It’s no secret that executives of the world’s largest companies earn a lot of money. Some of them earn way more than others though. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is one of those who are compensated very well for the work they do.
Huge Compensation
The 47-year-old materials engineer is actually among the top-paid business executives in the previous year. In total, his compensation as chief executive officer for Google’s parent company amounts to a whopping $281 million. What’s even more impressive is that he got to this level less than a year after assuming the position. He only became CEO late in 2019.
His would-be earnings are primarily made of stock awards and it’s worth noting that their value is still subject to fluctuations over time depending on how Alphabet stocks perform. Pichai’s stock awards are valued at $120 million and $150 million, respectively. Other things to factor in are his salary and other potential compensation.
Pichai’s lucrative compensation scheme can be compared to that of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s. The latter is on a compensation plan that could reward him with as much as $56 billion worth of stock options should he meet the company’s goals.
Salary Hike
Going back to the separate salary Pichai receives, recent filings also revealed that he got a raise from $650,000 to $2 million as he takes on more responsibilities. His former salary accounts for being Google CEO.
For context, that recent hike means that the Indian American executive is earning over a thousand times more than the average employee at Alphabet. The median pay at the company is reportedly $258,708.
It’s also worth noting that his current stock awards are a step up from the reported $200 million he received a couple of years ago when he became Google’s CEO.
Pichai’s Contributions
Pichai’s current compensation may be reflective of the many years he’s spent working and contributing at the company for which he’s been with since 2004. In fact, he notably helped in creating Chrome, Google’s web browser.
He actually led the team that worked on developing the program around the time Mozilla Firefox was overtaking Internet Explorer in terms of popularity.
Today, Chrome is by far the most used web browser and accounts for over half of the traffic on the web.