It's far more complicated than that, and pro-CEO, as ultimately even a very bad CEO is going to get paid outrageously. See good old Steve Ballmer, who was basic

It's far more complicated than that, and pro-CEO, as ultimately even a very bad CEO is going to get paid outrageously. See good old Steve Ballmer, who was basically running Microsoft into the ground. He was still very well paid, even though the minute he announced he was leaving, without naming the replacement, Microsoft stock shot up: The expected value of a random, unknown replacement for shareholders was enormous. So this isn't really about expected value, supply and demand. It's not as if a 10% cut would make Pichai quit, or that you'd not be able to find a comparable replacement at that price: I suspect that, not unlike Ballmer was, Pichai is worse than a random viable candidate. But there really is minimal pressure in saving money with top executives like this. CEO is not a random position, and it's basically never filled by a person the board doesn't have personal connections to. So ultimately CEOs get either raises, or get fired. When a CEO gets a cut in compensation, it's often because their own pay sends a message to investors and employees. Here, what we are seeing is that Pichai sees no need whatsoever to send any message, because he doesn't care in the slightest about this. It's modeling behavior for executives and other employees. And I don't think it's a good example we'd like them to follow.