If I’m part of a layoff, the fact that the CEO might take $10 million less in stock compensation over the next 5 years is pretty meaningless to me. I mean if w

If I’m part of a layoff, the fact that the CEO might take $10 million less in stock compensation over the next 5 years is pretty meaningless to me. I mean if we believe googles top line result, the ceo got $14 million in total comp, of which ~150k was salary, and 7 million was direct stock. So let’s say they cut it all completely. 11% of their workforce is ~865 people. Estimating 130k for an average developer salary, so call it 160k fully loaded. Stop paying the CEO direct cash or cash equivalent completely and use it to pay salaries of people being laid off and you can save 44 jobs assuming your CEO will only work for stock options from now on. That turns this from an 11% cut to a 10.5% cut. That might matter quite a bit to those 44 people, but the rest are still in the same place they are today, except maybe they feel a little better because the CEO doesn’t get paid for a little while, or at least until he moves on and the company hires a new ceo with real money again. More important than symbolic flogging of the C-suite would be what the severance package looks like.