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Comment by y0ssar1an | Hacker News Reader

absolutely no one is smart or productive enough to justify $692m in pay. they could hire thousands of engineers for that money.

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ya i could hire 500 min wage baseball players to replace ohtani then.

Isn't that the plot of Moneyball? You'll almost never find a single player with 30 stolen bases and 30 HR both, but you can find two players with 30 stolen bases and 30 HR alone for cheaper.

sure, and it doesn't work when everyone knows how to value stats that contribute to wins. Back then, they didn't do so equally. you could go bargain hunting and come out on top.

That’s not for you to decide. It’s for the people with the $692m to decide.

He runs the 2nd most valuable company in the world, and the company is most profitable company ever.

Giving him 700m in stock to keep him around is worth it for both the investors and employees.

Isn't Google famous for the investors and the employees both being entirely powerless?

They spend 25b a year on stock compensation. Giving your CEO ~230m of that is probably okay.

> absolutely no one is smart or productive enough to justify $692m in pay.

Upper management isn't paid based on how smart or productive they are. Google has like 400 billion yearly revenue. A CEOs decisions have enormous consequences, if a CEO can make slightly better decisions than another, it'd be easy to justify $692m in pay.

That said, I don't believe Sundar Pichai is a great CEO. He's might be an ok bean-counter, not sure, but I'm pretty sure one can get cheaper bean-counters.

> they could hire thousands of engineers for that money.

Yes and pray what would they do with them?

The market disagrees.

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