The bonuses of CEOs at the top 10 tech companies soared a massive 400 percent on average during the pandemic between 2020 and 2021, a new report showed on Tuesday. However, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai saw a drop of 14 percent in his bonuses in 2020 and 2021.
Tan Hock Eng from Broadcom was the highest gainer by a whopping 1,586 percent, from $3.6 million to $60.7 million, according to data acquired by financial news portal Feingold.
Oracle’s Safra Ada Catz ranked the second-highest, with her compensation growing 999 percent.
“With the tech sector registering significant returns amid the coronavirus pandemic, the industry’s executives are also ranking high in compensation,” the report said.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was third with 713.64 percent gains — from $22 million to $179 million, followed by Apple’s Tim Cook, who recorded a bonus surge of 571.63 percent — from $14.7 million to $98.7 million.
Amazon’s Andy Jassy finished the top-five category with gains of 491.9 percent, from $35.8 million to $211.9 million.
Other executives who earned significant perks include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (52.17 percent), Cisco’s Chuck Robbins (9.48 percent), and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (5.93 percent).
Elsewhere, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recorded a drop in his compensation by 19.68 percent — from $43.2 million to $34.7 million and Pichai from Alphabet (Google) recorded a drop of 14 percent.
Overall, the combined compensation of the selected executives for 2021 was $721.13 million, a 210.88 percent growth from the 2020’s figure of $231.96 million.
“Although the increase in bonuses might be a direct impact of the tech sector’s performance in the last two years, the standard justification for allocating high perks is to retain talent amid the pandemic,” the Finbold report mentioned.
Some executives are known to create corporate value, and their parent organization has resorted to compensating them with whatever it takes, it added.
On the flip side, the significant executive payout has reignited the wealth inequality in America.
Recently, US Senator Elizabeth Warren engaged in a war of words with Tesla CEO Elon Musk over the low taxes paid by billionaires.
According to Warren, billionaires should pay forward in taxes to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
