The manager received total compensation of $226 million in 2022.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf In January, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced one of the largest waves of layoffs in the company’s history: 12,000 jobs will be cut, around six percent of the global workforce. Now it is known that Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai is one of the highest-earning managers in the world.
Pichai received $226 million in total compensation last year, the company said in a statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The 50-year-old earns around 800 times as much as an average Google employee. The average salary is nearly $280,000.
The bulk of CEO compensation, around $218 million, is explained by stock awards. Pichai receives such shares every three years – most recently in 2019, when his total compensation was $281 million.
In 2021, the top manager received $ 6.3 million without such a shareholding. Pichai’s base salary, excluding bonuses, is around $2 million — and has stayed steady for the past three years.
Such numbers are likely to be incomprehensible to many employees because Pichai has currently prescribed a strict austerity program for his company.
Half a billion dollars is said to be saved worldwide by the company reducing its office space. US media also reported over the weekend that Google stopped building its new campus in Silicon Valley for cost reasons.
In 2022, Alphabet had sales of around $260 billion. The profit was around 60 billion dollars and was 16 billion euros lower than in 2021 due to the weakening economy.
Net worth in excess of half a billion dollars
In the past year, Google shares lost 39 percent in value, in the current year it went up at least 19 percent. On Tuesday, Google will present its quarterly figures – other tech companies will also be able to look at their books in the coming days.
Born in India, he has worked for the US technology company since 2004. There he was initially responsible for software products such as the Internet access program Google Chrome or the cloud storage service Google Drive. He later led the development of applications such as the Google Maps mapping service.
When the company restructured and Alphabet Holding was formed, Pichai rose to become the head of Google. When the two Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page announced in 2019 that they wanted to withdraw from the operative business, Pichai also took over the job at the top of the holding company. The manager’s fortune is estimated at more than half a billion dollars.
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