Investor tells Google: Cut costs, stop paying staff so much (theregister.com)

You would need a cartel of high tech companies and to lower the salaries together at the same time, for that to have minimal negative side-effects, i.e. people leaving for greener pastures. Oh wait.

Google's problem isn't that they are paying too much. It is that they aren't effectively using the talent they have. They have a bunch of extremely talented problem solvers that can make the same $500k total compensation working at any other large tech company, but they are stuck writing protobufs and yamls all day. While once nimble, in the recent decades Google has become saddled with bureaucracy and politics.

> "An analysis by S&P Global illustrates that median compensation at Alphabet was 67 percent higher than at Microsoft and 152 percent higher than the 20 largest listed technology companies in the US. There is no justification for this enormous disparity," said TCI.

Disparities are always unjustified if it takes more off my table.

Is it possible for activist investors to pressure Google when the two founders have something like 2/3 of the voting shares?

There is already very little growth left at Google. If the talent leaves, I believe Google will start a long term downward trend. I am not doubting Google employees are overpaid, but that’s the only way to keep them there at this point.

Person whose only contribution is to add money to the pile expect larger return by sticking it to people actually working at the company. News at 11.

google in dire need of better customer support in some products if it expects to stay competitive in the non-search and YouTube areas.

Perhaps moving the $$$ resources to the right place is in order.

200k off a 500k salary still leaves the 300k person in top 5% income earned in California. That leaves at least 100k for customer support person.

Edit: see other front page article, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33632468