Google CEO Sundar Pichai received a huge pay raise last year, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. Last week, his company announced the approval of a $70 billion share buyback.
Meanwhile, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has cut costs dramatically, including cutting 12,000 jobs, in response to slowing revenue growth.
This infuriated Google’s workforce. In the weeks since Pichai’s annual compensation was announced, Google’s internal platforms were filled with chats and memos criticizing the CEO for receiving a pay raise while cutting costs elsewhere. Some employees also criticized the share buyback, which is equivalent to a buyback in 2022.
Filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed Pichai earned a total of $226 million last year, mostly through a $218 million stock bonus, which he receives every three years.
The last time he received the reward, it was in 2019 in the amount of $ 276.6 million, and the total compensation amounted to $ 280.6 million.
In 2022, Pichai’s compensation package consisted of approximately $6 million for personal security expenses and $2 million for base salary. In the previous year, 2021, Pichai received a total compensation of $6.3 million, which included $2 million in salary and $4.3 million in other compensation.
Memes started to spread, which compared Pichai to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Cook took a 40% pay cut for 2022 in January.
