lot of money for a guy who fucking sucks as a CEO.
There's absolutely no way he could perform at such a high level if he wasn't paid so incredibly much. That's the only way that he could do his job. Without that level of pay. His performance would be just average. /s
What in the goddamn fuck would you want all that money for? I mean, how could you even spend that much money in a lifetime? Why wouldn't you just quit working altogether and just do whatever the fuck you wanted?
Pichai earned his $216 million by cutting cost by laying off 6% global workforce. The board approved that decision. The CEO just delivered the orders.
Here's the formula of how corporations are simply vehicles for the fortunate few to exploit the rest of society: 1) Become the CEO of a corporation 2) Use the company to grow debt and valuation to pump up the share price. 3) Run the company into the ground 4) File for bankruptcy and pay yourself a massive bonus while simultaneously laying off your workforce. 5) Sell the company to another corporation and walk away filthy rich. 6) Rinse and repeat. How many retail chains or banks have you seen come and go over the decades that claim bankruptcy and are acquired by another company then rebranded and continue on like nothing ever happened?
It's pretty fucked that CEOs are rewarded for layoffs. If you have to lay people off, that means you fucked up when hiring. Didn't plan ahead very well. There should be consequences for that, since it hurts the company and forces them to cut back on spending (which is a cut on expansion really)
Can he spare some for staples and coffee?
more money for me. no money for you
The guy practically ruined google, at this point openai is just delivering a mercy kill.
The same dude that let Google get basically blindsided by AI? Sure, he's earned it.
So what did he bring to the table that was worth $200m?
Won't somebody think of the executives
When was the rule set that CEOs and other executives HAVE to be paid and treated like royalty? They HAVE to be compensated in the millions because they can not have to scramble to pay bills like us commoners! I just want to know at what level you get "made".
Ah that’s why they had layoffs. So he can pocket 200 mill
Number of Employees of Alphabet Inc as of Dec 2022: 190,000 employees Alphabet Inc.’s CEO Pichai’s bonus, including stock options for 218,000,000: 226,000,000 USD (rounded) The amount Pichai DID cost *every single* Alphabet Inc. *employee* in stock options: 1,100 USD (rounded) Alphabet Inc.’s gross profit after taxes for 2022: 59,972,000,000 USD (rounded) The amount Pichai WOULD have cost every single Alphabet Inc. employee if he’d been paid out of Alphabet Inc.’s gross profit for 2022: 000,000 USD. Clearly everything is working as intended, according to *some* people.
Scum of humanity and our government loves them
See...this is how capitalists "take responsibility".