Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai collects $226 million in 2022 compensation amid layoffs

Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, received total compensation of about $226 million (about Rs. 1,850 crore) in 2022, more than 800 times the median employee salary, the company said in a statement. filing of titles on Friday.

Pichai’s compensation included equity awards of about $218 million (about Rs 1,800 crore), according to the filing.

The pay disparity comes at a time when Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is cutting jobs around the world. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs worldwide in January, or 6% of its global workforce. .

Earlier this month, hundreds of Google workers staged a walkout at the company’s offices in London following a dispute over layoffs.

In March, Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s offices in Zurich after more than 200 workers were fired.

Meanwhile, the company is working quickly to make its Bard chatbot stand out among its competitors. On Friday, Google announced Bard, its generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, to help people write code to develop software, as the tech giant catches up in a fast-paced race on technology. the AI.

Bard will be able to code in 20 programming languages, including Java, C++ and Python, and can also help debug and explain code to users, Google said Friday.

The company said Bard can also optimize code to make it faster or more efficient with simple prompts like “Could you make this code faster?”.

Currently, Bard is accessible to a small group of users who can chat with the bot and ask questions instead of running the traditional Google search tool.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

---