Google gives execs raises after declining to boost employees' pay | Hacker News Reader

Google gives execs raises after declining to boost employees' pay

hcamag.com

105 pointsjohncena3346 comments

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.

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.

That's sort of the point. They want to pay underperformers less in the hopes that they leave, while paying overperformers more to make sure they stay.

Generally at big-tech/FAANGs, you can expect:

... 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.

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.

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.

This article is blog spam dog shit.

“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...

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.

But they did not make a inflation adjusted increase to each employee, so you're just dodging the point.

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

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.

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?

I don't think this will prompt a lot of computer programmers at Google to move to a company that pays better.

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.

So the company went from user-hostile to employee-hostile. Congratulations.

Regression towards the mean of corporate America. The first couple decades were extraordinary but it wasn't going to last.

I think its just run by AM at this point. "Don't be evil" is now "HATE."

They're still a user-hostile company as well

Victims not employees, of extortion.

Google has never given standard yearly raises. You get a raise when you are promoted or when the market reference goes up.

Sundar Pichai has just updated Google's mantra: "Don't be evil, be greedy!"

If our executives didn’t make millions and millions of dollars, how could they possibly lead us?

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