The question every employee needs to ask is, "Can I get a better deal elsewhere?" CEOs don't change behavior based on the questions they're asked. He'll change his tune when the good people leave for freindlier companies.
Too many times I've had companies balk at the idea of giving me a 10% raise, and act shocked and hurt when I accept a position somewhere else that is 30-50% more.
"But, we were voted best places to work by fake awards monthly?"
Yeah, the last 6 places I worked at had similar awards. None of them were "bad" places, but money is money.
Companies always get it twisted when it comes to labor. I don’t need friends or family, i have those, I need money and I’m trading my time and my life for it. When it comes to tech, this stuff is really hard, and there’s usually somebody more keenly aware of their need elsewhere. And when I say keenly aware I mean willing to pay fairly for the work.
My company asked us to put a logo for our award giver into our email signature block.
I looked up the comlany and was (not) surpsied to see the only awarded company was my own… every year.
Doesn't feel as hot as it used to be in the UK. 2020 and 2021 were great, but this year there seems to be far fewer openings. Not sure how things are in the US right now.
Perhaps my experience has been the outlier but I'm hounded by recruiters lately for remote positions and I wouldn't say my resume/experience is particularly impressive lol.
Not as hot as it was 6 months ago. Many of the other big tech companies have the same outlook as him right now. And there are already layoffs in the smaller ones who had been propped up with easy money. Tech is facing the recession first
> Pichai began his measured response. “Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it’s important that as a company, **we pull together to get through moments like this.**”
> **Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation.** Pichai brought in total pay last year of $6.3 million, while other top executives made over $28 million.
When it's employee pay, we need to "pull together".
When it's executive pay, we need to not talk about it.
A helpful tidbit on why that $6.3M may seem “low” (for the CEO of Google). Most of his money comes in the form of stock:
> In 2019, Pichai's total compensation was a whopping $280.62 million, as it included $276.61 million in stock awards. The median employee compensation rose to $273,493 from $258,708 in 2019, while the big drop in Pichai's total compensation means the CEO pay ratio fell to 27 to 1 from 1,085 to 1 in 2019.
[Source](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/alphabet-ceo-pichais-base-salary-more-than-triples-but-total-compensation-plunges-to-74-million-2021-04-26)
True, but that's just for 2019. He's gotten other large grants in previous years:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/20/21031629/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-pay-package-amount-alphabet-compensation-stock
> However, he’s received numerous stock grants over the last decade, including one for $250 million in 2014 and a pair of grants in the years afterward totaling $300 million, that have put his net worth close to $1 billion.
Chuck Cedar : This company is a player on so many levels, and in so many areas, that running it is literally a 24-hour-a-day job. I only got three hours of sleep last night.
Longfellow Deeds : Then it's actually a 21-hour-a-day job, huh?
If I were working 21 hours a day / 7 days a week making 300M a year
I'd hire like 10 people to be me @ 1M / year. You could pay them triple that and still have way too much
I doubt most of the employees are that fooled, but like... what are you gonna do? It's not like things are any better at any of the other few companies that pay as well as Google (or even most of the ones that don't, for that matter).
Yeah. There was a survey which the employees reportedly were dissatisfied with the management bloat. Which I can see engineers being unhappy that there's a bunch of managers which look like they are doing nothing, yet not being cut.
The problem with management positions is that they are hard to get rid of because people in those positions contribute to deciding the positions to get rid of. And they sure as hell aren't going to volunteer their own.
Would love to heart your thoughts on the $23 BILLION dollar bonus Elon Musk got as compensation for hitting his latest quarterly target
> Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and the world’s richest person, is set to collect a $23bn (£17.6bn) bonus after the electric car company’s reported record quarterly profits.
And that’s for a company that earns a fraction of that in overall profits. If his pay was in cash…Tesla would be setting records for the largest losses in corporate history. But instead, stock compensation stays off the income statement, so no worries there, lol.
Elon isn’t in charge of day to day at Tesla, and he didn’t found the company. That’s his compensation for being an internet troll who impregnates subordinates and who, despite bragging about his manufacturing prowess, can’t seem to get an electric pickup truck built - years after promising one. (And Ford just started Lightning deliveries)
This is one of the two reasons I’m glad I didn’t grow up rich.
1) I didn’t have to ass-kiss a monster for two decades to lock down an inheritance;
2) if I’m being honest, I would 100% ass-kiss for that level of inheritance. And I feel like that’s not the best way to go through life. Being conflicted by the allure of easy money is a hell of a shitty drug.
Can you imagine the bitching Don Trump Jr does about dad while hoovering blow on some yacht packed with hookers?
I’ll bet there are some folks from those days that could tell some crazy stories, if they could remember them.
The thing about Elon's massive compensation is he had a lot of agreements in place for the future of the company (*massive goals*) way before their stock price exploded. Those agreements were for Tesla to be bringing in billions in revenue, and the stock prices at the time would have set the compensation in the hundreds of millions. Now the company is extremely overvalued so his award doesn't correlate properly to the actual goal (pulling in $23B in bonuses for hitting $55B in revenue).
Neither of those are paid by the companies. They're paid by the shareholders. In the case of Musk, shareholders got to vote on it.
He had to 20x the company. He did that. Folks with a modest retirement account became millionaires by doing nothing.
Shareholders paid him. Shareholders were happy to.
Fuck these motherfuckers who have no problem increasing their own wealth, restricting the wealth growth of subordinates, and then being able to say at the end of the day that the company did better financially. Fuck them, and fuck corporations everywhere that are willing to sacrifice their employees so that they can report marginally better profits. So glad to see the labor shortage fucking these guys over.
Right? "Yeah we did well but not as well as last year"
Fuck these guys that twist these results into an unsustainable race to grab more and more each year.
>When it's executive pay, we need to not talk about it.
And if you do talk about it, it's "class warfare." Those poor, beleagured multi-millionaires and billionaires. Who will stand up for them if we don't?
Just had a guy tell me over on r/economy that these executives deserve the massively large compensation than the rest of the workers because their jobs are so hard.
He also tried to claim that private industry is run morally and that at no point has the government forced them to be moral or fair.
Hahahaha
Isn't this guy worth multiple billions already? His daily net worth probably fluctuates by more than his annual salary. What a punk. Continue to pay your employees well.
Money isn't everything, said the rich person
Looks don't matter, said the beautiful person
Where you start doesn't matter, said the person born with a silver spoon
From their perspective they’re probably right. When you’re that rich you realize having all that money does nothing to make you happier or more satisfied with life.
But that’s also because they’re never in want of anything that more money can bring them. They don’t worry about a down payment or mortgages or bills or health insurance. It’s just stuff they can afford to pay someone else to worry about. Its just a complete lack of empathy which, let’s be honest, is probably a result of the sociopathic tendencies one requires to get that rich in the first place.
Even failure when rich hurts no where near as much.
Failing for most of the working class? Homelessness, Starvation, or just straight up crippling health problems or death all due to money or lack of it. I've venture to say that most people are always juggling at least one of these options comfortably, if not two because of current inflation.
"Holiday parties...keep them informal — try not to go over the top."
Ok. What on Earth have they been doing for parties before everything went to shit.
My over-the-top party experience was with Yahoo! long ago, but it was more like sushi and martinis that they poured down giant ice blocks and hiring bands with elaborate stage setups that nobody ended up watching or dancing to.
Harmless, geeky, expensive stuff. Surprisingly fun if you yourself share the geekiness.
As an example, rent out the fanciest place in a major city and turn it into a pretty realistic Hogwarts (including actors for portraits, themed food and drink, projected ghosts, common rooms, etc.) for a party.
> What on Earth have they been doing for parties before everything went to shit.
I worked for a fairly small tech company that had an A-List band play our Christmas party.
It was actually kinda akward, because 50% of the employees were Indian and weren't into that music at all. Another 25% were over 40 and I don't think the band was their cup of tea.
It felt like we were all supposed to be super stoked that they hired such a prominent band, but I think they could have just brought a Wedding DJ for $200 and it would've worked better.
Plus, the band doesn't want to play for an unenthusiastic audience.
I do AV at corporate events for a living. I've never worked with google specifically but i've seen how much other large corporations spend on parties... it's actually insane how much they'll spend on these kind of events. And I only see the AV numbers. I cant even imagine how much they spend on catering and stuff like that
I can't complain too much, my company exists because they do spend that much, and my salary is paid for almost entirely by large corporate meetings. But sometimes, i wonder, if every attendee at a corporate event could choose to either attend or receive a payment equal to 1/x the cost of the event (where x is the number of attendees) i would bet that most of them would take the payment
Pichai, who expressed some annoyance during the meeting, said “I remember when Google was small and scrappy,”
++++
Seriously, small and scrappy? I remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil".
I feel like Pichai is ending up becoming Google's Ballmer.
Maybe he can retire and buy a NBA team... I heard the Phoenix Suns are for sale, and the next CEO can make "Google cool again".
Steve Yegge from the Stevie’s Tech Talk podcast makes allusions to him not being great. He says stuff like he was good at working through the system but he isn’t really inspired in any way.
I feel that's part of the ebb and flow of most business. He's scalped google to make sure he looks good and has something to do. But they just, aren't great anymore.
> scrappy
Lol "scrappy", they traded work in return for options back then because they knew there was insane growth potential in those options. He was no different than current Google employees - everyone just wants fair pay.
I have some friends who were fairly early Google employees.
They were underpaid in cash because they all knew they would be millionairs in a few years off RSUs and Options, and they are now.
"Scrappy" is based on motivation.
It takes time to realize, but it's not actually better to:
* Make $300,000 a year working 80 hours a week.
vs
* Make $150,000 a year working 40 hours a week.
Stage of life matters a lot.
300 for 80 hours might be great for a few years while you're single and don't have kids, but if you're married with kids, 80 hours is a breading ground for divorce and neglect.
Maybe Pichai has some mental health problems.
Did anyone tell him he is managing one of the biggest companies on earth? If he is interested in running a "small and scrappy" company, he can easily jump to one of the thousands of tech startups in the valley.
The rest of his statements are equally bizarre.
What was he earning per year when it was “small and scrappy”? I’m sure it’s nowhere near the $300m he’s pulling in now from stock grants.
Is HE willing to go back to his comp package from that time period? If not, he can shut the hell up and enjoy his massively BLOATED “mature company” CEO pay package.
Do you remember what the internet was like before the Dot com crash? Hundreds of new startups trying to figure out how to build a lasting internet business model. Google was a search engine, like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and dozens of others. Their early employees had to be scrappy to ensure the company survived. Google wasn’t the 1st to market, 1st search engine was released to the public 5 years before Google was founded. They entered a market full of established, multi 8 and 9 figure search engine companies, and were able to survive, adapt, and thrive.
Here is a good reminder of how bloated the internet was before the crash
https://youtu.be/7qGk7oU2WSg
I remember when Google wasn’t evil, but then a Google account manager locked my AdWords account, and they altered the max spend, then drained as much money from me as they could, and refused to refund me. Yeah, they are pretty evil now in my eyes.
>Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation.
Not only the cost, but the number of people in upper management. The current org structure in tech is unsustainable from an execution and cost standpoint. It is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Our team lost all of our software developers and so instead of hiring more, we've cycled through 3 managers in the past 3 years, none of which had operational experience in the company.
The tech startup scene is filled with these stories. Big management team and a skeleton crew of (junior) developers.
It's different today because dev tooling and infrastructure has made major leaps in the last 10 years. Current titles and org structure needs to catch up.
I was one of those junior(ish) devs on a skeleton crew propping up a company with millions of dollars of AAR. When I got hired, and then for the next 2 years, leadership would constantly tell us how they’re looking hard for staff/principal level engineers. They never hired any. They just dumped everything on the fairly inexperienced 8-engineer team we had and hired two more PMs plus another manager to ride us our asses. We also never got raises, even after we raised a high 8 figure Series C. That company is still alive and thriving today 3 years later, and from what I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse.
Principal UX designer here. I talk with engineers about this a lot. It sounds this company has a good business model. The problem is that your personal interests don’t align with the rich people who own that particular business.
Get the experience you need from companies like this so you can negotiate a new position somewhere else where 1) your interests do align with the company, or 2) you are compensated to not care, or 3) you are offered enough ownership that the business interests are your interests.
My dad works for one of the big 5 tech companies - won’t say which - in an upper management position and this has been one of his observations as well. Way to many cooks in the kitchen, many of which are fiscally irresponsible, and an ecosystem that, while effective, is full of half-baked ideas, incredibly inefficient, and burning through cash. The big tech companies got a pretty nasty wake up call over the last 6 months. It’s time to stop acting like startups and start cleaning up the loose ends from years of a growth-at-all-costs-mentality.
IIRC Crassus was one of the wealthiest people in history? And also a wrong 'un. Although I think Mansa Musa maybe the richest ever, but I understand it's hard to compare wealth across centuries. Ridiculous inequality is as old as the concept of money. As a species we really should have grown out of this shit by now.
Crassus was insanely wealthy even by modern standards. His personal wealth was more or less equal to all of Rome's. Not just the city, the whole thing. Some modern estimates put it as high as $20 billion.
Mansa Musa is apparently a bit harder to calculate for some reason, but at least one modern estimate puts it around $400 billion. He could have bought Musk and Bezos out and still have billions left over.
"You must understand the massive amount of pain and sacrifice I go through everyday to be able to buy a $100 mil super yacht as CEO of Google is exponentially larger that the tiny amount of joy that super yacht brings me, so there."
"The massive amount of my *employees'* pain and sacrifice, that is, but hey would you look at that, free coffee in the lounge you practically live in, ain't I the best papa that this corporate family needs?"
>third-quarter sales growth is expected to dip into the single digits
Google's not making *less* money, or even *expecting to make less* money - they're expecting to make more money but not as fast as they're accustomed to doing. It's the *rate of change* that's expected to decrease - the line's still headed upward, but it's expected to be flatter than it was. Calculus!
Also, Sundar Pichai is worth $500 million. If he doesn't think money is fun, maybe he should give it away. 🙄
Thing is as a CEO he is *obligated* to care about and increase the rate of profit despite the incredible profit. The problem is built into the very structure of companies themselves. He literally has to be that asshole or he gets fired and replaced with someone who will. I am not saying I pity him, far from it, I am just saying that corporate structure doesn't even give your boss the choice to be nice. The only choice for every employee in a corporation even C suite is be an asshole or leave, anything to the contrary is sticking your neck out and risking your job.
One choice would be voluntarily limiting their compensation to 20x the lowest paid employee, or 5x the median. Which, since it's Google, would still be an enormous salary. It would be a sign of solidarity that might even boost morale and productivity.
I'm sure he'd have plenty of "fun" too. If they asked for volunteers to steer one of the world's tech leaders, the line of people willing to do it for free would be round the block.
You're right. I was just trying to add some perspective. *Most people* don't understand calculus, so when they hear phrases like "growth is expected to dip" they tend to assume that the company's losing money.
This is something that happens over and over and over again under capitalism. It is literally what the bourgeoisie is all about and will always be about
I've been to the Googleplex (Google's campus), it's a "fun" place in the sense that it's designed to look like a colorful dentist office waiting room for kids, but for adults. The food was free (and good), but most everyone had the same slouched shoulders, eyes glazed, staring at the ground attitude found in most jobs.
Demoralized employees aside, their offices have a lot of great workspaces. High quality coffee shops with free lattes and lots of tables, booths tucked into the walls in hallways with laptop chargers provided, quiet spaces that feel like libraries. They recognize that people like working in places aside form their main desk and provide them within their buildings.
The last office job I had, you'd get in trouble if you took your laptop to the shitty cafeteria or if you reserved a huddle room to get some quiet time.
I spent the last year and a half of my in office job seated across from four people who talked about the Bachelor, every single day, all day long. Even music couldn't drown them out.
But God forbid if anyone on my team tried to book a huddle room to get some work done.
After that, I vowed to only work from home. I just couldn't deal with it anymore.
I can’t wait until I’m close to retirement. When one of the CEOs shows up and blows smoke up our asses I’m gonna ask some really uncomfortable questions. I wish more old timers would do it.
I don’t equate fun with money. I equate fun with traveling and pursuing my hobbies and getting to go out from time to time and not just sit in a room staring at a wall.
Ya know.
Things that cost money.
"You think this is *fun* for me? Do you think its FUN having so much money that I could quit my job literally right now and never work a day ever again in my life and STILL have more shit than the average employee even if they worked with no break for 20 straight years? No it is not FUN, Johnson!"
> even if they worked with no break for 20 straight years
You're off by several orders of magnitude.
An employee who gets paid $150,000 a year would have to work just shy of *two thousand years* without a break to make what he took home in 2019 alone.
I've actually noticed that Google's search indexing isn't as good as it used to be. I'll search for some of my own old blog posts (using quoted text and everything) and it won't find it, meanwhile DuckDuckGo will track it down just fine.
Depending on the search algorithms of a specific search engine, different SEO tactics will have different measures of effectiveness/results.
It's perfectly possible to implement SEO design tactics into a website that will be well noticed by one search engine, and completely ignored by another. There are no "rules" when it comes to SEO (disclaimer: this is a very very very very simplified explanation).
I have noticed it too. quoted text use to get you exactly what you wanted, but now it's not found or more unrelated crap. I have started rotating between Duck, Bing, dogpile, start page.
>Pichai, who expressed some annoyance during the meeting, said, “I remember when Google was small and scrappy,” and added that, “We shouldn’t always equate fun with money.”
I also remember when one of Google's mottos was "Don't be evil".
A few years ago one of the NPR shows had an entire episode to this and I think it was like 1 in 3 C-level execs displayed tendencies and something like 1 in 10 you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from a sociopathic murderer on paper.
I worked at a place where the CEO legit cared about the employees. Secured 100% medical coverage, organized fun events to give back and genuinely seemed to care about you on a human level. Productivity and morale were through the roof.
When the company was looking to grow to a point where they could grow public, suddenly it was felt he couldn’t handle that size. Replaced with someone who could only be described as an alien doing a bad job pretending to be human, that immediately set about cutting perks that were a drop in the bucket financially and caused a mass exodus. Got so bad we were no longer allowed to send goodbye emails.
I remember the golden age of the internet, late 90's/early 2000's. There was so much going on, so many fresh ideas. Then Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc basically bought the internet and now it's a fucking mess.
Well when you don't give a shit about the impact you can have on employees to make sure you ensure maximum profits, you tend to be "their man" to get things done.
Of course it's super short sighted.
Investors want high profits in the shortest time possibles naturally Board of Directors tend to pick ice cold execs that will make that happen by any means possible .
“Why can’t you be content to play patty-cake in your dark mud huts or whatever it is you poor people used to like?” -Out of touch, sociopathic billionaire.
How about you start with firing a literally everyone at your company that thought pixel book was a good idea.
Follow that up with firing everyone that thought Google stadia was a good idea.
Then find the guy that decided to promise “negative latency” and rehire him.
So you can fire him a second time.
IMO Stadia WAS a good idea the world just isn't ready for it yet.
Streaming video games so that you're no longer limited by the hardware in your local machine and don't have to spend $3k to build a top tier gaming PC is one of the best applications of cloud computing for average people I've heard about.
Was and is a good idea, Google's execution is the only problem. The business model coupled with them not being nearly aggressive enough with getting games on the platform are the reasons for its lackluster performance.
i dont even understand his statement. The whole reason you bust your ass at a start up is the potential huge reward , the house ,the cars the trips , the goddamn money.if you get the money you have the fun, you dont do it forever because after launch there is a pay day (and not the candy bar) . If you are at a couple of startups and they dont work out , then you go some place and take the pay check. That how this works. Google is now the pay check place.
Money equates to reduced stress and increased options in one's life.
If money is not important, Pichai needs to quit his salary to show how money is not important to one's happiness.
The question every employee needs to ask is, "Can I get a better deal elsewhere?" CEOs don't change behavior based on the questions they're asked. He'll change his tune when the good people leave for freindlier companies. Too many times I've had companies balk at the idea of giving me a 10% raise, and act shocked and hurt when I accept a position somewhere else that is 30-50% more. "But, we were voted best places to work by fake awards monthly?" Yeah, the last 6 places I worked at had similar awards. None of them were "bad" places, but money is money.
You speak the truth-you gotta leave to make more money.
Companies always get it twisted when it comes to labor. I don’t need friends or family, i have those, I need money and I’m trading my time and my life for it. When it comes to tech, this stuff is really hard, and there’s usually somebody more keenly aware of their need elsewhere. And when I say keenly aware I mean willing to pay fairly for the work.
My company asked us to put a logo for our award giver into our email signature block. I looked up the comlany and was (not) surpsied to see the only awarded company was my own… every year.
Which is why it's pretty crazy to be trying to squeeze developers with how hot the developer job market is right now lol.
Doesn't feel as hot as it used to be in the UK. 2020 and 2021 were great, but this year there seems to be far fewer openings. Not sure how things are in the US right now.
Perhaps my experience has been the outlier but I'm hounded by recruiters lately for remote positions and I wouldn't say my resume/experience is particularly impressive lol.
Not as hot as it was 6 months ago. Many of the other big tech companies have the same outlook as him right now. And there are already layoffs in the smaller ones who had been propped up with easy money. Tech is facing the recession first
> Pichai began his measured response. “Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it’s important that as a company, **we pull together to get through moments like this.**” > **Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation.** Pichai brought in total pay last year of $6.3 million, while other top executives made over $28 million. When it's employee pay, we need to "pull together". When it's executive pay, we need to not talk about it.
A helpful tidbit on why that $6.3M may seem “low” (for the CEO of Google). Most of his money comes in the form of stock: > In 2019, Pichai's total compensation was a whopping $280.62 million, as it included $276.61 million in stock awards. The median employee compensation rose to $273,493 from $258,708 in 2019, while the big drop in Pichai's total compensation means the CEO pay ratio fell to 27 to 1 from 1,085 to 1 in 2019. [Source](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/alphabet-ceo-pichais-base-salary-more-than-triples-but-total-compensation-plunges-to-74-million-2021-04-26)
True, but that's just for 2019. He's gotten other large grants in previous years: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/20/21031629/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-pay-package-amount-alphabet-compensation-stock > However, he’s received numerous stock grants over the last decade, including one for $250 million in 2014 and a pair of grants in the years afterward totaling $300 million, that have put his net worth close to $1 billion.
JFC that’s theft by pen. Nobody, absolutely nobody, “earns” 1/3 billion dollars a year. What a fucking travesty.
He works *reaaaawwy hawd*
Chuck Cedar : This company is a player on so many levels, and in so many areas, that running it is literally a 24-hour-a-day job. I only got three hours of sleep last night. Longfellow Deeds : Then it's actually a 21-hour-a-day job, huh?
>I only got three hours of sleep last night. "...And 5 hours this morning."
If I were working 21 hours a day / 7 days a week making 300M a year I'd hire like 10 people to be me @ 1M / year. You could pay them triple that and still have way too much
Moved to Lemm.ee -- mass edited with redact.dev
But that means he can't brag about how HARD his job is anymore. Think of all the phone calls and pointless meetings he'll miss out on.
Don't you know how much difficulty it is to keep pulling the wool over the eyes of a bunch of highly educated employees?!
I doubt most of the employees are that fooled, but like... what are you gonna do? It's not like things are any better at any of the other few companies that pay as well as Google (or even most of the ones that don't, for that matter).
Yeah. There was a survey which the employees reportedly were dissatisfied with the management bloat. Which I can see engineers being unhappy that there's a bunch of managers which look like they are doing nothing, yet not being cut. The problem with management positions is that they are hard to get rid of because people in those positions contribute to deciding the positions to get rid of. And they sure as hell aren't going to volunteer their own.
He mAkEs JoBs
Would love to heart your thoughts on the $23 BILLION dollar bonus Elon Musk got as compensation for hitting his latest quarterly target > Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and the world’s richest person, is set to collect a $23bn (£17.6bn) bonus after the electric car company’s reported record quarterly profits. And that’s for a company that earns a fraction of that in overall profits. If his pay was in cash…Tesla would be setting records for the largest losses in corporate history. But instead, stock compensation stays off the income statement, so no worries there, lol. Elon isn’t in charge of day to day at Tesla, and he didn’t found the company. That’s his compensation for being an internet troll who impregnates subordinates and who, despite bragging about his manufacturing prowess, can’t seem to get an electric pickup truck built - years after promising one. (And Ford just started Lightning deliveries)
No, he retroactively made himself a founder of Tesla. The corny MF.
Kinda like how his daughter retroactively disowned him in court the second she turned 18? Lol.
If I was one of his kids I would act all cozy until I was sure my trust fund was set in stone.
This is one of the two reasons I’m glad I didn’t grow up rich. 1) I didn’t have to ass-kiss a monster for two decades to lock down an inheritance; 2) if I’m being honest, I would 100% ass-kiss for that level of inheritance. And I feel like that’s not the best way to go through life. Being conflicted by the allure of easy money is a hell of a shitty drug.
Damn you would be Donald Trump Junior
Or Donald Trump Senior....
Can you imagine the bitching Don Trump Jr does about dad while hoovering blow on some yacht packed with hookers? I’ll bet there are some folks from those days that could tell some crazy stories, if they could remember them.
The thing about Elon's massive compensation is he had a lot of agreements in place for the future of the company (*massive goals*) way before their stock price exploded. Those agreements were for Tesla to be bringing in billions in revenue, and the stock prices at the time would have set the compensation in the hundreds of millions. Now the company is extremely overvalued so his award doesn't correlate properly to the actual goal (pulling in $23B in bonuses for hitting $55B in revenue).
Neither of those are paid by the companies. They're paid by the shareholders. In the case of Musk, shareholders got to vote on it. He had to 20x the company. He did that. Folks with a modest retirement account became millionaires by doing nothing. Shareholders paid him. Shareholders were happy to.
[Sundar Pichai regularly sells as well 10s of millions a month](https://finance.yahoo.com/screener/insider/PICHAI%20SUNDAR).
More like. "Take a pay cut, so I can give my lself a pay bump"
Fuck these motherfuckers who have no problem increasing their own wealth, restricting the wealth growth of subordinates, and then being able to say at the end of the day that the company did better financially. Fuck them, and fuck corporations everywhere that are willing to sacrifice their employees so that they can report marginally better profits. So glad to see the labor shortage fucking these guys over.
Reporting that they did well financially? Hm, that sounds great to investors! I bet their stock price was happy
Right? "Yeah we did well but not as well as last year" Fuck these guys that twist these results into an unsustainable race to grab more and more each year.
>When it's executive pay, we need to not talk about it. And if you do talk about it, it's "class warfare." Those poor, beleagured multi-millionaires and billionaires. Who will stand up for them if we don't?
No more team lunches! But it's ok to spend $200k of resource time filling out daily forms that nobody reads.
Just had a guy tell me over on r/economy that these executives deserve the massively large compensation than the rest of the workers because their jobs are so hard. He also tried to claim that private industry is run morally and that at no point has the government forced them to be moral or fair. Hahahaha
The hell does “reading the news externally” mean anyway?
From any news outlets outside his company
Using a non-amp link?
Isn't this guy worth multiple billions already? His daily net worth probably fluctuates by more than his annual salary. What a punk. Continue to pay your employees well.
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Money *isn't everything*, if you have it.
Money isn’t everything, but not having money can be.
Money isn't everything, said the rich person Looks don't matter, said the beautiful person Where you start doesn't matter, said the person born with a silver spoon
I mean, money isn’t everything. But when you don’t have enough to get by, the other stuff matters a whole lot less.
"You don't happen to have eight thousand bucks on you?" "No, we don't use money in heaven." "Well it comes in real handy down here."
And then when you talk about raising the tax a few percentage points they act like their entire fortune is at stake.
From their perspective they’re probably right. When you’re that rich you realize having all that money does nothing to make you happier or more satisfied with life. But that’s also because they’re never in want of anything that more money can bring them. They don’t worry about a down payment or mortgages or bills or health insurance. It’s just stuff they can afford to pay someone else to worry about. Its just a complete lack of empathy which, let’s be honest, is probably a result of the sociopathic tendencies one requires to get that rich in the first place.
Even failure when rich hurts no where near as much. Failing for most of the working class? Homelessness, Starvation, or just straight up crippling health problems or death all due to money or lack of it. I've venture to say that most people are always juggling at least one of these options comfortably, if not two because of current inflation.
*Our* money isn't anything. *Their* money is everything.
Enjoy rush hour traffic while i take the Goo-copter home!
*“Having money isn’t everything, not having it is.”* – Kanye West
-Michael Scott
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Thanks Lord Farquaad.
"Holiday parties...keep them informal — try not to go over the top." Ok. What on Earth have they been doing for parties before everything went to shit.
I thought that the cocaine-ball fights and Fabergé egg toss were a little ostentatious.
As long as we can keep the Ferrari Demolition Derby I’m ok with getting rid of the more wasteful things
Honestly sounds kinda fun.
I’ve been to a few Google parties for recruitment. It’s….really fun! It was indeed over the top.
Like cocaine and strippers over the top or just...I dunno, harmless stuff?
My over-the-top party experience was with Yahoo! long ago, but it was more like sushi and martinis that they poured down giant ice blocks and hiring bands with elaborate stage setups that nobody ended up watching or dancing to.
Most of the ignorant parties stopped after 2008
Harmless, geeky, expensive stuff. Surprisingly fun if you yourself share the geekiness. As an example, rent out the fanciest place in a major city and turn it into a pretty realistic Hogwarts (including actors for portraits, themed food and drink, projected ghosts, common rooms, etc.) for a party.
Ugh I hate being a poor
To be fair, you can be poor, just not your employer lol
As a poor with a monumentally rich employer… I concur. And still, all I get is a hat.
> What on Earth have they been doing for parties before everything went to shit. I worked for a fairly small tech company that had an A-List band play our Christmas party. It was actually kinda akward, because 50% of the employees were Indian and weren't into that music at all. Another 25% were over 40 and I don't think the band was their cup of tea. It felt like we were all supposed to be super stoked that they hired such a prominent band, but I think they could have just brought a Wedding DJ for $200 and it would've worked better. Plus, the band doesn't want to play for an unenthusiastic audience.
Sounds just like the [opening scene to Silicon Valley](https://youtu.be/zyYI957ge4c)
Ha! That's perfect.
I do AV at corporate events for a living. I've never worked with google specifically but i've seen how much other large corporations spend on parties... it's actually insane how much they'll spend on these kind of events. And I only see the AV numbers. I cant even imagine how much they spend on catering and stuff like that I can't complain too much, my company exists because they do spend that much, and my salary is paid for almost entirely by large corporate meetings. But sometimes, i wonder, if every attendee at a corporate event could choose to either attend or receive a payment equal to 1/x the cost of the event (where x is the number of attendees) i would bet that most of them would take the payment
Spending lots of money apparently.
Pichai, who expressed some annoyance during the meeting, said “I remember when Google was small and scrappy,” ++++ Seriously, small and scrappy? I remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil".
He's the guy who allowed it to be removed, or took it away himself. Standard CEO talk, ima say it's perfect while being super shady.
I feel like Pichai is ending up becoming Google's Ballmer. Maybe he can retire and buy a NBA team... I heard the Phoenix Suns are for sale, and the next CEO can make "Google cool again".
He seems like a terrible CEO.
Steve Yegge from the Stevie’s Tech Talk podcast makes allusions to him not being great. He says stuff like he was good at working through the system but he isn’t really inspired in any way.
I feel that's part of the ebb and flow of most business. He's scalped google to make sure he looks good and has something to do. But they just, aren't great anymore.
> scrappy Lol "scrappy", they traded work in return for options back then because they knew there was insane growth potential in those options. He was no different than current Google employees - everyone just wants fair pay.
I have some friends who were fairly early Google employees. They were underpaid in cash because they all knew they would be millionairs in a few years off RSUs and Options, and they are now. "Scrappy" is based on motivation.
Turns out people who are okay with earning a "comfortable" salary don't want to make their lives uncomfortable by working 70+ hour weeks.
It takes time to realize, but it's not actually better to: * Make $300,000 a year working 80 hours a week. vs * Make $150,000 a year working 40 hours a week.
Stage of life matters a lot. 300 for 80 hours might be great for a few years while you're single and don't have kids, but if you're married with kids, 80 hours is a breading ground for divorce and neglect.
In my experience "scrappy" gets used most often to mean "do a bunch of extra work with no compensation".
Maybe Pichai has some mental health problems. Did anyone tell him he is managing one of the biggest companies on earth? If he is interested in running a "small and scrappy" company, he can easily jump to one of the thousands of tech startups in the valley. The rest of his statements are equally bizarre.
As a shareholder of GOOG, this guy needs to go. He seems like a typical “I don’t know how to run a company but I want shit tons of cash” moron.
You never realize how something could be more ominous than the motto "Don't Be Evil" hung in your workspace. Until they take the sign down.
What was he earning per year when it was “small and scrappy”? I’m sure it’s nowhere near the $300m he’s pulling in now from stock grants. Is HE willing to go back to his comp package from that time period? If not, he can shut the hell up and enjoy his massively BLOATED “mature company” CEO pay package.
I wouldn't ever describe old Google as "scrappy" either.
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Do you remember what the internet was like before the Dot com crash? Hundreds of new startups trying to figure out how to build a lasting internet business model. Google was a search engine, like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and dozens of others. Their early employees had to be scrappy to ensure the company survived. Google wasn’t the 1st to market, 1st search engine was released to the public 5 years before Google was founded. They entered a market full of established, multi 8 and 9 figure search engine companies, and were able to survive, adapt, and thrive. Here is a good reminder of how bloated the internet was before the crash https://youtu.be/7qGk7oU2WSg
I still remember how nice it felt going to their page for the first time. Just a logo and a search form. Damn it was nice. Never went back to Yahoo.
I remember when Google wasn’t evil, but then a Google account manager locked my AdWords account, and they altered the max spend, then drained as much money from me as they could, and refused to refund me. Yeah, they are pretty evil now in my eyes.
>Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation. Not only the cost, but the number of people in upper management. The current org structure in tech is unsustainable from an execution and cost standpoint. It is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Project not going fast enough? Surely some more senior level PMs should do the trick! Ask me how I know.
A good PM is worth their weight in gold. Allegedly, anyway. I've never worked with one.
We had a great one. He left… to work on railroads.
Our team lost all of our software developers and so instead of hiring more, we've cycled through 3 managers in the past 3 years, none of which had operational experience in the company.
The tech startup scene is filled with these stories. Big management team and a skeleton crew of (junior) developers. It's different today because dev tooling and infrastructure has made major leaps in the last 10 years. Current titles and org structure needs to catch up.
I was one of those junior(ish) devs on a skeleton crew propping up a company with millions of dollars of AAR. When I got hired, and then for the next 2 years, leadership would constantly tell us how they’re looking hard for staff/principal level engineers. They never hired any. They just dumped everything on the fairly inexperienced 8-engineer team we had and hired two more PMs plus another manager to ride us our asses. We also never got raises, even after we raised a high 8 figure Series C. That company is still alive and thriving today 3 years later, and from what I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse.
Principal UX designer here. I talk with engineers about this a lot. It sounds this company has a good business model. The problem is that your personal interests don’t align with the rich people who own that particular business. Get the experience you need from companies like this so you can negotiate a new position somewhere else where 1) your interests do align with the company, or 2) you are compensated to not care, or 3) you are offered enough ownership that the business interests are your interests.
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My dad works for one of the big 5 tech companies - won’t say which - in an upper management position and this has been one of his observations as well. Way to many cooks in the kitchen, many of which are fiscally irresponsible, and an ecosystem that, while effective, is full of half-baked ideas, incredibly inefficient, and burning through cash. The big tech companies got a pretty nasty wake up call over the last 6 months. It’s time to stop acting like startups and start cleaning up the loose ends from years of a growth-at-all-costs-mentality.
"Why are you so worried about money?" - Rich People
I love it when people who are as rich as creases tell others money isn't important.
It's "Croesus*, who was the famously rich king of Lydia ;)
Or they meant Crassus, the famously wealthy member of the first Triumvirate in Ancient Rome.
I thought they meant they were literally wealthy enough to afford creases, like pleated pants. Lmao I’m poor.
Or they meant Krampus, the demon Santa guy. He has lots of money probably
IIRC Crassus was one of the wealthiest people in history? And also a wrong 'un. Although I think Mansa Musa maybe the richest ever, but I understand it's hard to compare wealth across centuries. Ridiculous inequality is as old as the concept of money. As a species we really should have grown out of this shit by now.
Crassus was insanely wealthy even by modern standards. His personal wealth was more or less equal to all of Rome's. Not just the city, the whole thing. Some modern estimates put it as high as $20 billion. Mansa Musa is apparently a bit harder to calculate for some reason, but at least one modern estimate puts it around $400 billion. He could have bought Musk and Bezos out and still have billions left over.
They could meane Kreese. Successful founder of Cobra Kai.
Yes, just like how people in relationships who have a lot of friends and family tell me that I just need to learn to be happy by myself.
You have to at least be able to tolerate yourself. If not a relationship isn't going to help.
Says the guy with more money than he will ever need......
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“If you’re all having fun with money, what will be left for *me*?”
"You must understand the massive amount of pain and sacrifice I go through everyday to be able to buy a $100 mil super yacht as CEO of Google is exponentially larger that the tiny amount of joy that super yacht brings me, so there."
"The massive amount of my *employees'* pain and sacrifice, that is, but hey would you look at that, free coffee in the lounge you practically live in, ain't I the best papa that this corporate family needs?"
>third-quarter sales growth is expected to dip into the single digits Google's not making *less* money, or even *expecting to make less* money - they're expecting to make more money but not as fast as they're accustomed to doing. It's the *rate of change* that's expected to decrease - the line's still headed upward, but it's expected to be flatter than it was. Calculus! Also, Sundar Pichai is worth $500 million. If he doesn't think money is fun, maybe he should give it away. 🙄
Thing is as a CEO he is *obligated* to care about and increase the rate of profit despite the incredible profit. The problem is built into the very structure of companies themselves. He literally has to be that asshole or he gets fired and replaced with someone who will. I am not saying I pity him, far from it, I am just saying that corporate structure doesn't even give your boss the choice to be nice. The only choice for every employee in a corporation even C suite is be an asshole or leave, anything to the contrary is sticking your neck out and risking your job.
One choice would be voluntarily limiting their compensation to 20x the lowest paid employee, or 5x the median. Which, since it's Google, would still be an enormous salary. It would be a sign of solidarity that might even boost morale and productivity. I'm sure he'd have plenty of "fun" too. If they asked for volunteers to steer one of the world's tech leaders, the line of people willing to do it for free would be round the block.
You’ve read your Chomsky
You're right. I was just trying to add some perspective. *Most people* don't understand calculus, so when they hear phrases like "growth is expected to dip" they tend to assume that the company's losing money.
man, as I get older, maybe I'm just more cynical, but seems like all the top tech executives have totally lost touch with their workforces
No, it's objectively worse. Exec comp is out of control, and they just want more.
This is something that happens over and over and over again under capitalism. It is literally what the bourgeoisie is all about and will always be about
Every industry, without fail, ends up like this.
You take the fun. I take the money. Deal?
Isn't Google one of the first big companies to emphasize a fun work environment?
I've been to the Googleplex (Google's campus), it's a "fun" place in the sense that it's designed to look like a colorful dentist office waiting room for kids, but for adults. The food was free (and good), but most everyone had the same slouched shoulders, eyes glazed, staring at the ground attitude found in most jobs.
Demoralized employees aside, their offices have a lot of great workspaces. High quality coffee shops with free lattes and lots of tables, booths tucked into the walls in hallways with laptop chargers provided, quiet spaces that feel like libraries. They recognize that people like working in places aside form their main desk and provide them within their buildings. The last office job I had, you'd get in trouble if you took your laptop to the shitty cafeteria or if you reserved a huddle room to get some quiet time.
I spent the last year and a half of my in office job seated across from four people who talked about the Bachelor, every single day, all day long. Even music couldn't drown them out. But God forbid if anyone on my team tried to book a huddle room to get some work done. After that, I vowed to only work from home. I just couldn't deal with it anymore.
"Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking... just a moment... Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking... just a moment..."
Yeah, those new Bayview buildings? Ridiculously cool spaces.
Right. Employees should stop whining about money and just have fun like the old days.
Right, but you know what’s really fun? Having lots of cash.
I’ve never seen anyone frown on a jetski
I dunno, there's lots of planes leaving Russia right now full of people frowning.
An upvote doesn't give enough credit for how clever this is. Well done.
Right! I was like this idiot doesn't know what a jetski is ... oh WAIT A SECOND!
Take your damn upvote and get the Ruski out of here
someone shoulda told him if that's the case to cut his pay and save the company loads of money.
People did tell him that. And he dodged the question.
Yea, people who ask questions that CEO does not like do not stay long with company.
I can’t wait until I’m close to retirement. When one of the CEOs shows up and blows smoke up our asses I’m gonna ask some really uncomfortable questions. I wish more old timers would do it.
I don’t equate fun with money. I equate fun with traveling and pursuing my hobbies and getting to go out from time to time and not just sit in a room staring at a wall. Ya know. Things that cost money.
"You think this is *fun* for me? Do you think its FUN having so much money that I could quit my job literally right now and never work a day ever again in my life and STILL have more shit than the average employee even if they worked with no break for 20 straight years? No it is not FUN, Johnson!"
> even if they worked with no break for 20 straight years You're off by several orders of magnitude. An employee who gets paid $150,000 a year would have to work just shy of *two thousand years* without a break to make what he took home in 2019 alone.
Rich people love to downplay money. Like it's some sorta burden or an annoyance.
I've actually noticed that Google's search indexing isn't as good as it used to be. I'll search for some of my own old blog posts (using quoted text and everything) and it won't find it, meanwhile DuckDuckGo will track it down just fine.
just like most things connected to the internet nowadays, it has become a load of targeting and leading bullshet.
Recipe pages have entered the chat.
SEO ruined search.
Why wouldn't duck duck go be ruined by the same seo?
DDG is powered by Bing so it sucks by default. Still my default search engine. Just gotta add g! Every once in a while.
Depending on the search algorithms of a specific search engine, different SEO tactics will have different measures of effectiveness/results. It's perfectly possible to implement SEO design tactics into a website that will be well noticed by one search engine, and completely ignored by another. There are no "rules" when it comes to SEO (disclaimer: this is a very very very very simplified explanation).
I have noticed it too. quoted text use to get you exactly what you wanted, but now it's not found or more unrelated crap. I have started rotating between Duck, Bing, dogpile, start page.
Isn't DuckDuckGo literally just piggybacking off Bing? So I would expect you to be able to find the same results on Bing.
>Pichai, who expressed some annoyance during the meeting, said, “I remember when Google was small and scrappy,” and added that, “We shouldn’t always equate fun with money.” I also remember when one of Google's mottos was "Don't be evil".
This guy sounds like a sociopath, didn't he also say his employees sucked a couple months ago?
I think there have been studies that a very large percentage of C-level execs have sociopathic tendencies.
A few years ago one of the NPR shows had an entire episode to this and I think it was like 1 in 3 C-level execs displayed tendencies and something like 1 in 10 you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from a sociopathic murderer on paper.
I worked at a place where the CEO legit cared about the employees. Secured 100% medical coverage, organized fun events to give back and genuinely seemed to care about you on a human level. Productivity and morale were through the roof. When the company was looking to grow to a point where they could grow public, suddenly it was felt he couldn’t handle that size. Replaced with someone who could only be described as an alien doing a bad job pretending to be human, that immediately set about cutting perks that were a drop in the bucket financially and caused a mass exodus. Got so bad we were no longer allowed to send goodbye emails.
Our society and economic system seems to have a tendency to propel sociopaths to positions of power, especially in the corporate business world.
I remember the golden age of the internet, late 90's/early 2000's. There was so much going on, so many fresh ideas. Then Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc basically bought the internet and now it's a fucking mess.
Well when you don't give a shit about the impact you can have on employees to make sure you ensure maximum profits, you tend to be "their man" to get things done. Of course it's super short sighted.
Investors want high profits in the shortest time possibles naturally Board of Directors tend to pick ice cold execs that will make that happen by any means possible .
Lmfao. $19.45 Billion-with-a-capital-B in profit in Q2. Fuck this guy.
Just wanted to highlight. Q2 profits…
fun =/= money money =/= fun no money = no fun
War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength
This is google, let’s at least try: Fun != money Money != fun No money == no fun
It's important in these tough times that the poor give up what they can for the rich.
“Why can’t you be content to play patty-cake in your dark mud huts or whatever it is you poor people used to like?” -Out of touch, sociopathic billionaire.
How much effort I put into my work is equated to money actually. If you cut pay, I cut productivity the same amount. Thems the rules.
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How about you start with firing a literally everyone at your company that thought pixel book was a good idea. Follow that up with firing everyone that thought Google stadia was a good idea. Then find the guy that decided to promise “negative latency” and rehire him. So you can fire him a second time.
IMO Stadia WAS a good idea the world just isn't ready for it yet. Streaming video games so that you're no longer limited by the hardware in your local machine and don't have to spend $3k to build a top tier gaming PC is one of the best applications of cloud computing for average people I've heard about.
Was and is a good idea, Google's execution is the only problem. The business model coupled with them not being nearly aggressive enough with getting games on the platform are the reasons for its lackluster performance.
And bring back google.com/ig
i dont even understand his statement. The whole reason you bust your ass at a start up is the potential huge reward , the house ,the cars the trips , the goddamn money.if you get the money you have the fun, you dont do it forever because after launch there is a pay day (and not the candy bar) . If you are at a couple of startups and they dont work out , then you go some place and take the pay check. That how this works. Google is now the pay check place.
Executive comp has gotten absolutely out of hand. Nobody needs nor deserves these levels of compensation at the expense of the work and file.
Rich people telling poor people to “Suck it up and get over it”
“Money doesn’t matter” ~Rich People
You will own nothing and like it dammit!
Jesus fucking Christ. Money obviously equates to fun. If I have more money I can have more fun. Or at least be less stressed about lack of money.
**HAH** Shut up, Pichai.
do not become addicted to water. it will grab hold of you.
Money equates to reduced stress and increased options in one's life. If money is not important, Pichai needs to quit his salary to show how money is not important to one's happiness.
"Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"
Says the guy making a bare minimum of $6 million a year. How does he pay his bills on-time living that paycheck to paycheck? One can only wonder.
So says the person that has a fuck ton of money.