Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was awarded compensation worth more than $225 million in 2022, which marked a staggering 3,474% increase from the previous year, making him the nation’s highest-paid CEO, according to Equilar data.
There’s a whole rabbit hole to go down, but CEO compensation is not well defined. In this case it’s likely that Pichai was granted options with a multiyear vesting schedule, plus perhaps performance targets, and the entire net present value is being counted for 2022. Meanwhile he likely vested substantial options in 2021, but since it was granted in a prior year it’s not counted as compensation in that year.
This kind of accounting makes for extremely lumpy numbers and the evergreen opportunity to write articles about 3400% increases!!1! I don’t think it’s a particularly useful way to think about executive compensation and we shouldn’t pay attention to such articles.
There’s a whole rabbit hole to go down, but CEO compensation is not well defined. In this case it’s likely that Pichai was granted options with a multiyear vesting schedule, plus perhaps performance targets, and the entire net present value is being counted for 2022. Meanwhile he likely vested substantial options in 2021, but since it was granted in a prior year it’s not counted as compensation in that year.
This kind of accounting makes for extremely lumpy numbers and the evergreen opportunity to write articles about 3400% increases!!1! I don’t think it’s a particularly useful way to think about executive compensation and we shouldn’t pay attention to such articles.