Miffed Googlers meme on CEO’s $226M pay award amid cost-cutting marketing campaign

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s bumper 2022 pay award and the corporate’s plan to repurchase shares amid a ferocious cost-cutting marketing campaign is upsetting some within the workforce.

The exec scooped up $226 million for the 12 months, it emerged final month, with the majority comprising $218 million in triennial inventory awards – though Pichai really made extra in 2019 when he was paid a complete of $281 million.

To say the timing of the pay deal – made public on April 24 – was unlucky is maybe one thing of an understatement. A day later, nevertheless, Google adopted that up by confirming the board of administrators had rubber-stamped a whopping $70 billion in share repurchases in April 2022.

All this follows some fairly hefty job losses at Google, with 12,000 being pushed out of the door. Google employed almost 67,000 individuals from calendar Q1 of 2020 and headcount totaled almost 187,000 by September final 12 months.

The enterprise “employed for a special financial actuality than the one we face right this moment,” the CEO stated when asserting the redundancies in January.

Unsurprisingly, some Googlers are fairly pissed off and took to inner platforms on the firm to voice their dissatisfaction, in accordance with CNBC, with upwards of a dozen memes doing the rounds.

One contrasted Pichai with Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner because the iBiz boss agreed to take a 40 % discount in his 2022 complete compensation at the beginning of this 12 months – be aware that Apple hasn’t made mass job cuts. Different execs additionally agreed to reductions, together with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who stated he’d slash his wage by 98 % after making job cuts, as did Twilio chief Jeff Lawson.

One other was geared toward CFO Ruth Porat, who additionally did not do badly final 12 months at $15.7 million. Porat had talked of “multi-year” reductions to workers providers, specifically asking staff to sweat their property for longer, and making modifications to sponsored meals, fitness center, therapeutic massage and transportation help for Googlers.

“Ruth’s price financial savings utilized to everybody… Besides our hardworking SVP and CEO,” stated the meme, appreciated by 1,200 individuals and seen by CNBC.

A 3rd was based mostly on Lord Farquaad from Shrek, an antagonistic type recognized for banishing folks to the swamp within the 2001 movie. The meme said: “Sundar accepting $226 million whereas shedding 12k Googlers, reducing perks, and destroying morale and tradition.”

We have now requested Google to remark. ®