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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

This site doesn't distinguish pay and not-pay, I think. Sundar Pichai is paid about $8m/year, not $100k/hour. The rest is stock. And even that vests over 3 years[0], not one year.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000130817923...

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That's true, but CEOs (in general) are also in a unique position to create the appearance of value for stockholders through financial engineering, acquisitions, buybacks and so forth. They're able to leverage the resources of the company in unusual ways that don't necessarily have anything to do with operations or direct revenue, including firing other workers to improve the balance sheet.

And once they're retired or been forced out or moved on to another firm, they're free to divest their earned stock without much scrutiny; I've never heard of a CEO being critiqued for selling off stock in a former employer. So in that sense, money is money.

> So in that sense, money is money.

Ye-es, but only if the company is doing well. If the stock collapses, which it can do in a lot of companies, then it's not money. Imagine if Microsoft hadn't pivoted successfully to its new form, or if Google fails to find its footing in a ChatGPT world. Those are big, vital things that need navigating, and they are worth incentivising CEOs for. You might say that the vesting period should be longer, and perhaps that's right, but then other companies will poach them with shorter vesting periods, and the usual market dynamics apply where companies are vying for talent.

So what? The principal agent people has been understood by investors since the time of Adam Smith. Everyone is already aware of this.

So read it in the context of the comment to which it replies.

This. I am okay showing total comp, but the numbers also seem...weird? Like Zuck makes $1/year salary. $27m/year which is mostly security expenses if I remember correctly, but has by far the largest net worth (of those listed) which is what people care about. And his stock appreciation is vastly higher than that shown.

I think the problem with net worth is it's hard to reason about. Some people think billionaires could pay for everything if only we stole their money, when it turns out they don't have money, or not much in the grand scheme of public spending. It's just slightly too divorced from reality to make good instinctive decisions.

However it does make for good shock jock value.

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