Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs

Got to give it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for having their cake and also eating it.<p>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&#x2F;approved this compensation.<p>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&#x2F;stock price of the company.<p>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.

In comparison, Nadella is a bit above $50M which is gross underpay considering how Ballmer left the company. Nadella has been the best CEO in the past decade. In fact, you could argue that he’s the best investment manager in the past decade since MSFT is now a giant technology conglomerate. Better than Berkshire.

I said this in another thread complaining about Pichai:<p>Google<p>2019 Net Income - $36B<p>2022 Net Income - $60B<p>If was part of the workforce I would be even more pissed just at the company itself. Laying off 12k and cuts in perks after $60B in net income.

The $226M is over the next 3 years, so it&#x27;s approximately $75M&#x2F;yr. For comparison, this is a <i>decrease</i> from his last grant of $281M in 2019, or $94M&#x2F;yr. It&#x27;s a <i>20% cut in salary for the next three years in a row</i>.<p>For comparison, Tim Cook made $99M in 2022, and was cut to $49M &quot;target compensation&quot; in 2023 (but he can actually make more, e.g. his 2022 wound up 18% higher than target), and the following 2 years remain to be decided.<p>So sure Googlers can be angry, but it seems like the message is getting lost that this is compensation for 3 years (not 1) and a meaningful decrease (not increase). It could well wind up being an even bigger decrease than Tim Cook&#x27;s over the next 3 years, yet Tim is getting praise for taking a cut while people are angry at Sundar?<p>Seems like the real problem might be that Google makes 3-year CEO grants that people then totally misunderstand.

So if they paid him 0$ they could have kept 500-1,000 out of those 12,000 employees? And that&#x27;s assuming none of his pay was redistributed to any of the employees they kept. That&#x27;s the thing with these gigantic numbers, they always look really impressive, but when you divide them by the actual number of employees involved it&#x27;s not a huge per-employee benefit. Not saying it&#x27;s fair, just that if you stare starry eyed at the number thinking cutting out the top would make a huge difference in you&#x27;re life, you&#x27;re mistaken.

&quot;It&#x27;s almost like they care more about shareholders than Googlers.&quot;<p>The C-suite works for the board and the major shareholders. They&#x27;ll immediately throw workers under the bus if told to do so. That&#x27;s their job. They&#x27;ll be fired if they don&#x27;t. They knew it from day one.

Tech workers better hope that rate hikes stop soon, otherwise CEOs might take Musk as inspiration.<p>Almost everybody agrees that his actions are extreme and often stupendous. But that&#x27;s not the point. The point is that he fired 80% and Twitter is still operational.<p>Also, Twitter 5 times smaller than before seems to fairly rapidly change&#x2F;add features, whilst old Twitter never shipped anything.<p>Nobody should adapt these crazy tactics, but it&#x27;s an (extreme) demonstration of fluff and discovering core value. You don&#x27;t have to go Musk mode, but Musk demonstrated the effect of a decimation of the work force.<p>That suggests to CEOs that one might go half-Musk mode. There&#x27;s a lot of room to cut when you previously hired entire villages each year. Not 80%. But 30%? Why not. 40%? Maybe.<p>Consider Facebook&#x27;s &quot;year of optimization&quot;. They hired so many people that it takes them a year to figure our what all these people are even doing. What you have normalized as &quot;normal times&quot; were in fact dot com boom times.

Google’s board has spoken, and the price of their stock today matters more than the company’s future.<p>If I was an employee who cared about Google’s vision, or what other services they could offer the world, the I’d probably be angry at the squandered opportunity too.

As an employee of a publically traded software company, I can never understand why people feel entitled to their job. I sell my time to my employer and either party can back out of that transaction

What is the actual point of giving <i>anyone</i> $226m in pay? How would that motivate them to deliver any more..? Ratio of CEO:staff pay at 1000:1!

While I agree that CEOs are overpayed, I think the same applies to software engineers. Software Engineering has been a pay&#x2F;perk bubble for years that was due for a correction, and like when Elon cut the free gourmet lunches and coffees for Twitter staff, I&#x27;m sure the Google engineers will survive.<p>Meanwhile Google&#x27;s &quot;raters&quot;, the army of workers who do the hard work of moderating and testing Google&#x27;s platforms are getting paid crumbs in comparison: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;1166059832&#x2F;googles-ghost-workers-are-asking-for-labor-rights" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;1166059832&#x2F;googles-ghost-work...</a>

We have a tendency to think that things that are otherwise pretty universal don&#x27;t apply to us. This results in people have very individualistic philosophies. Mantras like &quot;work hard&quot; place responsibility on the individual.<p>Google is a money printing machine having net annual income of ~$60B? It&#x27;s profit per employee is utterly insane. Yet despite that there was a &quot;need&quot; for layoffs.<p>You&#x27;ll find no shortage of defenders for the layoffs. Talk of cutting &quot;the fat&quot;. Tell me: who decides what most of these people work on? Is it the individual? Or leadership? How amny executive leaders have gone as a result of need for belt-tightening? And whatever you think of Sunday (personally: not a lot), what makes this one man worth $226M&#x2F;year? Sending out the traditional &quot;thoughts and prayers&quot; and &quot;full responsibility&quot; email seems to have not hurt him in the slightest.<p>These layoffs are nothin gmore than an attack on labor costs. It makes the remaining employees work harder (fearing further layoffs) as job functions of those eliminated are added to them rather than backfilled, less likely to ask for or get raises and it will make hiring cheaper as there is more avilable labor.<p>Just like the Steve Jobs anti-poaching collusion, this is a coordinated effort. Despite efforts to appear otherwise, these tech companies aren&#x27;t on your side. They&#x27;re on the shareholders side. You are simply an unfortunate line item under &quot;expenses&quot;. So at least people are learning the lesson that they are completely expendable and there is no loyalty so absolutely no loyalty should be given to the company. Loyalty has to be reciprocal.<p>It actually doesn&#x27;t have to be this way [1]. Additionally, layoffs tend to be traumatic for both the people affected and those that remain. Cost savings are overstated once you factor in severance packages, possible litigation, psychic damage to remaining employees and the cultural loss of trust from the &quot;distraction&quot;.<p>Any genuine need to reduce costs could be better handled by across the board pay cuts.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polygon.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;7&#x2F;5&#x2F;4496512&#x2F;why-nintendos-satoru-iwata-refuses-to-lay-off-staff" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polygon.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;7&#x2F;5&#x2F;4496512&#x2F;why-nintendos-sator...</a>

And a bunch of us were making fun of him recently in the 60 Minutes &#x2F; AI thread... (me included)

CEO pay is a market rate. This is not much different than complaining about the price point of gas, or milk, or eggs.<p>You can describe it as being too high in your opinion, or not worth it in your opinion, but that&#x27;s completely different than pretending that its not being set by the market (and approved by the board) weighing myriad inputs. And btw, one of those inputs is...the ability to successfully tighten the belt and restructure costs to hit numbers.<p>Make the case to fire Pichai if you want, I&#x27;m fine with that, but recognize that you&#x27;re going to pay &quot;replacement cost&quot; at the same rate or higher for someone else. That&#x27;s showbiz baby.

I have mostly worked for companies whose ARR is 5-10% of this guy&#x27;s pay. And their CEOs usually have a bigger ego!

As a googler, I believe that googlers should be paid top of market. I love to see my fellow Sundar getting bank

You can be as angry as you want, but anger isn&#x27;t going to do anything.<p>They can &quot;fuck around and find out&quot; all they want because they know that they are so powerful they will never have to find out.<p>They know they&#x27;ll never have to face a tech union or deal with laborers sitting at the big boys negotiating table.

It&#x27;s funny to me that no one complained about Sundar&#x27;s pay when things were going swimmingly well.

If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for excellence, he’ll get another island next year

Google doesn&#x27;t even respect it&#x27;s shareholders, only the people who get awarded shares. Most of the share buybacks go to preventing the newly minted shares from dropping the stock price.<p>Apple does actually respect it&#x27;s shareholders...probably because it&#x27;s hard to hoodwink Berkshire Hathaway.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epsilontheory.com&#x2F;stock-buybacks-and-the-monetization-of-stock-based-compensation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epsilontheory.com&#x2F;stock-buybacks-and-the-monetiz...</a>

similar thread <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35809807" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35809807</a>

Googlers:<p>if you don&#x27;t like how Google works, vote with your feet<p>you&#x27;ll never own enough shares to get on the mic at an annual meeting, leaving is your only recourse

He was promised this pay in his contract just like the employees contract where they signed it.

Amazing how much failing to keep up with competitors, evolve core business will get you.<p>How much of Google’s valuation is Sundar, how much is inflation of asset values to keep asset owners ahead of everyone else, how much is a decade of cheap money?

Imagine making a million a week.<p>&#x2F;brain explodes

People need to get over themselves. You&#x27;re not entitled to a job.

I wonder what it&#x27;s like being rich. :thinking emoji:

What a genuinely vulgar comp package.

Two words. Tone deaf.

Unionise.

Hating capitalism is one thing. Being clueless how it works is childish.<p>200M over 3 years for the CEO of the most consequential tech company on the planet is peanuts. Pop artists make similar money scantily clad and squeezing autotune

Is $225M a lot for CEO of big corporation? I genuinely don&#x27;t know. What is the average pay?

Pichai needs to go, Google is in dire need of someone that can shake things up.

I disagree about putting all these things together.<p>The layoffs and reduction in perks were sorely needed in Big Tech given all the fat that has been milking it for years.<p>The CEO pay is definitely egregious and should be called out (and those at other companies should also be called out).