If Google felt it needed to save, say, $500k, and it did so by firing 10 people who each made $50k, that would be devastating to those 10 people. On the other

If Google felt it needed to save, say, $500k, and it did so by firing 10 people who each made $50k, that would be devastating to those 10 people. On the other hand, if it did so by reducing the collective paychecks of the C-suite by $500k, they definitely wouldn't even notice. Obviously this doesn't scale infinitely, but it's not about whether you can make 100k people wealthy by giving them all of Pichai's money. It's about what's more important to Google when it believes it needs to spend less: keeping its executives' compensation from dropping by even a penny, despite the fact that any of them could probably retire in comparative luxury right now, or treating its employees with dignity and respect. Once Pichai's paycheck is no higher than, say, 3-5x the company median, then come back and say you actually need to start laying people off.