Google CEO Sundar Pichai likely to take huge pay cut after laying off employees

In the wake of recent layoffs and challenging macroeconomic environment, it looks that CEO Sundar Pichai will receive a significant pay reduction. Pichai revealed that all positions beyond the "senior vice president" level will see a large decrease in their annual bonus during a recent town hall meeting with Google employees.

The annual bonus for all positions above the senior vice president level will be reduced "quite significantly." Compensation for senior positions is based on business performance, "According to reports, Pichai stated in the town hall. While he didn’t specifically say about taking a salary cut, by his statements it is evident that he would also take a wage decrease.

Now, just a few weeks before Google announced layoffs Sundar Pichai got a massive hike in salary. At the time, Google’s parent company Alphabet, board recognised Pichai’s "strong performance" as CEO and said that the vesting of a significant chunk of the award would depend on Alphabet’s total shareholder return relative to other S&P 100 companies.

Alphabet also added that the award was tweaked to increase the performance stock units (PSUs) from 43 per cent in 2019 to 60 per cent, which increases the performance requirement for the payout. In addition, the Google CEO was also given two tranches of PSUs with a target value of $63 million each and $84 million in the form of Alphabet's restricted stock units. So, what is the annual salary of Pichai? According to a filing from 2020, Google disclosed Pichai's annual salary to be $2 million. As per the IIFL Hurun India Rich List 2022, the Google CEO’s net worth fell 20 per cent to Rs 5,300 crore. However, he still ranks amongst the top richest professional managers on the list.