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Google is a $1.6T company. For a guy that runs it to earn $200 M a year is basically nothing. Can he do good enough of job? Great, he's then definitely worth it

Google is a $1.6T company. For a guy that runs it to earn $200 M a year is basically nothing. Can he do good enough of job? Great, he's then definitely worth it (and, actually, he's worth much more).

empyrrhicist 3y ago
> (and, actually, he's worth much more). Bullshit. Fucking nonsense, bullshit. I fail to understand how thinking people could ever believe that this is true - it's got to be innumeracy and a healthy dose of propaganda. Would Google lose the now-equivalent of 200m annual if any one of the top 100 leaders within the corp ascended to the goddamned throne? Fuck no. It's nonsense to believe any one person is worth compensating at that level.
- jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
  What are your thoughts on NFL player Josh Allen having a $250MM contract? I fail to understand why there is more controversy over CEO pay than athletes.
  - raincole 3y ago
    Because it's easier to measure an athlete's performance than to measure a CEO's. And athletes usually have no right to fire people (at least not a lot of people at once).
    - evandale 3y ago
      You don't think LeBron has any say in the teammates they sign? Tom Brady famously got Gronk out of retirement and Brown was on the team because of Brady despite having a horrible reputation and being essentially blacklisted from the NFL. Star players are a dime a dozen in professional sports and I don't think their influence on the team makeup is as rare as you think. In fact, a big name star might have _more_ hiring power than a typical CEO in a public company.
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    I don't follow sports, but at least those people are doing actual, physically comparable things with clear connections to revenue (more like music artists than CEOs). Maybe that analogy is more apt than you intended though, in that the valuations are made for shallow human/society reasons that are quite decoupled from reality.
    - jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
      There are many players who don't live up to their $100MM+ contracts. I fail to understand why physicality should be relevant to high compensation.
      - evandale 3y ago
        > There are many players who don't live up to their $100MM+ contracts. Do you have examples? The ticket sales alone that big name players drive to home games make far more than 100MM over the course of their contacts. https://www.statista.com/statistics/294166/toronto-blue-jays-gate-receipts/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/294166/toronto-blue-jays... That doesn't even include all the merchandise and the food/drink sales and all the other benefits that come from signing big name stars. The CEO of a company doesn't have the same "star" power a pro athlete, musician, or actor has.
      - rubicon33 3y ago
        Physicality is far more measurable in its results than the product of a thousands strong multi-national company. In other words one can pretty clearly attribute the performance of an athlete to said athletes talents and ability. In the case of the CEO making the same money, it's much harder to measure their performance, and even harder to attribute the success of the company to their direct performance. This point becomes even more true as companies grow in scale, such as Google has done.
        ztrww 3y ago
        > it's much harder to measure their performance That doesn’t mean that their performance can’t significantly affect their companies stock price to a much higher degree than similarly paid athletes could. > Physicality is far more measurable Who cares. Do you believe that only people whose output could be precisely measured should be highly compensated? Of course there is a lot of inefficiency considering Pichai seems to be a very poor CEO who’s quite replaceable.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    If Sundar Pichai ever had to compete against other companies at the level of an NFL player, vs. be asleep at the wheel of Google’s money-printing advertising monopoly, he would immediately crumple. This is obvious in their fumbling all the AI stuff, half of which they invented.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Attempting to change the subject doesn't change the fact that this obscene compensation amounts to stealing from the pockets of his own employees. Rather than structuring Google as a dictatorship, how about we structure it as a democracy and ask Googlers what they think the CEO should be paid, at their own expense. Do you think they would come up with a number that is less or more than the current figure?
    - ztrww 3y ago
      Which would likely end with only being able to hire significantly less competent CEOs than other companies. Only on average over long term of course. There is quite a lot of variance considering how useless someone like Pichai seems to be.
- Aunche 3y ago
  Keep in mind Google executive compensation appears to be biannual (his compensation in 2021 was 6M). Overall, his compensation for the past 2 years is less than .05% of Google's revenue during the same period. If the performance of a Google CEO even slightly better or worse Pichai going to have a much larger impact on Google than 225M. I'm sure plenty of the top 100 leaders at Google would be better than Pichai, but others would be worse and shareholders can't distinguish who until after the fact, so they saw Pichai as the best option.
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    You've inadvertently highlighted the actual problem - our economic system allows for megaliths like Google to exist and dominate, and we can't help but measure everything against them. Like, run the clock forward and imagine Google monopolizes half of GDP. Should the CEO be compensated as a percentage of that? It's a fallacious view - how many super hard working and ultra educated people could be recruited to that post for, oh, say a cool 1M per year with a good retirement plan and no stock nonsense. Tons - a huge list of people who don't have the right connections to sit atop the money pyramid.
    - ztrww 3y ago
      > how many super hard working and ultra educated people Both attributes seem to be somewhat tangentially related to being a highly successful CEO. There are plenty of examples of “super hard working” and educated CEOs running their companies to the ground and costing much, much more than just $200 million..
      - empyrrhicist 3y ago
        Pick your desired adjectives then. Or is the skillset somehow a magic property that only emerges when total compensation surpasses 100m?
        ztrww 3y ago
        I don’t think “skillset” is the right word either. It’s the financial outcome of the decisions the CEO makes which is the only thing that really matters. Which is notoriously hard to measure and impossible to do in advance. So companies tend to use various proxies when hiring like past experience and less useful ones like skills, education, character, personal connections, work ethic etc. Obviously this system is very inefficient but nobody can deny that some CEO are better than others and that the best ones can make decisions which bring 10-100x or more money to the company than whatever they are paid. So if the board of 100 billion company believes that a CEO they can hire for 100 million will increase growth/profits by more than 10 million CEO would it seems perfectly rational to pay him as much (they might be awful at picking the ’best’ person but that does not invalidate the core principle)
- mkarrmann 3y ago
  Why's it so hard to believe that a worse CEO for one year would result in a 0.01% lower market cap? Given that framing, 200m is a very drastic under estimation.
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    It's not hard to believe. What's hard to believe is that you couldn't possibly find a better CEO for a much more modest compensation package.
    - mkarrmann 3y ago
      I share that intuition, although I don't see any reason to trust the intuition of an outside (either myself or presumably yourself) making 2 second back-of-envelope calculations of that of the Alphabet board.
      - empyrrhicist 3y ago
        Outrageous claims require commensurate evidence. Human factors easily explain why these hierarchical social structures produce wealth concentration.
        mkarrmann 3y ago
        That's a good point.
deleted 3y ago
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scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
That “he runs” it is entirely made up as well. It’s a $1.6T company - one person doesn’t run the show. Is he worth more? Is he worth less? Literally all of this stuff is not anyone’s business outside of their company and their stakeholders. We can’t truly have a clue what doing a “good job” is with them, or what the compensation should be. They want to ruthlessly hire-fire talent - it’s all entirely on them as a company. Being outraged about any of it is just as naïve as buying into the idea that their monopolies are built on merit and not on elite credentials and pedigree required to join the club. For what it’s worth, I think the enormous payouts are there so that these guys’ judgement and decision making is 100% directed only on the company’s value and well-bring. They’re supposed to be in-bribeable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  > Literally all of this stuff is not anyone’s business outside of their company and their stakeholders. Hard disagree - capitalism is great up to a point, but a functioning market and vibrant tech sector doesn't require that we allow individuals to become this obscenely wealthy. Answering the question of how extreme we want income/wealth inequality to be allowed to become is a valid economic question to be answered societally.

Google is a $1.6T company. For a guy that runs it to earn $200 M a year is basically nothing. Can he do good enough of job? Great, he's then definitely worth it (and, actually, he's worth much more).

empyrrhicist 3y ago

> (and, actually, he's worth much more). Bullshit. Fucking nonsense, bullshit. I fail to understand how thinking people could ever believe that this is true - it's got to be innumeracy and a healthy dose of propaganda. Would Google lose the now-equivalent of 200m annual if any one of the top 100 leaders within the corp ascended to the goddamned throne? Fuck no. It's nonsense to believe any one person is worth compensating at that level.

jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
What are your thoughts on NFL player Josh Allen having a $250MM contract? I fail to understand why there is more controversy over CEO pay than athletes.
- raincole 3y ago
  Because it's easier to measure an athlete's performance than to measure a CEO's. And athletes usually have no right to fire people (at least not a lot of people at once).
  - evandale 3y ago
    You don't think LeBron has any say in the teammates they sign? Tom Brady famously got Gronk out of retirement and Brown was on the team because of Brady despite having a horrible reputation and being essentially blacklisted from the NFL. Star players are a dime a dozen in professional sports and I don't think their influence on the team makeup is as rare as you think. In fact, a big name star might have _more_ hiring power than a typical CEO in a public company.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  I don't follow sports, but at least those people are doing actual, physically comparable things with clear connections to revenue (more like music artists than CEOs). Maybe that analogy is more apt than you intended though, in that the valuations are made for shallow human/society reasons that are quite decoupled from reality.
  - jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
    There are many players who don't live up to their $100MM+ contracts. I fail to understand why physicality should be relevant to high compensation.
    - evandale 3y ago
      > There are many players who don't live up to their $100MM+ contracts. Do you have examples? The ticket sales alone that big name players drive to home games make far more than 100MM over the course of their contacts. https://www.statista.com/statistics/294166/toronto-blue-jays-gate-receipts/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/294166/toronto-blue-jays... That doesn't even include all the merchandise and the food/drink sales and all the other benefits that come from signing big name stars. The CEO of a company doesn't have the same "star" power a pro athlete, musician, or actor has.
    - rubicon33 3y ago
      Physicality is far more measurable in its results than the product of a thousands strong multi-national company. In other words one can pretty clearly attribute the performance of an athlete to said athletes talents and ability. In the case of the CEO making the same money, it's much harder to measure their performance, and even harder to attribute the success of the company to their direct performance. This point becomes even more true as companies grow in scale, such as Google has done.
      - ztrww 3y ago
        > it's much harder to measure their performance That doesn’t mean that their performance can’t significantly affect their companies stock price to a much higher degree than similarly paid athletes could. > Physicality is far more measurable Who cares. Do you believe that only people whose output could be precisely measured should be highly compensated? Of course there is a lot of inefficiency considering Pichai seems to be a very poor CEO who’s quite replaceable.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  If Sundar Pichai ever had to compete against other companies at the level of an NFL player, vs. be asleep at the wheel of Google’s money-printing advertising monopoly, he would immediately crumple. This is obvious in their fumbling all the AI stuff, half of which they invented.
- kibwen 3y ago
  Attempting to change the subject doesn't change the fact that this obscene compensation amounts to stealing from the pockets of his own employees. Rather than structuring Google as a dictatorship, how about we structure it as a democracy and ask Googlers what they think the CEO should be paid, at their own expense. Do you think they would come up with a number that is less or more than the current figure?
  - ztrww 3y ago
    Which would likely end with only being able to hire significantly less competent CEOs than other companies. Only on average over long term of course. There is quite a lot of variance considering how useless someone like Pichai seems to be.
Aunche 3y ago
Keep in mind Google executive compensation appears to be biannual (his compensation in 2021 was 6M). Overall, his compensation for the past 2 years is less than .05% of Google's revenue during the same period. If the performance of a Google CEO even slightly better or worse Pichai going to have a much larger impact on Google than 225M. I'm sure plenty of the top 100 leaders at Google would be better than Pichai, but others would be worse and shareholders can't distinguish who until after the fact, so they saw Pichai as the best option.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  You've inadvertently highlighted the actual problem - our economic system allows for megaliths like Google to exist and dominate, and we can't help but measure everything against them. Like, run the clock forward and imagine Google monopolizes half of GDP. Should the CEO be compensated as a percentage of that? It's a fallacious view - how many super hard working and ultra educated people could be recruited to that post for, oh, say a cool 1M per year with a good retirement plan and no stock nonsense. Tons - a huge list of people who don't have the right connections to sit atop the money pyramid.
  - ztrww 3y ago
    > how many super hard working and ultra educated people Both attributes seem to be somewhat tangentially related to being a highly successful CEO. There are plenty of examples of “super hard working” and educated CEOs running their companies to the ground and costing much, much more than just $200 million..
    - empyrrhicist 3y ago
      Pick your desired adjectives then. Or is the skillset somehow a magic property that only emerges when total compensation surpasses 100m?
      - ztrww 3y ago
        I don’t think “skillset” is the right word either. It’s the financial outcome of the decisions the CEO makes which is the only thing that really matters. Which is notoriously hard to measure and impossible to do in advance. So companies tend to use various proxies when hiring like past experience and less useful ones like skills, education, character, personal connections, work ethic etc. Obviously this system is very inefficient but nobody can deny that some CEO are better than others and that the best ones can make decisions which bring 10-100x or more money to the company than whatever they are paid. So if the board of 100 billion company believes that a CEO they can hire for 100 million will increase growth/profits by more than 10 million CEO would it seems perfectly rational to pay him as much (they might be awful at picking the ’best’ person but that does not invalidate the core principle)
mkarrmann 3y ago
Why's it so hard to believe that a worse CEO for one year would result in a 0.01% lower market cap? Given that framing, 200m is a very drastic under estimation.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  It's not hard to believe. What's hard to believe is that you couldn't possibly find a better CEO for a much more modest compensation package.
  - mkarrmann 3y ago
    I share that intuition, although I don't see any reason to trust the intuition of an outside (either myself or presumably yourself) making 2 second back-of-envelope calculations of that of the Alphabet board.
    - empyrrhicist 3y ago
      Outrageous claims require commensurate evidence. Human factors easily explain why these hierarchical social structures produce wealth concentration.
      - mkarrmann 3y ago
        That's a good point.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago

That “he runs” it is entirely made up as well. It’s a $1.6T company - one person doesn’t run the show. Is he worth more? Is he worth less? Literally all of this stuff is not anyone’s business outside of their company and their stakeholders. We can’t truly have a clue what doing a “good job” is with them, or what the compensation should be. They want to ruthlessly hire-fire talent - it’s all entirely on them as a company. Being outraged about any of it is just as naïve as buying into the idea that their monopolies are built on merit and not on elite credentials and pedigree required to join the club. For what it’s worth, I think the enormous payouts are there so that these guys’ judgement and decision making is 100% directed only on the company’s value and well-bring. They’re supposed to be in-bribeable.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
empyrrhicist 3y ago
> Literally all of this stuff is not anyone’s business outside of their company and their stakeholders. Hard disagree - capitalism is great up to a point, but a functioning market and vibrant tech sector doesn't require that we allow individuals to become this obscenely wealthy. Answering the question of how extreme we want income/wealth inequality to be allowed to become is a valid economic question to be answered societally.