Google CEO Sundar Pichai made $226 million last year

By Nicole Goodkind, CNN Business

Google’s top executive took home quite a bit of money last year.

Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Google’s parent company Alphabet, made nearly $226 million in 2022, according to a new filing from Alphabet.

The majority of the pay came from stock holdings, valued at more than $218 million. The rest of the compensation came from a $2 million base salary and more than $5 million for a private security detail.

It is a big boost for Pichai, who made just over $6 million in 2021 and $7.4 million in 2020.

Pichai’s stock boosts come every three years, in 2019 he received a similar package of $281 million.

Alphabet stock, meanwhile, fell by 39% in 2022 amid a broader tech and market slowdown. Shares have rebounded this year, moving up about 19.5% since January.

Other top executives also received healthy paychecks in 2022, though nowhere near as large as Pichai’s. Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of knowledge and information at Google and Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, each made $37 million. Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat and Kent Walker, chief legal officer, both made about $24.5 million.

In January, Alphabet announced it would cut 12,000 jobs amounting to a 6% cut in its total workforce. The median compensation for an Alphabet employee is just under $280,000, according to the filing. It means Pichai’s salary is more than 800 times larger.

Someone making the $15.50 minimum wage in Alphabet’s home state of California would have to work 14.6 million hours, or just over 7000 years (with 40 hour work weeks and no time off) to catch up with Pichai’s 2022 salary.

Ballooning CEO compensation has been a controversial topic in recent years.

Pay for top executives has skyrocketed by 1460% since 1978 according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, and more than 80% of their pay is typically stock-related.

“This escalation of CEO compensation and of executive compensation more generally has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving fewer of the gains of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%,” wrote analysts at the institute. “The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more).”

Apple CEO Tim Cook cut his own 2023 pay by 40% after drawing criticism from shareholders for earning $100 million in 2022 and 2021.

The vast majority of Cook’s 2022 compensation — about 75% — was tied up in company shares, with half dependent on share price performance.

Shareholders voted against Cook’s pay package after Apple’s stock fell nearly 27% last year. The vote is nonbinding, but the board’s compensation committee said Cook requested the reduction.

“The compensation committee balanced shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance, and a recommendation from Mr. Cook to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received,” the company said in its annual proxy statement released Thursday.

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