It comes as no surprise that Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai is one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. However, Pichai’s recent pay raise to over $226 million last year has raised concerns among employees, especially in light of the company’s cost-cutting measures and job cuts that impacted over 12,000 people.
Although most of CEO Pichai’s income last year came in the form of a $218 million stock buyback, which he receives every three years, in addition to his base $2 million salary package, this incident has caused a stir in the company’s internal message boards with employees criticizing his pay raise and the company’s $70 billion stock buyback.
Employees using memes
In classic fashion, many employees expressed their frustrations in the form of memes, with one comparing Pichai to the character Lord Farquaad from the movie Shrek, with the text “Sundar accepting $226 million while laying off 12k Googlers, cutting perks, and destroying morale and culture.” Another meme criticized Google CFO Ruth Porat’s cost-saving measures under these tense economic conditions, stating, “Ruth’s cost savings applied to everyone… except our hardworking VPS and CEO.”
While some employees used memes to express their disappointment, others drew comparisons to rival CEOs, such as Apple’s Tim Cook, who received a 40% cut from his total compensation for 2022, and Zoom’s Eric Yuan, who reduced his salary by 98% and declined his bonus after cutting 1,300 jobs earlier this year.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first time CEO Pichai has come under fire, as he previously took responsibility for firing over 12,000 employees and the recent botched launch of Google’s Bard AI. However, the topic of Pichai’s compensation is especially controversial, since the CEO himself acknowledged that “we shouldn’t always equate fun with money” in response to the elimination of certain perks.
2023-05-05 15:13:21