Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google and Alphabet, is reported to have earned almost $226 million in 2022, according to a new filing from Alphabet. The majority of Pichai's earnings came from stock holdings valued at over $218 million, with the remainder made up of a $2 million base salary and over $5 million for private security measures. This is a significant increase for Pichai, who earned just over $6 million in 2021 and $7.4 million in 2020. However, Pichai's stock boosts come every three years, and in 2019, he received a similar package of $281 million.
While Pichai's earnings may be staggering, it's worth noting that 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. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat and Kent Walker, chief legal officer, both made approximately $24.5 million.
However, ballooning CEO compensation has been a controversial topic in recent years, with pay for top executives skyrocketing by 1460% since 1978, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. More than 80% of their pay is typically stock-related, which has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving fewer gains of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%.
In contrast, the median compensation for an Alphabet employee is just under $280,000, according to the filing. This means that Pichai's salary is more than 800 times larger. For context, 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.
It's worth noting that Alphabet announced in January that it would cut 12,000 jobs, amounting to a 6% cut in its total workforce. Meanwhile, Alphabet stock fell by 39% in 2022 amid a broader tech and market slowdown, but shares have rebounded this year, moving up about 19.5% since January.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also faced criticism for his compensation in 2022, earning $100 million in that year and in 2021. Cook cut his own 2023 pay by 40% after shareholders voted against his pay package when Apple's stock fell nearly 27% last year. The vast majority of Cook's 2022 compensation was tied up in company shares, with half dependent on share price performance. The vote against Cook's pay package is nonbinding, but the board's compensation committee said Cook requested the reduction.