Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, earned a whopping $226 million from his employer last year. This is 800 times higher than the median salary at Google in the US, which was revealed in a message to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a native Indian, Pichai has been working at Google since 2004, and the majority of his income – $218 million – was in the form of shares. However, this news comes at a time when the company announced it would cut around 12,000 jobs, which has led to protests around the world.
In London, hundreds of Google workers recently walked out to express their dissatisfaction with the extensive layoffs, and in Zurich, Switzerland, similar protests took place in March. While Pichai announced a series of cost-cutting measures at Alphabet and Google, including lowering bonus payments for high-ranking managers, employees remain unhappy about the job cuts.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Pichai’s actual salary has been $2 million in recent years, with the majority of his earnings coming from a block of shares he receives every three years. Although this package is partly linked to the achievement of certain goals, the rest is due on a regular basis. In 2019, this package was worth an impressive $281 million.
Google is currently trying to get back on track after the unsuccessful presentation of its own AI chatbot Bard. It answered a science question wrong, which caused Alphabet’s share price to plummet. Despite this setback, Pichai’s incredible earnings have put him in the headlines once again, and it remains to be seen whether the protests against job cuts will have any effect on the company’s future plans.
