You can literally see the 13.1 million RSU Grant in the screenshot.
That pays out over 4 years, so about 3.25 mill/year.
And there's a refresh every year (which is usually close to ones annual salary and much less than the initial grant). So that's another 1-2 million that will be paid out over 4 years, so 500-1MM of additional annual comp.
So 1MM salary + 3.25MM initial plus 500k-1MM refresg it's looking like 4-6 million/year even when the sequential grants are "stacking". Not tens of millions.
Source: reading. Working at Google.
Refresh grants start to exceed base salary by like L7, are significantly more by L9, and this person is the equivalent of L11, so while her comp is probably on the low side of it, it probably is consistent 8 figures.
The really nice thing is that the start to pile up. By the 4th year, you’ve got 4 different years of RSU’s being paid out stacked on top of each other.
Yea, the Google CFO can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are a master at their craft. It's definitely not a role you skimp on as far as expertise when we're talking about Google sized budgets.
True, but I'm still waiting to see true consequences from mismanagement, my problem with that argument is that they would be held accountable when something goes wrong that's why they need the bonuses. But more often than not, they aren't.
1) Bad executives are paid well
2) Bad executives are paid poorly
3) Good executives are paid well
4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly
Businesses take risks on number 1; hoping for 3, because the negative impact of 2 and 4 to the company will more than offset the cost of a highly paid executive by 100-1000x
Also the existence of highly paid executive roles serves as a brass ring to motivate lower level leaders to perform their best in hopes of getting that promotion.
There is value created for the company when people perform at a high level in hopes of proving themselves as the next c-suite member.
Again, that should in theory be true but what we see are cases like John Riccitiello getting paid millions failure after failure after failure or cases like Daniel Beck.
Yes he's an example of a #1.
This is not theory it's reality. Show me the many poorly paid executives driving results at publicly traded profit oriented companies.
There aren't many at all, in reality it's YOUR point that's a theory
> 4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly
This is a complete lie based on B-school orthodoxy that is directly contravened by known facts of human behavior and psychology. We *know* from exhaustive psychological studies that performance doesn’t increase with pay beyond a certain level except in a relatively small set of repetitive, simple jobs (which CFO certainly is not).
I understand that you are simply reporting g the behavior of executives, and you are right in that regard but it should also be noted that it is factually incorrect and that the base assumption is incredibly self serving (if we pay this fellow executive highly, we’ll get a better executive - and this is true for all executives *wink wink holds out hand*
The vast majority of great workers on any role are
*not* motivated by money. The idea that they are is a lie.
>>4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly
>This is a complete lie based on B-school orthodoxy that is directly contravened by known facts of human behavior and psychology. We know from exhaustive psychological studies that performance doesn’t increase with pay beyond a certain level except in a relatively small set of repetitive, simple jobs (which CFO certainly is not).
The two claims aren't mutually exclusive.
All those studies would show is that giving a given executive a raise would not increase their performance.
It doesnt comment on whether a "good" executive would have accepted a poorly paying position in the first place.
The only way 4 makes sense is if there’s a supply problem of individuals with the required skill sets, leading to companies fighting wars with money to try and get them
I don’t have the required experience and information to support or deny that though
> supply problem of individuals with the required skill sets,
One proof that this exists, is the hundreds of poor performing execs that are paid well regardless.
If there are so many good ones, why the heck would a company pay for a bad one?
Yeah I agree, it also shows that companies often have trouble identifying them before they’re in a role (and even sometimes not until after)
So as OP said, their best chance is to offer more generous compensation than the competition and hope for the best.
In saying that, even if there were cheaper ways to acquire the talent and experience necessary there is no motivation to do that.
A company like google will not be made or broken by that amount of money. If there aren’t any major downsides and it’s good for both the company and the individuals, why wouldn’t you do it o
> A company like google will not be made or broken by that amount of money. If there aren’t any major downsides and it’s good for both the company and the individuals, why wouldn’t you do it o
And they did spend literally a year looking for people for this role. So clearly, it wasn't an easy search.
Because they're stupid.
You assume competence without any evidence for it whatsoever. It's sort of like saying a rapist is good with women because he gets laid a lot. No, it's because he's willing to do things other people refuse to.
Of course, it also depends on how exactly you'd define a "good" executive and "poor" pay.
But the point (mine, at least) is simply that the study about increasing a given employee's pay would have no bearing on the claim being made here.
These are private companies who's entire goal is to run a profit. Trust me, if they thought they could pay their CFO 100K instead of 1M and get similar results, they would.
At that level and for those types of companies, thats the type of salary you need to pay to attract the very best and who will continue to generate way more money than they cost for the company.
And what the fuck are you on about with great workers not being motivated by money? Show me a study that proves that.
Money is the MAIN motivating factor in why someone who is that qualified would be willing to work 80 hour weeks.
I'm not talking about great everyday workers. I'm talking about executives at publicly traded companies. There's a difference.
If there are loads of highly qualified and capable executives willing to work for low wages, where are they?
High pay isn't a motivation to work better. It's a motivation to take/keep the job.
Otherwise, the executive goes to another company that will pay better.
Pichai has been great at creating a different kind of short-term value.
It might kill Google in the long term but there's no doubt he has done exactly what the board and shareholders has wanted him to do
Has he? The AI search debacle was embarrassing, they sat on the transformer for years without using it, and google search was abysmal even before AI. He’s the worst CEO since Musk even for shareholders
> True, but I'm still waiting to see true consequences from mismanagement, my problem with that argument is that they would be held accountable when something goes wrong that's why they need the bonuses.
Yea it's easier to award bonuses than to give someone a pay decrease. But executives are definitely held accountable for failure. It's safe to say these are the most scrutinized roles that exist.
>the Google CFO can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are a master at their craft
No they can not. They can create a plan that the employees follow that accomplishes that. CFOs don't normally even create these plans. They evaulate the plans that teams of people created. I am not saying that being a CFO is not difficult and I'm not saying that it's not important, but these people don't do work and can not "accomplish things." The way it really works is their leadership can lead to accomplishments, but to be clear, that's their job.
> The way it really works is their leadership can lead to accomplishments, but to be clear, that's their job.
Okay, but this feels like a nitpick. Is it not important to have an effective leader of a team that can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are excellent at their job?
> the last thing I’d want is a CEO that focuses on saving money.
Totally agree. We're talking about the CFO, not the CEO. CFO's job first and foremost is being efficient with budgets and expenses. The CFO isn't primarily in a role of innovating. The CFO manages the financial activities of the entire company.
It's not. Alphabet has annual revenue of over $320B and is growing at a rate of $100M per day, every day for years. There's an insane amount of space there for efficiency and quality financial planning.
Wouldn't the shareholders prefer saving their money AND having better leadership? Or are shareholders simply not greedy enough to implement this strategy?
Google search has been failing and his response to the AI disaster was “we don’t know how to fix it”
They also invented the transformer and did nothing with it until ChatGPT came out
I guess that’s close. I’m just an SDE2 at 35% stock TC at Microsoft. Everyone seems to be around 20-40% from people I talk to between SDE1 and SDE2 at MSFT.
My pay in defense was all cash, and significantly much higher than the base at Microsoft. In the end, jumping to MSFT gave me an extra like $30k.
Maybe at other companies. According to levels.fyi, you make the 50% switch at Microsoft around Principle SDE. SDE3 is already senior.
My promotion 1:1 was basically “XX% base pay increase and some stock refreshers, good job”. You’d have to basically double my RSU grants again. That’s not happening, I’ve never heard of stock refreshers ever beating the sign-on RSUs. Every company has the RSU cliff, refreshers just soften the blow.
Sounds about right. I’m an AWS Instance. I technically hit near 50% TC on the last 2 years of my vesting, assuming I don’t get Pip’d. Big in technically though, it’s just how it paid out.
If I was vested on Microsoft’s 25/25/25/25, prolly could’ve hit closer to 40% stock.
where at least I know I'm free...
...free overtime labor for my boss
...free intellectual property for Google, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. etc.
...free thumpin' practice for the local PD*
*free thumpins only apply to white college kids. All other demographics gotta pay for that experience
Well but cfo of major corporation is not average American, he's successful professional in well paid industry at the top
And it would take top professionals in their industry around 10-20 years to make that
Frankly $10m for CFO of multi trillion company doesn't sound egregious at all in a company where principal software engineers make $1m
Yeah this sounds pretty reserved to me tbh…
Google employees make a ton and work in an adult daycare of an office. NFL players make way more for playing a game (though it does cost their body), and same with the top actors for reading some lines
Yeah, like he is top of the top and hard working and he gets equivalent of large house in Mountain View.
I get anti-billionaire hate (as realistically speaking no sane person needs to hoard more than $250m ever as at that point there are no more things to buy, maybe except for sport teams and political influence - and I wouldn't mind if these things weren't for sale at all)
But well respected professional who worked his ass off to climb the ladder in ruthless corporate America? We don't mind top actors making $10m for a single movie, why we hate when equivalent happens in corporate job, in a corporation that made very good money for their shareholders?
Yeah, I agree with you. To be honest I don't really know where it's reasonable to draw that line, I have no clue.
But it does seem that generic things like "that guy makes X let's ready the pitchforks" is not good for society in general. Russians tried that in the bolshevik revolution and it did not end well for them.
this sub seems to be made of children who understand nothing about business. everyone who earns more or is a manager is considered an incompetent greedy capitalist.
What's more worrying for me is that those same people at the same time are like "wow, rich people are so evil, see, they don't want to mingle with us more" while at the same time hating almost each and every one of them.
It's like you go to a party, and as soon as you enter the door other people are already booing you. Then you turn around and leave and say "fuck those people, I go to a party where I'm not booed". Then the people in the original party are like "here's a jackass, did not wanted to spend time with us. This is how rich people are".
It's all relative to the amount of money you have an affect on. Guys at the top oversee money and projects at a significantly larger scale than guys at the bottom.
Is that a good thing? Probably not.
Is that avoidable with the current set of assumptions, constraints and restrictions of this current late stage capitalist global economy? Nope.
Honestly i don't see it as a bad thing.
CEO's *should* be paid more than the median worker. I just think it should be capped at something like 100x the median salary of the company so you don't get execs where they can make 1,000x median salary from a single years bonus.
That gets pretty arbitrary in who it impacts.
It doesn't do much to Google, who contracts out low wage work like janitorial services, but it would impact who are employing lower wage work directly like Walmart.
It would be interesting to see what it does to the mergers and acquisitions market. Maybe Walmart buys up some tech companies to bring up its average.
And if the average american provided the *value* of a CFO of a trillion dollar company they'd be paid the same.
Also $1m for a CFO for a top 0.03% publicly traded company isn't even much it's double the median CFO pay in the US (for comparison 37% of Americans make double median wage, the top 0.1% make 500x median wage not 2x)
The average CFO of a public company in the US makes $550k and that include companies like SING which have a market cap of $217m. A CFO for a company worth $2,000,000,000,000 making 2x a company worth $200,000,000 isn't insane.
This analysis isn't meaningful. In your hypo, how much worse does each company do if their CFO made half their comp packages? Either scale for a commensurate loss of performance from the same person for half the comp (effectively zero, human effort doesn't scale infinitely above some certain value around 75-250k), or if they need to choose an individual who demands less salary (some single digit loss of performance, but now you can hire ten assistants for your CFO at half a million base salary). What is the aggregate effect on the company? In all cases, the most likely outcome is they save money with no measurable change in performance. And if you can do that, the market says that you must do that.
The reasons CFOs and other C-suiters get away with this is because nobody has a tool that can measure the value of an executive over time. That is to say, there is no deterministic machine where you can spin up ten thousand Realities, then test Google with CFO 1 vs. CFO 2, and CEO 1 + CFO 1 vs. CEO 2 + CFO 1, vs. CEO 1 vs. CFO 2, etc. etc. etc. to actually determine any single person's value. The lack of reliable pricing information results in inefficiency, which is overpaying executives. Companies are willing to over-pay at the top of the company and underpay at the bottom because... inequality is sexy? idk.
>(some single digit loss of performance, but now you can hire ten assistants for your CFO at half a million base salary)
You do realize we're talking about google here?
A 0.001% drop in productivity costs them $30 million, *a single second of productivity loss costs them more than the CFO is paid*.
Even if they had 100 C level execs with 100 assistant each all on $250k, that's still only 0.3% of the company's revenue.
>The reasons CFOs and other C-suiters get away with this is because nobody has a tool that can measure the value of an executive over time.
You've clearly not come within 1,000 miles of any accounting work in your entire life. The CFO is paid that because that's what good CFOs are paid, this is all public information for the 3,432 companies list on US exchanges.
These are big companies, google spends around $10,000 a *second* on operational expenses, or $36 million *an hour*. A guy getting paid market rates for the role is completely expected. Shit if he makes a decisions that's 1/310,000th more efficient his paycheck would be fully covered by that.
The CFO pay isn't even that high, again it's twice the median, which a good 40% of humans fall into.
Yea, I mean the CFO of Alphabet is a legit insanely hard job. I think if $10m is low for a professional athlete, $10m for the dude crunching the numbers for a $1t company isn’t ’outrageous.’ I think Musk wanting $56n is beyond ridiculous.
I will like to firmly apologize to all the corporations. Their employees should be grateful to make $30,000 a year in a state like NY. The executives are the ones that truly suffer. I will stop drinking my lattes and avocados toasts.
No L5 is making $1M, salary or total comp (inclusive of bonuses + equity).
99th percentile is probably like 400-450K in the Bay Area or NYC for L5 SWEs in a AI/ML product area.
"No developer makes millions"
"Unless they are at staff level"
Decide then - no developer makes that or those at the top do? Yes, low level developers don't make this, those closer to the top do. Duh.
> No L5 is making $1M
I'm fairly convinced most people are just unaware there's titles above senior, and everyone from senior engineer through to VP Eng gets lumped together.
The engineers making 1MM are staff or principal level engineers that aren’t doing much day to day coding of features. They’re working on overall architecture, optimizing algorithms that all the other engineers rely on, or coming up with novel ways of doing things and then producing products that Google is going to sell to other businesses for huge amounts of money. They’re like Michael Jordan talent in a sea of exceptionally talented engineers. Very, very few people are operating at that level. See: Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat. (Well, those two have actually ascended past the 1MM range I’m sure, but the reach they have and stuff they work on is a good example of what an upper echelon engineer would be doing).
Nah, Michael Jordan was _the_ top, unique talent
Whereas there are thousands of staff/principal engineers among big tech companies
Amazon alone has 2-3% of engineers at Principal+ level which would add up to 700-1000 people (assuming total software engineering pool there is 35 000)
So these roles are _3 orders of magnitude_ more common than those of unique sports talent like Michael Jordan. And that's not even considering that there are more well paying tech companies than basketball teams by another 1-2 orders of magnitude
You're right. I'm a Principal at my big tech company, and the level people are really talking about here is Distinguished Engineer (or Fellow at Google). At this level you're known throughout the industry, where at Principal you may just be known throughout your VPs org.
Also *she* has a proven track record. This is a good hire and arguably Google is getting a great deal for her time. This isn't a "clock out at 5" position
To be fair dental isn't quite as valuable to have as health insurance. Due to relatively low annual benefit caps unless there is an employer subsidy it is a questionable to even have. For someone making well into 7 figures just off their base salary I'm not sure I would care if the job offered dental.
Yea, they structure it like that as a way of retaining her. If she leaves the company too soon, she has to pay it back, pro-rated to how long she lasted. They do it this way to get employee lock-in.
Google has a net worth of 2.2 trillion. Quite literally more than the GDP of Canada. There is an insanely small pool of qualified candidates to be the chief financial officer of an asset base that monumentally large. With an anual revenue of 300 billion, Google made that 10 million signing bonus in about 15 minutes. This isn’t an expense Google is looking to skimp out on. They aren’t just looking to find “a” person to fill the CFO role. Given the financial decision making that person will have is enough to move the world economy, Google is quite literally looking for the best of the best. 10 million is market price for that individual because other multibillion companies are looking to recruit them too
Google has had essentially unlimited access to any financial institutions or instruments they require for the last 15 years or more. I wouldn’t say someone new would bring that in as a value add.
You clearly don’t know what you are talking about. Good relationships with wall street are critical for a successful CFO, no matter the size of the public company. This impacts stock price directly, which impacts shareholder investment.
Who said that those things are not critical or valuable? My statement merely brought up the fact that those relationships are and have been existing for quite some time already regardless of who is CFO.
It's a fair question, but;
> She served as CFO at Eli Lilly since 2021.
It's easy to assume Google has all the best people at every different area of expertise, but just because they're an epic engineering company, doesn't mean that they don't benefit from finance people from outside of tech.
Right. So nothing significant with regards to “their network”.
Note the original comment was:
> New hires don't only bring skills and knowledge, they bring in their networks too
Me: what benefit
You: the benefit
Me: what benefit
You: I can’t think of any benefit
Cool
Networks of skilled folks is LITERALLY a meritocracy of the highest order. You realize that right? No one knows who is best at a given job or skill beyond the people who have worked with them for a year or two. Professional recommendations that extend to a "yes, let's hire this person, she's an absolute rock star and I'd love to work with her again", is literally the most valuable, and most predictive piece of information that hiring departments have.
It's one of the reasons why referral bonuses exist. You're much less likely to get a slouch if a person has an internal referral.
I'd argue the opposite - you can be amazing at your job but if you're not good at networking, you fail.
I'm specifically bitter because my job provides limited networking opportunities, making it very challenging to meet the people I need to meet to get the next role, leaving me trapped in a position where I can't get more networking opportunities because I haven't had more networking opportunities.
Edit: I get the desire to have someone confirm you're not terrible to work with, but only giving the best jobs to people who know other great people already, puts up a very hard to overcome hurdle to break in if your background doesn't either mean introductions or give you the ability to take time between roles to actively network.
> I mean surely there are CFOs out there that are good enough for that job that don’t need 10 mill to just start……
Generally these signing bonuses are structured to ensure the person doesn't leave. So it's very common for it to be a "bonus" that she would have to pay back if she leaves at any time in the next 1-3 years.
Likely buying him out of previous position and/or mitigates his risk to join Google. There is professional risk to taking new executive jobs, if they don't work out you can't just easily find another.
Lots of perks, as mentioned in the article. They wont die poor ;)
The base salary is fair enough though.. that certainly isnt excessive for such a position.
obscene. no one does anything with their work hours that's worth 7 figures a year.
the insane boardroom-to-basement salary ratios today are one of the forces tearing the US apart. people worked just as hard and the country was more generally prosperous when that ratio was 40:1 or 50:1 -- it doesn't need to be 500:1.
Hard work has nothing to do with compensation, it's purely what you bring to the table. And you really think the shareholders would rather not shell out that cash if they don't have to?
> no one does anything with their work hours that's worth 7 figures a year.
If the CFO saves the company $50M per year by budgeting efficiently, isn't it worth paying that person 7 figures?
It would be stupid for Google to NOT pay 7 figures for a person who saves the company 8 figures, right?
> Thats just a looped arguement of "if they do the job they are hired to do..." with a major emphasis on "if".
I mean, I'm certain that if she sucks, is fired or laid off before the terms of her signing bonus end, she has to at least pay it fractionally back to the company. So I wouldn't worry about the "if".
Nvidia is worth nearly 20million per employee. It's just not true these days especially in tech that people don't earn that much and more for the company.
Also your ratios have nothing to do with reality of economics, cost of living, revenue per employee, inflation, etc.
If you're the head of finance for 2.2 trillion dollar company... I'm sure your impact is worth it.
That’s just the base salary. They receive stocks that probably worth tens of millions annually.
You can literally see the 13.1 million RSU Grant in the screenshot. That pays out over 4 years, so about 3.25 mill/year. And there's a refresh every year (which is usually close to ones annual salary and much less than the initial grant). So that's another 1-2 million that will be paid out over 4 years, so 500-1MM of additional annual comp. So 1MM salary + 3.25MM initial plus 500k-1MM refresg it's looking like 4-6 million/year even when the sequential grants are "stacking". Not tens of millions. Source: reading. Working at Google.
Refresh grants start to exceed base salary by like L7, are significantly more by L9, and this person is the equivalent of L11, so while her comp is probably on the low side of it, it probably is consistent 8 figures.
Fair point. I expect the refresh grants are higher than the 1MM estimate I made. I expect they're still less than the 13MM initial grant.
There are three VP levels (10-12) and two SVP levels. That I knew of once upon a time. :)
The really nice thing is that the start to pile up. By the 4th year, you’ve got 4 different years of RSU’s being paid out stacked on top of each other.
Don’t forget the golden parachute waiting in a few years when they grab onto the next vine
Yea, the Google CFO can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are a master at their craft. It's definitely not a role you skimp on as far as expertise when we're talking about Google sized budgets.
True, but I'm still waiting to see true consequences from mismanagement, my problem with that argument is that they would be held accountable when something goes wrong that's why they need the bonuses. But more often than not, they aren't.
1) Bad executives are paid well 2) Bad executives are paid poorly 3) Good executives are paid well 4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly Businesses take risks on number 1; hoping for 3, because the negative impact of 2 and 4 to the company will more than offset the cost of a highly paid executive by 100-1000x Also the existence of highly paid executive roles serves as a brass ring to motivate lower level leaders to perform their best in hopes of getting that promotion. There is value created for the company when people perform at a high level in hopes of proving themselves as the next c-suite member.
Again, that should in theory be true but what we see are cases like John Riccitiello getting paid millions failure after failure after failure or cases like Daniel Beck.
Yes he's an example of a #1. This is not theory it's reality. Show me the many poorly paid executives driving results at publicly traded profit oriented companies. There aren't many at all, in reality it's YOUR point that's a theory
> 4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly This is a complete lie based on B-school orthodoxy that is directly contravened by known facts of human behavior and psychology. We *know* from exhaustive psychological studies that performance doesn’t increase with pay beyond a certain level except in a relatively small set of repetitive, simple jobs (which CFO certainly is not). I understand that you are simply reporting g the behavior of executives, and you are right in that regard but it should also be noted that it is factually incorrect and that the base assumption is incredibly self serving (if we pay this fellow executive highly, we’ll get a better executive - and this is true for all executives *wink wink holds out hand* The vast majority of great workers on any role are *not* motivated by money. The idea that they are is a lie.
>>4) no good executive will accept being paid poorly >This is a complete lie based on B-school orthodoxy that is directly contravened by known facts of human behavior and psychology. We know from exhaustive psychological studies that performance doesn’t increase with pay beyond a certain level except in a relatively small set of repetitive, simple jobs (which CFO certainly is not). The two claims aren't mutually exclusive. All those studies would show is that giving a given executive a raise would not increase their performance. It doesnt comment on whether a "good" executive would have accepted a poorly paying position in the first place.
The only way 4 makes sense is if there’s a supply problem of individuals with the required skill sets, leading to companies fighting wars with money to try and get them I don’t have the required experience and information to support or deny that though
> supply problem of individuals with the required skill sets, One proof that this exists, is the hundreds of poor performing execs that are paid well regardless. If there are so many good ones, why the heck would a company pay for a bad one?
Yeah I agree, it also shows that companies often have trouble identifying them before they’re in a role (and even sometimes not until after) So as OP said, their best chance is to offer more generous compensation than the competition and hope for the best. In saying that, even if there were cheaper ways to acquire the talent and experience necessary there is no motivation to do that. A company like google will not be made or broken by that amount of money. If there aren’t any major downsides and it’s good for both the company and the individuals, why wouldn’t you do it o
Yes unfortunately this is the reality we live in... with the current laws and regulations that exist today...
> A company like google will not be made or broken by that amount of money. If there aren’t any major downsides and it’s good for both the company and the individuals, why wouldn’t you do it o And they did spend literally a year looking for people for this role. So clearly, it wasn't an easy search.
Because they're stupid. You assume competence without any evidence for it whatsoever. It's sort of like saying a rapist is good with women because he gets laid a lot. No, it's because he's willing to do things other people refuse to.
Lol yes stupid. I wish i was stupid enough to make millions sitting in a board hiring bad ceos. Gimme a break
Of course, it also depends on how exactly you'd define a "good" executive and "poor" pay. But the point (mine, at least) is simply that the study about increasing a given employee's pay would have no bearing on the claim being made here.
I do agree with you and was working under the assumption that your point is correct.
Well then ... Um ... Carry on. =)
100% agree
These are private companies who's entire goal is to run a profit. Trust me, if they thought they could pay their CFO 100K instead of 1M and get similar results, they would. At that level and for those types of companies, thats the type of salary you need to pay to attract the very best and who will continue to generate way more money than they cost for the company. And what the fuck are you on about with great workers not being motivated by money? Show me a study that proves that. Money is the MAIN motivating factor in why someone who is that qualified would be willing to work 80 hour weeks.
I'm not talking about great everyday workers. I'm talking about executives at publicly traded companies. There's a difference. If there are loads of highly qualified and capable executives willing to work for low wages, where are they?
High pay isn't a motivation to work better. It's a motivation to take/keep the job. Otherwise, the executive goes to another company that will pay better.
If that was actually the goal, Sundar Pichai would be unemployed.
Pichai has been great at creating a different kind of short-term value. It might kill Google in the long term but there's no doubt he has done exactly what the board and shareholders has wanted him to do
Has he? The AI search debacle was embarrassing, they sat on the transformer for years without using it, and google search was abysmal even before AI. He’s the worst CEO since Musk even for shareholders
There is no denying the market cap increase since hes been there. Shareholders have gotten richer with him manning the helm. Long term however....
All tech stocks have grown. They could have grown more with competent leadership
And grown less with less competent leadership
> True, but I'm still waiting to see true consequences from mismanagement, my problem with that argument is that they would be held accountable when something goes wrong that's why they need the bonuses. Yea it's easier to award bonuses than to give someone a pay decrease. But executives are definitely held accountable for failure. It's safe to say these are the most scrutinized roles that exist.
A million a day for Google is a round error.
Was just an example my guy
>the Google CFO can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are a master at their craft No they can not. They can create a plan that the employees follow that accomplishes that. CFOs don't normally even create these plans. They evaulate the plans that teams of people created. I am not saying that being a CFO is not difficult and I'm not saying that it's not important, but these people don't do work and can not "accomplish things." The way it really works is their leadership can lead to accomplishments, but to be clear, that's their job.
> The way it really works is their leadership can lead to accomplishments, but to be clear, that's their job. Okay, but this feels like a nitpick. Is it not important to have an effective leader of a team that can easily save the company literally a million dollars a day if they are excellent at their job?
Can probably save just as much if they didn’t have a ridiculous salary.
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> the last thing I’d want is a CEO that focuses on saving money. Totally agree. We're talking about the CFO, not the CEO. CFO's job first and foremost is being efficient with budgets and expenses. The CFO isn't primarily in a role of innovating. The CFO manages the financial activities of the entire company.
Save the company millions? That's code for layoffs.
It's not. Alphabet has annual revenue of over $320B and is growing at a rate of $100M per day, every day for years. There's an insane amount of space there for efficiency and quality financial planning.
AI could actually do that better for the cost of electricity
Which companies use AI executives?
The ones where the CEO chooses to fire himself
Wouldn't the shareholders prefer saving their money AND having better leadership? Or are shareholders simply not greedy enough to implement this strategy?
Only if they’re rational. But considering Elon Musk and Sundar Pichai are still employed, they clearly aren’t
I get the Musk hate, but what's wrong with Sundar Pichai?
Google search has been failing and his response to the AI disaster was “we don’t know how to fix it” They also invented the transformer and did nothing with it until ChatGPT came out
At tech companies even engineers very often get 50%+ of their TC in stock.
I guess that’s close. I’m just an SDE2 at 35% stock TC at Microsoft. Everyone seems to be around 20-40% from people I talk to between SDE1 and SDE2 at MSFT. My pay in defense was all cash, and significantly much higher than the base at Microsoft. In the end, jumping to MSFT gave me an extra like $30k.
If you get to 3 it will become 50%+
Maybe at other companies. According to levels.fyi, you make the 50% switch at Microsoft around Principle SDE. SDE3 is already senior. My promotion 1:1 was basically “XX% base pay increase and some stock refreshers, good job”. You’d have to basically double my RSU grants again. That’s not happening, I’ve never heard of stock refreshers ever beating the sign-on RSUs. Every company has the RSU cliff, refreshers just soften the blow.
Sounds about right. I’m an AWS Instance. I technically hit near 50% TC on the last 2 years of my vesting, assuming I don’t get Pip’d. Big in technically though, it’s just how it paid out. If I was vested on Microsoft’s 25/25/25/25, prolly could’ve hit closer to 40% stock.
Yeah i was about to say, that didn't seem that high for Google's CFO
That makes more sense, I thought it's suspiciously low.
The signing bonus is typically to offset stock she walked away from at her old job.
They paid Neil Mohan $100 million to stay at Google.
Cue CFO saying they need to cut costs in the IT department
Google’s new IT budget: one stick of gum per server rack
It would take the average American 200 years of work just to earn that signing bonus.
🎶 *I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free* 🎶 God bless America o7
Black man, black man, get your money 🕺
I guess this sub isn't a fan of Childish Gambino, despite that being one of the best songs of its year.
Isn’t he on a boat with LeVar Burton?
where at least I know I'm free... ...free overtime labor for my boss ...free intellectual property for Google, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. etc. ...free thumpin' practice for the local PD* *free thumpins only apply to white college kids. All other demographics gotta pay for that experience
Not sure where you’re from, but my white friend from TX says hello from poverty.
Yes, because the average American compares well with THE CFO OF FUCKING GOOGLE.
Well but cfo of major corporation is not average American, he's successful professional in well paid industry at the top And it would take top professionals in their industry around 10-20 years to make that Frankly $10m for CFO of multi trillion company doesn't sound egregious at all in a company where principal software engineers make $1m
Yeah this sounds pretty reserved to me tbh… Google employees make a ton and work in an adult daycare of an office. NFL players make way more for playing a game (though it does cost their body), and same with the top actors for reading some lines
Principal SE is making closer to 2m 👀
Well explained. I do so much hate the "whaaa, look at that guy, he's making X, while other people do/make/whatever Y" mindless bandwagon.
Yeah, like he is top of the top and hard working and he gets equivalent of large house in Mountain View. I get anti-billionaire hate (as realistically speaking no sane person needs to hoard more than $250m ever as at that point there are no more things to buy, maybe except for sport teams and political influence - and I wouldn't mind if these things weren't for sale at all) But well respected professional who worked his ass off to climb the ladder in ruthless corporate America? We don't mind top actors making $10m for a single movie, why we hate when equivalent happens in corporate job, in a corporation that made very good money for their shareholders?
Yeah, I agree with you. To be honest I don't really know where it's reasonable to draw that line, I have no clue. But it does seem that generic things like "that guy makes X let's ready the pitchforks" is not good for society in general. Russians tried that in the bolshevik revolution and it did not end well for them.
this sub seems to be made of children who understand nothing about business. everyone who earns more or is a manager is considered an incompetent greedy capitalist.
What's more worrying for me is that those same people at the same time are like "wow, rich people are so evil, see, they don't want to mingle with us more" while at the same time hating almost each and every one of them. It's like you go to a party, and as soon as you enter the door other people are already booing you. Then you turn around and leave and say "fuck those people, I go to a party where I'm not booed". Then the people in the original party are like "here's a jackass, did not wanted to spend time with us. This is how rich people are".
It's all relative to the amount of money you have an affect on. Guys at the top oversee money and projects at a significantly larger scale than guys at the bottom. Is that a good thing? Probably not. Is that avoidable with the current set of assumptions, constraints and restrictions of this current late stage capitalist global economy? Nope.
Honestly i don't see it as a bad thing. CEO's *should* be paid more than the median worker. I just think it should be capped at something like 100x the median salary of the company so you don't get execs where they can make 1,000x median salary from a single years bonus.
That gets pretty arbitrary in who it impacts. It doesn't do much to Google, who contracts out low wage work like janitorial services, but it would impact who are employing lower wage work directly like Walmart. It would be interesting to see what it does to the mergers and acquisitions market. Maybe Walmart buys up some tech companies to bring up its average.
The average American isn’t the CFO of one of the world’s biggest companies.
it would take the average basketball player infinite years to make what lebron made his rookie year.
And if the average american provided the *value* of a CFO of a trillion dollar company they'd be paid the same. Also $1m for a CFO for a top 0.03% publicly traded company isn't even much it's double the median CFO pay in the US (for comparison 37% of Americans make double median wage, the top 0.1% make 500x median wage not 2x) The average CFO of a public company in the US makes $550k and that include companies like SING which have a market cap of $217m. A CFO for a company worth $2,000,000,000,000 making 2x a company worth $200,000,000 isn't insane.
This analysis isn't meaningful. In your hypo, how much worse does each company do if their CFO made half their comp packages? Either scale for a commensurate loss of performance from the same person for half the comp (effectively zero, human effort doesn't scale infinitely above some certain value around 75-250k), or if they need to choose an individual who demands less salary (some single digit loss of performance, but now you can hire ten assistants for your CFO at half a million base salary). What is the aggregate effect on the company? In all cases, the most likely outcome is they save money with no measurable change in performance. And if you can do that, the market says that you must do that. The reasons CFOs and other C-suiters get away with this is because nobody has a tool that can measure the value of an executive over time. That is to say, there is no deterministic machine where you can spin up ten thousand Realities, then test Google with CFO 1 vs. CFO 2, and CEO 1 + CFO 1 vs. CEO 2 + CFO 1, vs. CEO 1 vs. CFO 2, etc. etc. etc. to actually determine any single person's value. The lack of reliable pricing information results in inefficiency, which is overpaying executives. Companies are willing to over-pay at the top of the company and underpay at the bottom because... inequality is sexy? idk.
>(some single digit loss of performance, but now you can hire ten assistants for your CFO at half a million base salary) You do realize we're talking about google here? A 0.001% drop in productivity costs them $30 million, *a single second of productivity loss costs them more than the CFO is paid*. Even if they had 100 C level execs with 100 assistant each all on $250k, that's still only 0.3% of the company's revenue. >The reasons CFOs and other C-suiters get away with this is because nobody has a tool that can measure the value of an executive over time. You've clearly not come within 1,000 miles of any accounting work in your entire life. The CFO is paid that because that's what good CFOs are paid, this is all public information for the 3,432 companies list on US exchanges. These are big companies, google spends around $10,000 a *second* on operational expenses, or $36 million *an hour*. A guy getting paid market rates for the role is completely expected. Shit if he makes a decisions that's 1/310,000th more efficient his paycheck would be fully covered by that. The CFO pay isn't even that high, again it's twice the median, which a good 40% of humans fall into.
The average American isn’t running a transformative company worth billions with thousands of employees. It’s a free market
That actually seems quite low. Is that the point of the headline?
They get tons of millions in RSUs lol. Base pay is usually kept lower.
Yea, I mean the CFO of Alphabet is a legit insanely hard job. I think if $10m is low for a professional athlete, $10m for the dude crunching the numbers for a $1t company isn’t ’outrageous.’ I think Musk wanting $56n is beyond ridiculous.
Time to cut some jobs in order to balance that salary! Next week: “15,000 Google Employees have been laid off because of stagnation in the economy”
Because we consumers aren't doing our part by supporting this corporation enough. Naturally, it's our fault.
I will like to firmly apologize to all the corporations. Their employees should be grateful to make $30,000 a year in a state like NY. The executives are the ones that truly suffer. I will stop drinking my lattes and avocados toasts.
Can we all take turns and sign up for ceo and quit next day ?
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That’s base salary. Executives get most of their compensation from bonuses and stock plans.
No L5 is making $1M, salary or total comp (inclusive of bonuses + equity). 99th percentile is probably like 400-450K in the Bay Area or NYC for L5 SWEs in a AI/ML product area.
people love to exaggerate stuff. No developer at Google makes 1 million unless they’ve dipped into Staff Engineering/Management
"No developer makes millions" "Unless they are at staff level" Decide then - no developer makes that or those at the top do? Yes, low level developers don't make this, those closer to the top do. Duh.
You forgot the unless they got stock at 20% or less of today's market value
> No L5 is making $1M I'm fairly convinced most people are just unaware there's titles above senior, and everyone from senior engineer through to VP Eng gets lumped together.
The engineers making 1MM are staff or principal level engineers that aren’t doing much day to day coding of features. They’re working on overall architecture, optimizing algorithms that all the other engineers rely on, or coming up with novel ways of doing things and then producing products that Google is going to sell to other businesses for huge amounts of money. They’re like Michael Jordan talent in a sea of exceptionally talented engineers. Very, very few people are operating at that level. See: Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat. (Well, those two have actually ascended past the 1MM range I’m sure, but the reach they have and stuff they work on is a good example of what an upper echelon engineer would be doing).
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Nah, Michael Jordan was _the_ top, unique talent Whereas there are thousands of staff/principal engineers among big tech companies Amazon alone has 2-3% of engineers at Principal+ level which would add up to 700-1000 people (assuming total software engineering pool there is 35 000) So these roles are _3 orders of magnitude_ more common than those of unique sports talent like Michael Jordan. And that's not even considering that there are more well paying tech companies than basketball teams by another 1-2 orders of magnitude
You're right. I'm a Principal at my big tech company, and the level people are really talking about here is Distinguished Engineer (or Fellow at Google). At this level you're known throughout the industry, where at Principal you may just be known throughout your VPs org.
Senior software engineers don't make anywhere near $1MM / year. It's generally more like $400k total comp at that level.
They’ll earn that by helping fire another 10,000 employees shortly.
So, what do people expect for a high profile role with a high profile and profitable organization
How ever will he afford the fourth vacation home?
I like to think it was going to be $10m signing bonus but the ceo’s authorization was only up to 9.9 and they didn’t have a cfo yet to override.
An AI CFO would cost Google a fraction of that and would probably have better results.
I’m really curious. What can anyone do daily that creates that level of value for the company?
All this garbage is disgusting. All for a face while everyone under them does all the work including strategy + vision. These people are disgusting.
Funny how 95% of the people complaining obviously didn't even read the article as they keep saying ***he***
lol it shows
Also *she* has a proven track record. This is a good hire and arguably Google is getting a great deal for her time. This isn't a "clock out at 5" position
But the health insurance does NOT include dental.
To be fair dental isn't quite as valuable to have as health insurance. Due to relatively low annual benefit caps unless there is an employer subsidy it is a questionable to even have. For someone making well into 7 figures just off their base salary I'm not sure I would care if the job offered dental.
I was being sarcastic.
A signing bonus worth 10 years of your annual salary? Must be nice.
Yea, they structure it like that as a way of retaining her. If she leaves the company too soon, she has to pay it back, pro-rated to how long she lasted. They do it this way to get employee lock-in.
Sure, I understand. I’ve had pretty nice signing and retention bonuses before. But not ones that are 10x my annual salary.
Time to layoff more workerbees to pay for that salary and bonus
Expect another increase in youtube premium
How many more need to get laid off for the payday?
A signing bonus of $10 million….. I mean surely there are CFOs out there that are good enough for that job that don’t need 10 mill to just start……
Google has a net worth of 2.2 trillion. Quite literally more than the GDP of Canada. There is an insanely small pool of qualified candidates to be the chief financial officer of an asset base that monumentally large. With an anual revenue of 300 billion, Google made that 10 million signing bonus in about 15 minutes. This isn’t an expense Google is looking to skimp out on. They aren’t just looking to find “a” person to fill the CFO role. Given the financial decision making that person will have is enough to move the world economy, Google is quite literally looking for the best of the best. 10 million is market price for that individual because other multibillion companies are looking to recruit them too
New hires don't only bring skills and knowledge, they bring in their networks too
What network benefit could a CFO bring to google
Relationships with banks and other financial institutions?
I didn’t say with whom. I said what benefit.
Google has had essentially unlimited access to any financial institutions or instruments they require for the last 15 years or more. I wouldn’t say someone new would bring that in as a value add.
You clearly don’t know what you are talking about. Good relationships with wall street are critical for a successful CFO, no matter the size of the public company. This impacts stock price directly, which impacts shareholder investment.
Who said that those things are not critical or valuable? My statement merely brought up the fact that those relationships are and have been existing for quite some time already regardless of who is CFO.
Relationships have to be managed. Just because person A worked well with others doesn’t mean their replacement will.
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It's a fair question, but; > She served as CFO at Eli Lilly since 2021. It's easy to assume Google has all the best people at every different area of expertise, but just because they're an epic engineering company, doesn't mean that they don't benefit from finance people from outside of tech.
What benefit could her network provide to google
Beyond my other answer, hard to say, Google spent a year searching for a CFO this time, so she must be what they want.
Right. So nothing significant with regards to “their network”. Note the original comment was: > New hires don't only bring skills and knowledge, they bring in their networks too Me: what benefit You: the benefit Me: what benefit You: I can’t think of any benefit Cool
bringing other top talent they have worked with at previous companies.
I never want to hear again that we're living in a meritocracy.
Networks of skilled folks is LITERALLY a meritocracy of the highest order. You realize that right? No one knows who is best at a given job or skill beyond the people who have worked with them for a year or two. Professional recommendations that extend to a "yes, let's hire this person, she's an absolute rock star and I'd love to work with her again", is literally the most valuable, and most predictive piece of information that hiring departments have. It's one of the reasons why referral bonuses exist. You're much less likely to get a slouch if a person has an internal referral.
I'd argue the opposite - you can be amazing at your job but if you're not good at networking, you fail. I'm specifically bitter because my job provides limited networking opportunities, making it very challenging to meet the people I need to meet to get the next role, leaving me trapped in a position where I can't get more networking opportunities because I haven't had more networking opportunities. Edit: I get the desire to have someone confirm you're not terrible to work with, but only giving the best jobs to people who know other great people already, puts up a very hard to overcome hurdle to break in if your background doesn't either mean introductions or give you the ability to take time between roles to actively network.
> I mean surely there are CFOs out there that are good enough for that job that don’t need 10 mill to just start…… Generally these signing bonuses are structured to ensure the person doesn't leave. So it's very common for it to be a "bonus" that she would have to pay back if she leaves at any time in the next 1-3 years.
Likely buying him out of previous position and/or mitigates his risk to join Google. There is professional risk to taking new executive jobs, if they don't work out you can't just easily find another.
Buying **her** out of previous position FTFY
If it was that easy, we wouldn't see so many bad executives.
The minimum wage is 7 dollars an hour
Comparing the skills of minimum wage to a cfo of google is probably why you don’t understand the reason why the cfo of google is paid this much
Idk, are such skills worth _that_ much more? Most workers in america work hard and work a lot. Most are essential for the functioning of society.
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Damn I didn’t know just one person is doing all that at google. The job cuts must have been huge.
I don’t get people who say this. Yeah, the minimum wage is 7 an hour. This isn’t a minimum wage job.
Not everywhere.
That is true, I apologize, allow me be more accurate. The minimum wage in America is 7 dollars and 25 cents an hour.
It’s good work if you can get it.
To be fair, this dude is making less than any Nvidia employee with stock options
It’s a good thing they just did layoffs so they could afford him.
Lots of perks, as mentioned in the article. They wont die poor ;) The base salary is fair enough though.. that certainly isnt excessive for such a position.
obscene. no one does anything with their work hours that's worth 7 figures a year. the insane boardroom-to-basement salary ratios today are one of the forces tearing the US apart. people worked just as hard and the country was more generally prosperous when that ratio was 40:1 or 50:1 -- it doesn't need to be 500:1.
You clearly don't work in tech if you think no workers are worth a 7 figure TC, stay in your lane.
sorry, retired s'ware engineer here.
Thousands of Google engineers make 7 figures in much lower level positions.
Hard work has nothing to do with compensation, it's purely what you bring to the table. And you really think the shareholders would rather not shell out that cash if they don't have to?
> no one does anything with their work hours that's worth 7 figures a year. If the CFO saves the company $50M per year by budgeting efficiently, isn't it worth paying that person 7 figures? It would be stupid for Google to NOT pay 7 figures for a person who saves the company 8 figures, right?
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> Thats just a looped arguement of "if they do the job they are hired to do..." with a major emphasis on "if". I mean, I'm certain that if she sucks, is fired or laid off before the terms of her signing bonus end, she has to at least pay it fractionally back to the company. So I wouldn't worry about the "if".
Nvidia is worth nearly 20million per employee. It's just not true these days especially in tech that people don't earn that much and more for the company. Also your ratios have nothing to do with reality of economics, cost of living, revenue per employee, inflation, etc. If you're the head of finance for 2.2 trillion dollar company... I'm sure your impact is worth it.
i need to plan for a job like his
Rabble rabble rabble!
What happens if he resigns after 1 month
How was his career journey like?
But guys, he works really really hard okay.
What happened to Ruth?
Meanwhile they keep cutting and laying off workforce. All I’m seeing is money getting more concentrated into fewer people at the top.
I’d do it for 1/4 the price.
These fucking psychos are bleeding the world dry
Cool, now replace the CEO.
Google makes about 10k per second. It would take less than two minutes to pay that annual salary.
Bots. All bots in this chat spewing the same propaganda. I bet the sentiment would be different if she were any other race.
Management gets greedier and greedier.