Is it really disgusting? Google stock rose 65% in 2021. Unless you are working at the cafeteria, the recent inflation had little impact on the compensation of Google employees.
Since they actually work for the contracting or temp company and not the contracting customer of that company, the arrangement doesn't generally include equity, profit-sharing and other benefits from the contracting company. However, the employee of the temp or contracting company might be able to negotiate equity, profit-sharing or other benefits from their employer if their market value is sufficiently high. It all depends on the arrangement the employee makes with their employer and that is usually driven by how in-demand, rare and proven the particular employee's skills are.
I've found it valuable to have the flexibility to choose whether I want to be an employee or a contractor depending on the market, company and my goals at the time. Over the decades I've experienced the upside and the downside of being an employee working alongside contractors who were taking home substantially more per day than I was but not getting equity. Sometimes my options ended up being nearly worthless and other times it worked out extremely well. Conversely, at other times I've been a short-term contractor able to negotiate fantastic weekly take-home pay. Sometimes that worked out very well and other times it would've been even better for me to have taken the job offer and been an equity employee. But I would have had to stay three or four years to vest, sacrificing the flexibility to pick my assignments, location and schedule.
Having experienced all sides of this, I've found the determining factor isn't really the choice of compensation model. What matters most is developing unique skills and being able to consistently deliver tangible value. How I choose to monetize my value is up to me and, like any investment, I get to 'pick my poison' and live with the consequences. Barring random luck, increased certainty and immediacy of minimum guaranteed compensation tends to come at the cost of potential maximum upside.
Depends on how much of comp is based on stock, and how much of that is based stock awards that don't vest immediately/quickly. Its likely that a lot of employees are selling stock asap and wouldn't get to realize all that growth.
To counter this, they also suffer lockout periods. Employees typically have a short amount of time to figure out their strategy before being stuck for two months or longer.
Employees only get to plan in the macro. They can go long or short, not respond to real economic events, opportunities, or headwinds.
Having multiple windows each year to sell your stock/options at fair market prices is a luxury that very, very few people working at startups gets. This is a ridiculous thing to complain about. For the vast majority of people having 4 trading windows per year is more than enough to adjust their portfolio based on their financial strategy.
The lockout periods are quite short. You can buy and sell more than 2/3 of the time. You can also set up an autosale system which sells as soon as you vest regardless of whether you are in a lockout period.
Anything that isn't vesting immediately will be worth more, increasing future compensation (in USD) even if employees sell what they can immediately. https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/ says there are 3 and 4 year vesting schedules.
Sure, but "They also received stock awards valued at between $23 million and $35 million, split between performance-based equity and stock that vests over time, the filing states.".
That $350,000 doesn't even move the needle? Why is the focus there?
> That’s disgusting. These 4 execs made order 200M in 2020, Google took in 130B in quarterly revenue in q4. and they have the steel procreators to tell their employees about how they can’t give quality of life adjustments during on of the worst inflationary periods in 100 years. Fuck google with a pointy stick.
other2:
> Is it really disgusting? Google stock rose 65% in 2021. Unless you are working at the cafeteria, the recent inflation had little impact on the compensation of Google employees.
other3:
> So by that logic execs certainly didn't need an increase in salary?
you:
> Did they get a salary increase? Or did their equity just go up like everyone else?
> Executives tend to have salaries that are a fraction of total comp.
other4:
> I mean, it's literally the second sentence of the article we're discussing...
> >The Mountain View, CA-based company will be raising the salaries of four execs from $650,000 to $1 million...
you:
> Sure, but "They also received stock awards valued at between $23 million and $35 million, split between performance-based equity and stock that vests over time, the filing states.".
> That $350,000 doesn't even move the needle? Why is the focus there?
So this thread starts off with criticizing Google over not giving COL adjustments in a terrible period of inflation given their massive profits.
Someone says the stock gains negate the impact of inflation.
Someone else says if stock increases were sufficient, then why did execs need a salary bump.
You asked if they got a salary increase.
Someone else points out that they did.
You then point out they got lots of stock.
And then say that their salary increase barely moves the needle so why focus there?
The point seems to have been lost here.
To go back to the original point, the point was that Google denied their employees COL adjustments. If giving their execs salary bumps didn't even move the needle for them, then why give it to them especially when they denied their other employees COL adjustments despite having massive profits?
stock grants are given by dollar amounts, rather than by units - so if the stock price grew, you'd get fewer stock units!
Of course, while waiting on the vesting period, they grow, but those grants were made a while ago - contingent on your employment - which means the growth is part of the expectation of the compensation. After all, the stock _could_ drop during that period too, and you don't get extra cash compensation to, well, compensate.
Therefore, you cannot use the stock price growth to argue that they don't need inflationary wage adjustments.
Am I to understand that the minions who clean toilets and garden and serve food continue to be outsourced so Mr Google can say it doesn't exploit its workforce?
They didn't decline to boost employee pay -- they declined to make an across the board COL adjustment. Instead they will build the COL adjustment into each person's annual raise along with a performance bonus.
You're only hearing about these guys because they are required to report it in their SEC filings.
Google gives regular raises and the raise curves were considerably higher this year than prior years. "Index raises to inflation" would mean lower pay for engineers here.
I'm not sure the exact breakdown of their rewards, but baking a COL adjustment and a merit increase in a single number doesn't really count. Makes it way too easy to reduce pay increases.
Mostly it gives them the ability to effectively cut the pay of those whose performance they don't value, by giving them increases smaller than inflation.
Most FAANGs will just nuke them from orbit instead of trying to coax them out with a 3% raise instead of a 6% raise. Google may be an exception, I don't know, but you're not going to last long as a 'low performer' at Amazon (as today's LinkedIn post will attest) or Meta or Apple. They'll just tell you to pack your shit.
Google is famously slow at firing people. I’ve seen low performers scrape by for 18 months because managers were conflict averse and didn’t want to do anything.
... a refresh grant every year equal to 25% of a new hire grant for someone of your level vesting over 4 years, quarterly, with no cliff.
... a COL adjustment.
... a merit-based pay hike.
... a market adjustment if appropriate.
This is not a reduction in pay no matter how you slice it. It's going to be way more than 7%. It's going to be roughly 6.25% + 3% + 0-5%. 10-15% annually. 13-18% if they get the COL.
These are assessed relative to the market.
This is on top of your base pay, bonus, company bonus multiplier and vesting equity which has probably significantly appreciated year over year - potentially huge, as GOOG is up 37% YoY.
I'm not worried for the employees even though leadership didn't commit to making COL adjustments 6-7% this year instead of 2-3% like most years. It's a rounding error for these folks and there's no world in which they're getting a pay cut if they're meeting expectations.
I have a fear that my team where I work is going to go through more attrition this year because of a similar philosophy. We didn't get merit or COL increases last year, and I doubt they're gonna wanna go more than a few percent on COL this year. That's a huge effective pay cut.
Almost no company pays people based on COL. Pay is based on the market rate for the area which should generally go up as COL increases but not in every case or for every role.
Haven’t companies been doing this for literally centuries?
It sucks, but it seems that it is what it is. Fortunately people can vote with their feet and googlers in particular are likely to be able to get a pay increase by switching jobs.
Short of a straight up profit share it doesn’t seem like there’s a reliable way to guarantee pay increases - stock is a decent hedge but then you can have 80% drops in a year like Peloton.
Google is literally a money printer. They could all go on vacation and the thing would run itself. The fact that they will pay execs these sums to do nothing but start and kill yet another useless side product is embarrassing.
Who is doing anything worth more than a living wage (some amount that meets basic needs where they live, plus some buffer) independent of all the infrastructure built with the know-how, sweat, and blood of others?
51 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadSince they actually work for the contracting or temp company and not the contracting customer of that company, the arrangement doesn't generally include equity, profit-sharing and other benefits from the contracting company. However, the employee of the temp or contracting company might be able to negotiate equity, profit-sharing or other benefits from their employer if their market value is sufficiently high. It all depends on the arrangement the employee makes with their employer and that is usually driven by how in-demand, rare and proven the particular employee's skills are.
I've found it valuable to have the flexibility to choose whether I want to be an employee or a contractor depending on the market, company and my goals at the time. Over the decades I've experienced the upside and the downside of being an employee working alongside contractors who were taking home substantially more per day than I was but not getting equity. Sometimes my options ended up being nearly worthless and other times it worked out extremely well. Conversely, at other times I've been a short-term contractor able to negotiate fantastic weekly take-home pay. Sometimes that worked out very well and other times it would've been even better for me to have taken the job offer and been an equity employee. But I would have had to stay three or four years to vest, sacrificing the flexibility to pick my assignments, location and schedule.
Having experienced all sides of this, I've found the determining factor isn't really the choice of compensation model. What matters most is developing unique skills and being able to consistently deliver tangible value. How I choose to monetize my value is up to me and, like any investment, I get to 'pick my poison' and live with the consequences. Barring random luck, increased certainty and immediacy of minimum guaranteed compensation tends to come at the cost of potential maximum upside.
Employees only get to plan in the macro. They can go long or short, not respond to real economic events, opportunities, or headwinds.
Frankly, I never found lockdowns to be really onerous at all. You can’t really time the market anyway.
Executives tend to have salaries that are a fraction of total comp.
>The Mountain View, CA-based company will be raising the salaries of four execs from $650,000 to $1 million...
That $350,000 doesn't even move the needle? Why is the focus there?
context:
other1:
> That’s disgusting. These 4 execs made order 200M in 2020, Google took in 130B in quarterly revenue in q4. and they have the steel procreators to tell their employees about how they can’t give quality of life adjustments during on of the worst inflationary periods in 100 years. Fuck google with a pointy stick.
other2:
> Is it really disgusting? Google stock rose 65% in 2021. Unless you are working at the cafeteria, the recent inflation had little impact on the compensation of Google employees.
other3:
> So by that logic execs certainly didn't need an increase in salary?
you:
> Did they get a salary increase? Or did their equity just go up like everyone else?
> Executives tend to have salaries that are a fraction of total comp.
other4:
> I mean, it's literally the second sentence of the article we're discussing...
> >The Mountain View, CA-based company will be raising the salaries of four execs from $650,000 to $1 million...
you:
> Sure, but "They also received stock awards valued at between $23 million and $35 million, split between performance-based equity and stock that vests over time, the filing states.".
> That $350,000 doesn't even move the needle? Why is the focus there?
So this thread starts off with criticizing Google over not giving COL adjustments in a terrible period of inflation given their massive profits.
Someone says the stock gains negate the impact of inflation.
Someone else says if stock increases were sufficient, then why did execs need a salary bump.
You asked if they got a salary increase.
Someone else points out that they did.
You then point out they got lots of stock.
And then say that their salary increase barely moves the needle so why focus there?
The point seems to have been lost here.
To go back to the original point, the point was that Google denied their employees COL adjustments. If giving their execs salary bumps didn't even move the needle for them, then why give it to them especially when they denied their other employees COL adjustments despite having massive profits?
Of course, while waiting on the vesting period, they grow, but those grants were made a while ago - contingent on your employment - which means the growth is part of the expectation of the compensation. After all, the stock _could_ drop during that period too, and you don't get extra cash compensation to, well, compensate.
Therefore, you cannot use the stock price growth to argue that they don't need inflationary wage adjustments.
Mountain View paradise has an underclass?
I don't completely disagree with you, but c'mon this is hyperbole, right?
https://advisor.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-over-last-100...
You may not owe steel procreators better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. We're trying for curious conversation here.
You're only hearing about these guys because they are required to report it in their SEC filings.
The increase didn't happen. They declined to boost employee pay
Yeah, maybe the top 5% got bigger increases, but that's not whats being discussed
... a refresh grant every year equal to 25% of a new hire grant for someone of your level vesting over 4 years, quarterly, with no cliff.
... a COL adjustment.
... a merit-based pay hike.
... a market adjustment if appropriate.
This is not a reduction in pay no matter how you slice it. It's going to be way more than 7%. It's going to be roughly 6.25% + 3% + 0-5%. 10-15% annually. 13-18% if they get the COL.
These are assessed relative to the market.
This is on top of your base pay, bonus, company bonus multiplier and vesting equity which has probably significantly appreciated year over year - potentially huge, as GOOG is up 37% YoY.
I'm not worried for the employees even though leadership didn't commit to making COL adjustments 6-7% this year instead of 2-3% like most years. It's a rounding error for these folks and there's no world in which they're getting a pay cut if they're meeting expectations.
“Company that pays exceptionally well is not doing an across the board CoL adjustment”
There is literally no story here.
Oh wow look another article from this spam site claims Google is the top paying employer in the US.
https://www.hcamag.com/us/news/general/top-50-companies-with...
It sucks, but it seems that it is what it is. Fortunately people can vote with their feet and googlers in particular are likely to be able to get a pay increase by switching jobs.
Short of a straight up profit share it doesn’t seem like there’s a reliable way to guarantee pay increases - stock is a decent hedge but then you can have 80% drops in a year like Peloton.