Google Execs Happy With $1 Salaries 595
DarkClown writes "ZDNet is on the one hand reporting that Google execs will keep their $1 salaries again this year, and on the other hand is reporting that the executives cashed in more than $160 million worth of stock last month." From the stock article: "Since the search giant went public in August 2004, Brin has sold about 6.5 million shares at a market value of $1.68 billion. Page has sold about 5.8 million shares at a market value of $1.4 billion, according to calculations from Thomson Financial. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who was brought in to run the company before it went public, has sold more than 2.1 million shares, worth more than $502 million." They could be getting a multi-million dollar salary *and* the stock money. Good faith efforts go a long way in my book.
Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Interesting)
So there, that's where people learn "stuff like [that]"...with basic research on the subject. You know, the way one learns just about anything.
Your attitude towards your mutual funds genuinely confuses me. If you dislike them so much, why do you bother putting any money in? If you don't see any real growth, why do you carry on the investment? On the one hand, you're upset that your money hasn't grown. You "REALLY don't want to have to think about this shit. Someone should do it for [you]." So you're saying that someone should take care of and grow your money for you without you having to put in any effort. On the other hand you declare that you're 'old fashioned' and insist on working for your money, and that people who gain money without working (at something you define as legitimate work) for it are somehow in the wrong. So which is it? The good ol' Protestant Work Ethic, or "Someone should make my money more money for me because doing it myself is hard and I don't get it?"
Not to mention that as a man who works in a technical field, you should understand the equally 'old fashioned' idea of RTFM. I hope you've never complained about an ignorant user, or someone who wanted you to do every simple little computing task for them. Your attitude towards managing your own assets seems to be a lot like theirs towards their computers...only they just want free time and help, you want free money!
Having worked with brokers in the past and spoken with them at length to attempt to get an idea of how they do their job, I can assure you that investing is not "a pool cue to move billiard balls around a table". There's a lot of research, planning, analysis and careful thought put into trying to find the wisest strategies for investing. Is it a guess in the end? Well sure, nobody knows the future. But blasting an entire field simply because you couldn't bother taking the 5 minutes it would take to at least get a vague idea of what it involves? That's not "insulting" so much as it is offensively stupid.
If you want to talk about what of value is created by the market...well that's a tough call. There's a lot of room for discussion on that point, and if you want to take the stance of "no" there's a lot of good arguments you could make. However, think about all the brokers out there putting in 9-12 hour days to try their best to grow the mutual funds that millions of Americans (I'm sure other nations as well, though I'm not as familiar with how their markets work) have their savings and retirement funds invested in. Maybe it's a super-idealistic idea, but if I could go home knowing I'd given a few million people $5 each more towards retirement with my day's work, I think I'd feel like I accomplished something tangible.
Then we go back to a lengthy discussion about the "evils" of these large corporations. So let's do these one by one.
The Sony Mavicam purchase - First you complain about how the manufacturer's warranty is "unacceptable"....yet you obviously accept it because you're buying their product. An angst-ridden teenager working a shitty job (and earning comission, most likely, for each warranty he sells) looks at you funny for not going for it. But in the end, you gave him your money.
DirecTV - You liked your TV rates, but t
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not quite, becaue $200 a year for 5 years is *not* the same as
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Run company well" and/or "don't be evil" about but two choices on a very large menu.
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's worked for them so far, why change..?
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Informative)
The Google founders don't just have f*ck you money, they have f*ck everybody money.
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:3, Informative)
That said, Fuck You Money is a function of a person's location, cost of living, current stock market trends, personal spending habits and personal desire. A person would have to calculate their own value for it.
Although, it
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Insightful)
Friedmud
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:3, Funny)
Was that metric or Imperial?
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying they're going to let Google free fall, because I believe it's their love child and they'd probably sink all $1B back into the company before watching it go belly up, but it's not exactly encouraging for investors to see that. Of course, given a share price of $440, investors aren't exactly being rational in the first place.
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:3, Informative)
Let me explain something to you: Google didn't have the choice of caving-in to censorship, or standing-up for the Chinese people. Google had the choice of caving-in to censorship, or being kicked out of China and having all of their IP addresses blocked by the Chinese government.
As mighty as Google might look from
Re:Diversification (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:2)
Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:2)
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it is also this motivation/reward scenario that created the term pump and dump. And landed executives in jail. And cost other shareholders millions/billions/pick a number.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Informative)
Executives are granted options that are already in the money on issue. Thus, they get substantial income even if the stock does nothing. If the stock goes down these options are regularly repriced with lower exercise prices which effectively removes all the downside risk.
Furthermore, options are a poor tool. The link should be between the executives performance and outcomes, not the stock price. The stock price will move for many reasons unrelated to the executive's performance - for example, stocks go up in booms and yet you would be hard pressed to argue that any executive was responsible for the economic boom. Thus, at a minimum, they should only be paid when their stock outperforms other similar stocks (or even just the whole market index). Instead, you see executives being rewarded heavily for good luck. If the market is going up, only the most grossly incompetent executive could make a stock go down. A mere seat-warmer is still likely to get significant returns.
The basic economics is that poorly designed incentive schemes, of which option grants are an example, encourage gaming of the system and not proper results or rewards.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. Technically, the term is tax avoidance : Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is making money while paying the smallest legal amount of tax on that money.
Stock (dividend income) sales are taxed at a much lower rate than Regular Income. They were one of the tax cuts passed by Bush back in '02 (?). Prior to that, your tax rate on stock sales was whatever your Ordinary Income rate was (seems fair, right? The more you earn, the more you're taxed). What Bush did was scrap that, and said that so long as the stock was from a US company or certain multinationals, your tax rate was capped at 15%.
When people talk about 'tax cuts for the rich', the dividend income tax change was the biggie.
In the case of The Google Boys, it's the difference between paying a base 35% on $1.4Bn in Income, or paying a base 15% on $1.4Bn. That's over $200 million dollars less in tax.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
If they only pay their 15% social security tax on $1 instead of the required $80,000 by law, it is really a scam on the public (and the system).
I read somewhere that the IRS can audit you and claim that the first 80,000$ in dividends count as sallary for tax purposes if your normal income does not approach 80,000. I wonder how they are filing their papers. And I wonder if what I read is true.
If they are getting away with paying social security tax on the $1, they are really shafting all those middle and lower class americans who pony up $12,000 per year on medicaid/SS taxes. Not to mention that these middle class americans, on top of the 15% SS/Medicaid tax, pay in a tax bracket higher than 15%. That is a combined tax of over 30% plus most of their money spent on products and services which carry another 5-10% sales/income tax to the state and local government. Combine it all up and middle and lower america pays a hefty 40% in taxes. While S and C corp business owners pay a flat 15%.
The 15% capitol gains tax is a joke and always will be. If you are a professional stock investor and that is your income, paying 15% taxes while middle class americans pay a higher rate is just plain fucking ridiculous. Likewise for anybody who is claiming their 15% gains tax instead of income. Anyone who makes money from capitol gains at that tax bracket is simply leeching off the public. If people paid their share of taxes then overall tax rates would be lower for everyone. Having a substantially lower tax bracket for these people is ignorance at its finest.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
The limits on SS Tax is 6.2% on your earnings up to 96,400. The Medicaid tax is 1.45% but the Medicaid tax does not stop at 96,400. If you are paying 12K in combined FICA taxes you are making a lot more than Middle class wages! When you SS tax stops at 96.4K you have paid a combined $7374 for the year. To get the other 1.45% to total to $4626 you have to make another 316K in income for a total incomeof over 400K!! That puts you in the Top 1% of al
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:3, Interesting)
SS Opt outs (Score:3, Insightful)
Social funds like SS and the NHS recognise that capitalism depends on inequities in the distribution of wealth as part of its basic mechanism and spread the cos
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Informative)
This is clearly wrong, as stock sales and dividends are two totally separate things. The sale of stock generates either ordinary or capital gains income (depending on how long you hold the stock). Dividends reflect the stockholders share of the profit in ongoing operations, and you don't surrender your stock to get them.
When people talk about 'tax cuts for the rich', the dividend income tax change was the biggie.
Yes, well, people say lots of foolish things. Taxes on dividends are "double taxation", as profits have been taxed at the corporate level once, and then they get taxed again when they're dispersed to the shareholders. The most reasonable thing to do would to eliminate the dividend tax altogether, since it really doesn't increase tax receipts so much as force companies to distribute profits in other ways. Lots of (most?) companies either don't have dividends or have insignificant dividends for that reason. Typically you wouldn't buy a stock that disburses dividends unless it's in your IRA account where you won't pay taxes on it until you retire.
You could make the argument a tax on dividends makes sense because corporations are able to avoid corporate taxes through offset pricing schemes, but the real fix there is to fix the corporate tax system, not add another layer of taxes. Of course, if we did that the super rich would actually pay more in taxes, so you won't see much support for it in Congress.
In the case of The Google Boys, it's the difference between paying a base 35% on $1.4Bn in Income, or paying a base 15% on $1.4Bn. That's over $200 million dollars less in tax
If I'm reading yahoo [yahoo.com] correctly, Google doesn't even have a dividend, so the dividend tax rate is meaningless to the founders. Since Google just went public recently they're probably paying ordinary income taxes on most of the stock they've sold.
IT's the 20 million pay-offs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Stock value != company success (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anybody here really believe that a CEO's perspective changes if they get a $1 salary versus a multi-million dollar salary when they have a ton of stock and options? Good CEO's will feel a vested interest in the company's performance, and bad CEO's will not. Awarding them scads of cash may keep them on board with your company, but that's all it buys you.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
But Googles stock price is not linked to the companies success; it is linked the companies reputation as being really cool. Googles stock price exceeds what it's earnings justify by orders of magnitude. Google stock, or any stock at their kind of P/E ratio is mostly a pyramid scheme. Taking a one-dollar salary, and pointing that out without mentioning the billions in other compensation, is about keeping the really cool reputation going. Meanwhile, the execs are moving to diversify their wealth away from Google stock, because they are smart guys.
Re:Rewarding Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think just going to school makes you d
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if you make the tax-dodge argument, it still only works if their company's stock is worth enough to make such tax dodge worth considering.
Nothing about their salary is locked in. Either they continue to make decisions that keep the stock price high and their pockets full of phat cash, or they don't get paid.
Re:Not to be a dick... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, btw:
There's a lot of Kool-Aid being consumed around here.
I read things differently, but then I'm cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
actually what I gather is they told the employees "we care about Wall Street" which can be quite different from caring about the company (lay off half of your workforce and outsource and the stock will go up, be conservative with your numbers and projected earnings and the stock will go down).
I personally wish the stock market just disappeared, but fat chance of that happening.
Good faith? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK. What about Google's payroll tax liability?
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Informative)
I make next to nothing, and I pay more income tax than that.
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Informative)
If you hang on to if for less than a year, you tack the amount to your income and pay that rate. Holding it for 12 months helps, as that 'income' gets taxed at a fixed rate rather than what you make at a normal income. But no worries on the tax front. Once you break a certain threshold where you get to play with the glorious ATM (alternative minimum tax) codes, which these guys certainly hit... No changes there at all...
Re:Good faith? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Good faith? (Score:4, Informative)
And you're higher than a kite!
From the IRS (http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc409.html [irs.gov]):
"You may have to report capital gains and losses on Form 1040, Schedule D (PDF) . If you have a net capital gain, that gain may be taxed at a lower tax rate. The term "net capital gain" means the amount by which your net long-term capital gain for the year is more than your net short-term capital loss. The highest tax rate on a net capital gain is generally 15% (or 5%, if it would otherwise be taxed at 15% or less). There are 3 exceptions:
The taxable part of a gain from qualified small business stock is taxed at a maximum 28% rate.
Net capital gain from selling collectibles such as coins or art is taxed at a maximum 28% rate.
The part of any net capital gain from selling Section 1250 real property that is due to recapture of straight-line depreciation is taxed at a maximum 25% rate. "
The important part is that your long term capital gains are pegged based on your tax bracket. If you would normally pay more than 15% in taxes, your capital gains are 15%. If you would pay less, you pay only 5%. Short term capital gains are just figured as normal income and taxed as below.
And here are the tax schedules (http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=13351
"If taxable income is over-- But not over-- The tax is:
$0 $7,300 10% of the amount over $0
$7,300 $29,700 $730 plus 15% of the amount over 7,300
$29,700 $71,950 $4,090.00 plus 25% of the amount over 29,700
$71,950 $150,150 $14,652.50 plus 28% of the amount over 71,950
$150,150 $326,450 $36,548.50 plus 33% of the amount over 150,150
$326,450 no limit $94,727.50 plus 35% of the amount over 326,450 "
So, if you earn $1 billion from the sale of stock held over one year, with only $1 dollar in actual income, you pay ($1 billion * 5%) $50 million (since the tax rate on $1 is 10%, which is less than 15%). If, however, you earned a $1 million salary, then cashed out $1 billion in stock, you'd pay ($1 billion * 15% = $150 million) + ($94,727.50 + (1 million - 326,450)*35% = $330,470) = $150,330,470.
By paying themselves $1 per year, they saved themselves over $100 million. Yeah, it was completely altruistic. Altruistic like a fox!
Re:Good faith? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good faith? (Score:2)
But not income tax, which is what the parent mentioned. They probably pay the (much lower) long-term captial gains tax.
Re:Good faith? (Score:4, Informative)
>
> But not income tax, which is what the parent mentioned. They probably pay the (much lower) long-term captial gains tax.
In Kalifornistan, all income - salary, interest, dividends, and both short-term and long-term capital gains - is taxed by the State as well as the Federal government. Every dollar earned over $40000 is taxed at 9.3%. (Every buck over $1M is taxed at 10.3% starting January 1, 2006.)
So if you have, say, a $400M capital gain on a $500M hunk of stock, the Feds take $60M (to build a quarter of a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, or to blow up some Arabs), and Ahnold takes an extra $37M in state taxes (for the pensions purchased by the various government employees union' under the previous administration in exchange for campaign donations.)
And since the AMT threshold is measured in thousands of dollars, no, you can't deduct the $37M in state taxes from your Federal return, because you're so far beyond the AMT threshold that your accountant can't even see the AMT threshold without very long baseline interferometry.
Ask yourself what the various levels of government have done to earn a quarter of the wealth spawned by Google.
This isn't a right-vs-left issue. Wouldn't most Democrats be a little happier if the government wasn't able to take a huge chunk of your wealth in order to buy bombs to drop on brown people? And wouldn't most Republicans be a little happier of the government didn't take the rest of your money to spend on government employees' unions and welfare queens?
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of all the standard responses (cops, roads, an army, etc), they built the Internet, without which Google couldn't exist.
Re:Good faith? (Score:3, Insightful)
Possibly true now, but it's doubtful that it was built or would have been built without the government. Even as late as 2004, more than half the people on the Internet were connected over telephone services, whose infrastructure is heavily dependent on government support. I'd be pretty shocked if government funding (direct, or via the use of emine
Re:Good faith? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I don't know how much of the following justifies the government taxation, but it certainly lists ways in which the government has assisted Google.
Firstly, Brin & Page were grad students at Stanford, recieving their undergraduate education from publicly funded Universities and reciving federal grant money to do the fundamental research that made Google what it is today. Part of their success revolves around being at the right place at the right time, but another part is that they had the opportunity to solve a problem first, and come up with the money strategy second, rather than the other way around. Because they a quality education and the government paid opportunity to study interesting problems, they were able to create an enourmous amount of weath, for themselves and for society. Hell, even Stanford operates on the charity of a former governor, rather than a series of well informed and rational choices made by students. And I think it's fair to say they still recieve a good sum of money in the form of federal research grants.
Second, Google exists to search the vast amount of information available over the Internet. For Internet Libertarians, the funding behind DARPAnet and even the development of HTML has to be a strange paradox. Certainly, there are plenty of governments under which the free dissemination, indexing and ranking of communications is not welcome. If I wished to be misleading, I might say that the Libertarian camp is divided over the issue -- there are as many Libertarian governments in favor of internet censorship as there are opposed!
Thirdly, Google the corporate entity benefits from a large number of local, state and federal services. The SEC provided them with a framework within which they could safely offer a number of shares for initial public offering, even in a unique way (despite complaints from many within the private sector), and gives shareholders confidence that the reports they read are accurate and should the need or desire arise, they can get a fair market price for their stock. The legal system provides Google with a fair and impartial jurisdiction within which suits by and against Google may be held (certainly Google gets its fair share of suits from those upset about being indexed--justified or not). Should the Googleplex burn down, the local fire department has been and will continue to be on watch for them. And for those Googlers that don't rollerskate to work, the State of California and the Federal government help to provide safe roads and highways with which to commute over. Should Google go bankrupt, the government provides a fair system of bankruptcy within which the company may survive, to the benefit of the majority of creditors.
Finally, the employees of Google don't have to worry about their status as Immigrants, Jews, Blacks, Men, or Communists interfering substantially with their business dealings. Should they be treated substandardly for these inherant traits (for example while finding a house in the SF market), the governments provide them with a recourse under the law for this irrational discrimination.
Now you're certainly welcome to claim that taxes are too high, that the government is accomplishing their goal too wastefully, or the like. But perhaps the State of California uses the high tax rates as an migratory throttle, to make sure that people planning to make money on a large scale do so outside their state? If California is still enjoying a growing economy and population, despite the high tax rate, perhaps enough people like the system to make it work?
Re:Good faith? (Score:3, Insightful)
Receiving additional income does not result in a situation where you're paying more in taxes than that income. So Page, Brin and Schmidt suddenly started making $1 million/year in salary, they would still be taking home more money after income taxes than if they weren't receiving that money. So there's no motivation based on income taxes to not receive additional salary.
Personally I think they take $1 salaries because they want to appear
Re:Good faith? (Score:2)
Re:Good faith? (Score:2)
Not only that... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not only that... (Score:2)
Re:Not only that... (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that the Google executives have billions of dollars in their names, they exceed the asset limits for the food stamps program.
So? (Score:2)
Nothing wrong with that (Score:2)
THis isn't so unusual (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, all the CEOs are wealthy from stock sales.
Dilution (Score:3, Informative)
The SEC has mandated stock option expensing methods because previously too many companies made executives' pay pretty much disappear - instead of paying them, they gave them options. Now that they are expensed, what is the difference? It just seems to me as if the executives are getting paid billions of dollars and Google's bottom line should reflect that with the new expensing procedures- whether it it direct compensation or stock options.
Thanks,
Jack
Re:Dilution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dilution (Fixed formatting) (Score:3, Informative)
Minor correction: A stock option is properly the option to buy or sell a given number of shares on a given date for a given price. See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for a more thorough discussion, but in short what a stock option as a means of compensation entails is this: The company gives you an option to buy N shares for X dollars each on D date. If the stock price on the open market is greater than X dollars per share (call it Y), then you can exercise your option by spending N * X dollars to buy N shares o
Straight from the Steve Jobs playbook... (Score:2)
I mean, it's not like this move hurts them. They look great to their employees, get lots of great press, and don't pay as much in taxes. Later, when they don't have _quite_ as much stock money to thow around, they can ask for a nice salary, and a greatful board will shower them with riches.
I expect the next move from these guys to be buying some small spin-off for $10 million and turning
Re:Straight from the Steve Jobs playbook... (Score:2, Informative)
Four months after Ford Chairman Henry Ford II fired Iacocca as president of Ford in July 1978, he took up with Chrysler and promptly figured out the automaker was in big trouble. He fired executives, bargained with the United Auto Workers union to lower salaries and benefits for hourly workers, lowered his own salary to a dollar a year, and secured loans from the federal government to bail out the company.
Pay checks? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pay checks? (Score:2, Funny)
Uhh, Zonk? (Score:3, Interesting)
The news here is that the executives are selling their stock -- not normally considered a show of faith in the company. Brin and Page have each dumped over a billion dollars worth, and Schmidt another half-billion.
Re:Uhh, Zonk? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets use a pets.com type company as an example. I run pets.com. I got money from a VC to start a company and sell pet products on the web. A few years in, I go public and grow my business to a $10 million dollar a year business, 2 million of which is profit. I still hold 35% of the company, and I think that the prospects to grow my business and expand into others is looking bright, and I expect to double or even triple my revenue and profits over the next few years. However, the stock has my company valued at $1 billion dollars. I know damn well that even the rosiest outlook will not allow my company to really be worth that much for at least another 15-20 years. So I sell 10% of my stake, and pocket a $100 million. I still think my company is a great company. I still have plenty riding on that fact. I also still think that my investors are fools and have a far greater chance of getting a better return on their investment anywhere else (though I would never ever ever announce that fact to anyone, not even my dog).
Selling your company's stock and believing that your company has a good future ahead of it are not mutually exclusive.
Hang on (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hang on (Score:2)
This must be some strange meaning of evil (Score:2)
Re:This must be some strange meaning of evil (Score:2)
Re:This must be some strange meaning of evil (Score:3, Interesting)
But even assuming the value of the stock is "inflated", this has absolutly nothing to do with monetary inflation. They use the same word, "inflated", but they
Right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which part of "they've sold stock hundreds of millions" don't you understand? That's cash money in the bank. The stock could crash to under a dollar a share and they wouldn't even notice.
Stock, not Stock Options (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, they aren't being PAID in stock (That's not part of their current salary, reimbursement for their current work), that is the reward they have for risking their money, work, and reputations building this thing called Google in the first place.
Sure there is the tax reasons... (Score:2)
Most American CEOs should take this as the way to do things instead of giving themselves dubious raises. That or somehow their salary is tied into the stock price in which if they pump and dump the stocks their salary will go through the floor.
Another day another dollar... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another day another dollar... (Score:3, Funny)
Page and Brin can help with that:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(1+USD)+per+
Minimum Wage? (Score:5, Funny)
Not to pull the "starving in africa" card, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But $160 million in stock options? $1.68 billion in 2 years? Damn! Do you know how much rice and grain you could buy for starving people? How many middle class and working class people you could employ with that? The 8th highest paid executive in the world is the CEO of ExxonMobil and he made $88 million this year.
It's good that these stock options are tied to performance, because if Google tanked, they'd get nothing. But let's put the amount of money into perspective. Can we tone down on corporate greed? Did these guys really need that much in stock options?
I'm just saying...
I don't understand (Score:4, Funny)
So could anyone give me a quick synopsis of how this one-dollar pay thingie works. Add supported synopsis is OK.
Is anything on Slashdot more predictable... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't fault the Google guys for their compensation or their decision to try and defer some tax issues. Hell, I don't even fault them for turning their pseudo-salaries into a miniature news event. They're in the business of growing Google, and part of that is playing up the "Google mystique."
Yeah, they make a lot of money no matter how you count it. But you know what? So can you, if you come up with an idea that's good enough and get people to buy into it.
We should look upon home-run successes like Google for inspiration, not class jealousy.
$160 Million? (Score:3, Funny)
Article moderation: -1 Duh.
Dark Side? (Score:5, Insightful)
They get more than $1 (Score:3, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GOOG [yahoo.com]
Eric Schmidt gets $82,000 and Sergey Brin and Larry Page get $45,000.
Forget the suits (Score:3, Funny)
Just make sure Guido is well compensated. The world really needs Python.
1$ Salary + Stock Options - Selling Stock (Score:3, Insightful)
They only get the nominal 1$ as a yearly salary, and instead get paid in stock and stock options.
This means that they have strong faith in their company (if the stock crashes they'd lose alot of money compared to just having a ordinary 6-7 digit salary)
And regarding the sale of stock - its stock they already own, so they are taking nothing away from the company. Its like turning part of your coin or stamp collection back into cash. Well, its a tiny bit bigger than that but the principle is the same.
Learning (Score:3, Informative)
I've seen a number of posts on here complaining about the Google share price being outrageous. I'd be interested in hearing what they would have to say about Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) at an astonishing $89,600 per share. I suppose you think they are overrated too?
It's all in the market cap. While it might seem that might post is a thinly-veiled insult to the Slashdot crowd, I actually intend for it to be encouragement for most of you to go out and take a few stock market classes or read up on investopedia or wikipedia.
Here's your free lesson:
Market cap of Google is $130.94 billion. Market cap of Apple is $64.30 billion. Berkshire-Hathaway is $112.99 billion. IBM is $126.93 billion. Microsoft is a whopping $279.74 billion. Yahoo is $49.47 billion.
(Current as of EOD 1-24-06)
Based on this, a geek can deduce their interpretation of which company is "worth" more and thus determine which stocks to buy and which ones to "short". (For more on how to short a stock, use your favorite search engine or check with your brokerage)
Assets and Liabilities also play a huge part in valuation. A company can have a high market cap but have a crappy current ratio or debt to equity ratio. Personally I think Google is slightly overvalued, but here's the list that I have with actual market cap and where I think each of the above companies market caps *should* be.
TICK-ACTUAL-WORTH
GOOG-131-110
AAPL-64-80
BRKA-113-130
IBM-127-100
MSFT-279-230
YHOO-50-80
It's up to you how you determine what you currently value a company at, but I think valuing based off of market cap is a good way to get started. For example, Yahoo at one point had a paltry market cap of something like 7 billion after the dot-com crash of 2001-2002. Astute investors (like myself and others) invested in these companies that we suspected would rebound. Several of us make off very well because of it. And it didn't take much more than time for us to learn.
Of course, I gradually taught myself this over the course of about 6 months. I do not regret using the time between graduation and first official full-time job to do so. What a risky time to be playing with my money, though. If I had to do it over again
Oh, and I lost money too. But if you invest in safely and stay away from the lure of pink sheets stocks, you'll do fine.
Yes, but... Real stocks here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Make dividends and true stock investments (investing in IPOs, new stock offerings, and startup stock payments) taxable at the capital gains rate and revert all the daytrading/recycled stock profits to the full tax rate; it will benefit new technologies and put the brakes on silly speculation trading (read: gambling for the rich).
Re:Yes, but... Real stocks here. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it'll just switch the speculation to a different area. People can just easily waste money on start-ups as they can on day trading. We call people who do this "Venture Capitalists".
Not that I have any love for day-traders, but start-ups can be a big sucking black hole filled with business newbies who think that getting a million dollar loan means they can erect a fashionable building, grant themselves stock options and have a flawed business plan that would only be acceptable to a feverish, overfunded market for start-ups. A recent example would be the time period we refer to as "the late 1990's".
Re:Minimum wage laws (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:2)
Google does not pay a dividend.
Re:Disgusting (Score:2)
Continued being great?
Re:Why wouldn't they be? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to be pretty confident in the value of your company to accept stock as payment.
Don't be greedy! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:With $500 M to $1.4 B, why keep working??? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is precisely why you can only dream of having a couple million. The people you mention became rich because, among other things, they love what they do.
Re: C'mon - running Google would be fascinating (Score:3, Interesting)
It would not be surprising that they wou
Re:With $500 M to $1.4 B, why keep working??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, and as an EMPLOYEE of the company that might be something you would want to do. Keep in mind this article is concerning the execs. I don't know about Eric Schmidt, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded a company based on their Phd work. They don't have to worry about money, now they can continue with the research that they might have went on doing if they hadn't decided to start Goog