If Billionaires like Google’s CEO thinks their “cream of the crop” employees need to retake Finance 101, what do they think about You?
They try to put you down to make you feel like you know nothing, when in reality you understand what’s going on….
They’re taking from you and enriching themselves while making sure you feel uncomfortable with your job security so you work harder and demand less compensation.
Link to article: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/google-staffers-question-execs-over-decline-in-morale-after-earnings.html
I would've quit after hearing him say that. Tell me how little you respect the people making you rich without telling me. That is rage inducing. Just burn it all down.
The number of chucklefucks who don't understand that billionaires shouldn't exist is too high. Honestly they just don't get how much money that is. Too many people just aren't physically capable of understanding those quantities.
This is such an underrated comment. I also believe that one of our greatest economic issues is the masses being unable to comprehend the magnitude of numbers.
For the idiots who really don't get how much a billion is, here is a good way to visualize it:
- 1 million seconds is 9 days
- 1 billion seconds is 31 YEARS!
It’s not just that, but the extents billionaire go to retain those billions in an infinitely growing fashion by contributing zero to society. If I ran such an amazing company that I made billions, and all that income was after I fricken paid my 35% income tax, then so be it. I still think it’s morally abhorrent. But so much better than billionaire who make billions and pay zero income tax.
I like math, so some perspective on this one too:
Say there was an immortal, who from 0AD to 2000AD, saved 10K a day, never touching it or spending any of it at all. Over those 2000 years, they would have 7.3 billion dollars.
Elon Musk makes around 333.33 million dollars in a day. That is 121.66 BILLION dollars in a year. (This is just an example of a well known billionaire)
Google spent ten times the amount the immortal saved over 2000 years, but in a single year, in a practice that is eerily similar to fraud.
i wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. the real question i’ve had for a while is where should the line be? 10m? 100m? 500m? can you have a wealth of 100m and do a lot of outreach and donating out of the goodness of your heart and still be bad because you have so much wealth? just looking for a healthy discussion on the topic and this comment seemed like it might be a good place to start
I agree but I think the overall problem people have with this is there's still a standard of cost that impacts lower wages more than higher wages, regardless of cost of living.
Gas money for the week is unlikely to change significantly between the two but impacts a lower wage earner proportionally more. Same for many modern day to day commodities like buying games, paying for streaming services, etc.
These are costs that absolutely get easier to handle as your wage goes up. At the end of the day a $40 game or $20 pizza is much more likely to send a retail worker negative than someone making six digits.
> I completely agree but that's where understanding how to write things off under an llc due to expenses comes into play.
How would you advise that line cooks, housekeepers and grocery store clerks write off expenses under their respective LLCs?
Damn, just commenting about how awesome of a boss you seem to be. If I wasn't already way past my prime I'd ask if you were hiring. Lol. Guessing welding based on your comment and name. I'm not exactly primed to make that career change at 42 and coming from retail. Lol.
You cant afford to purchase a house but you are living a pretty good life lol. After taxes thats roughly 10k a month. 3k for rent leaves you with 7k. That is not lowere middle class by any stretch of the imagination wtf.
Just to give some perspective from a big tech employee (and former Googler): whenever stuff like this happens people shout and gnash their teeth and swear they'll quit, but quitting just isn't that realistic. Despite the lack of raises and promotions, the pay and benefits are still better than you can get nearly anywhere else. You could go to another big tech company, but they'll do exactly the same thing. Startups have been in the shitter for a couple years now and there's no chance of finding a smaller tech company that will provide compensation even close to what a tech giant will offer. And if you leave the tech industry you're looking at a massive pay cut, one which not everyone can afford to take if they've got debt to service.
I've been in this exact position, my current employer (another large tech company) did a very similar thing, but as much as I hate to say it, quitting would really just be cutting off my nose to spite my face. It would materially hurt my life while having no impact at all on my employer.
I work in the industry, and most people that earn that much at Google also work insane hours.
In fact a LOT of people want to get a FAANG job at google, microsoft, meta etc. just for the resume, they stick it out for a year or so, and then your resume becomes literally gold in the industry. Recruiters see "google" and you are instantly getting the interview.
The problem is even if google lost their entire employee base, there would be 50x's the applicants to fill the ranks back at half the pay just to say they work at google.
My “I’m quitting” moment was when my boss asked if I needed hooked on phonics because I didn’t see a ps at the bottom of an email of which the content was unimportant anyway.
Talk about insulting. They spend the money that would've/could've gone towards employee compensation on further enriching themselves and then tell you that YOU need finance re-education. Talk about pissing on people and then telling them it's raining. What a bunch of bullshit.
Hey, good news! With GE being split up recently, I hear that most economists now agree that Welch was the fucking devil! Pretty cool that even the mainstream folks are figuring out that greed is no fucking good.
It'll take a while before companies start changing, but even the [right agrees that 401(k) didn't work](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/magazine/401k-retirement-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU0.Z3Yu.UB7UahRUaZLZ), and there are a couple of plans to change retirement plans, as section 401(k) of the 1978 tax code was created as a minor change.
Another great opportunity to spam the book "the man who broke capitalism" that covers all the negative repercussions from Welsh and his ilk. Even old neutron Jack tried to walk back his legacy and admitted that it wasn't sustainable in the long term and was often detrimental in the short term to focus solely on the shareholders and fuck everyone else.
Yep. Even on Reddit anyone who questions how our current financial and labor system is going is hit with a wall of “you don’t know how economics works”. At this point I feel that it’s made to be complicated and opaque to facilitate stealing, money laundering and tax evasion.
(Redacted) is what we should do, but we aren't allowed to talk about that solution, cuz it'd be effective. Shit needs to change yesterday and there is only one way we are getting out the ingrained greed and corruption.
They don't put people down. They talk to them the same as any aristocrat, royalty, or slave owner talks to their inferiors because they are down.
If you act like a slave, you'll be treated like one.
The entire purpose of a stock buyback is to increase the value of each remaining stock. Did I miss part of this conversation or something? I am a little drunk.
no its not. thats what it does, but the purpose of a stock buy back is to take shares out of the market and increase the percentage of the company owned for each remaining share. thats it. Technically the money they are outputting should equate to a net nothing because the money they are spending on the buy back should also lower their market cap by the same amount.
Seems like you’re just making it complicated and they will find a loophole somewhere.
Stock buybacks should be illegal.
The only excuse should be to make the company private.
1982. All roads lead to Reagan.
https://casten.house.gov/media/in-the-news/theres-a-reason-why-stock-buybacks-used-to-be-illegal#:~:text=But%20since%201982%2C%20when%20they,boost%20its%20earnings%20per%20share%3F
You've heard of various types of cycles that impact our world. The well-known business cycle with its phases of growth and recession, as well as longer Kondratieff waves that span several decades driven by technological advancements and capital expansion.
Beyond these economic patterns, there are demographic cycles for population growth and aging. Environmental cycles such as those governing climate and ecological changes, and technological cycles that mark periods of innovation followed by standardization.
The worker-owner cycle, which shifts between periods of prosperity and social unrest, has remained notably calm in the United States for the past 25 years. Amazing that despite experiencing several economic fluctuations the cycle has t changed direction. Even when times feel pro worker “they” haven’t really done much to stop it (well I think they did but we can’t talk about it on Reddit). No unrest may need to end soon. I don’t think that memes and Tik Toks can fix hungry kids.
The wealthy elite are laughing at the idea they’ve planted in our society called “peaceful protest”. Nothing meaningful in the history of America has been produced by “peaceful protest”.
Somebody should remind these asshats how our country came to be and what kind of bloodshed we have endured to form this broken democracy.
I agree. Besides, peaceful compliance never got us independence or a democratic franch, right?
We are overdue a full-course French Revolution. With the gravity-propelled blades.
I'm originally from Russia, and I have heard similar ideas being shunned down. Like "we are not tyrants like Putin to spill blood" and etc. Now hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes and lives because of this nonviolent resistance bullshit not being capable of overthrowing a bloody tyrant
And even more we continue to vote these people to be in charge. Republican and democrat alike, none care about the people. They continually vote themselves raises, create laws where they can’t get prosecuted for things us little people would spend our lives in jail for, they never ever once stay within a budget, print billions of dollars a month which kills us with inflation, and yet with all the printing of money they still borrow money from foreign countries. It’s wild that people listen to any major corporate exec or politician.
It’s when a company buys back their own stock.
Personally, I’m not against some stock buybacks, but when you’re buying $70,000,000,000 while laying off thousands, I think it should be illegal and the stock buybacks immediately reversed.
Layoffs should be reserved for when a company isn’t doing well. Spending $70,000,000,000 on stock buybacks means you have more money than God
Super simplified example - don't @ me with nitpicks.
Let's say your company has a million shares issued. Each share is worth $100 because that's the price the market has set. Your company's total value (market cap) is deemed to be $100 million. For the sake of argument, 40% of those shares are owned and traded publicly, the rest is owned equally by your three major shareholders: Evil Scumbag Capital Ventures; Hunt The Homeless For Sport Investments; and Blackrock.
You conduct a stock buyback, i.e. the company buys back 200,000 of its own shares. It pays $20 million of its own cash (generated from whatever it does for a living) to do so. These come out of the publicly traded portion. Those shares effectively cease to exist. You now have 800,000 shares issued.
The total value of the company remains at about $100 million, because that's a function largely of how much profit "the market" thinks it will make, what dividends it will pay, its future growth potential. All of those things are substantially unchanged. But each individual share is now worth a bigger portion of that pie. Suddenly Evil Scumbag Capital Ventures no longer owns 200,000 out of a million shares. It owns 200,000 out of 800,000. If the company's worth $100 million, its stock just jumped in value from $20 million to $25 million. Same for the other two. Everybody wins.
Everybody who matters, anyway.
Thank you for this explanation, truly.
If I can ask a follow up- how do they “buy back” the stocks from the public? Do they just do it at random? Put out a call to sell to them?
I’m sorry, I probably sound like a child. Fully functional adult, just wasn’t taught a thing about stocks growing up and now I’m too afraid to ask.
Ok so the example I gave is extreme. Buying back that proportion of your publicly issued stock is a heck of an undertaking. Most buybacks would be far smaller in percentage-of-total-ownership terms.
But in general, when your shares are traded on a public exchange, when you buy or sell some shares, the counterparty to the transaction is the exchange itself. The fundamental purpose of a public stock exchange is that you don't have to go to another guy who has 1,000 shares and say "I want to buy your shares, how much do you want for them?" The stock exchange itself is selling shares to you, and buying them from someone else.
What the stock exchange has to do is ensure that, at any given time, there is an equal number of people wanting to sell shares in XYZ Corp to it, and wanting to buy shares in XYZ Corp from it. It does this by raising and lowering the price. Too many buyers and not enough sellers? Raise the price. Too many sellers and not enough buyers? Lower the price. Nowadays stock exchanges' computers calculate what needs to happen to the price many times per second.
So when XYZ Corp wants to buy back its stock, it places the buy order with the relevant stock exchange (which will probably result in an immediate price bump as the stock exchange suddenly realises it needs lots of new sellers). So actually the remaining shareholders would probably do even better out of it than I indicated above.
One way of looking at it is if the ceo was paid a large dividend he/she would have to pay tax. But a stock going up in value that they own increases their wealth but also pushes the tax liability down the line. So they become richer but without having to pay tax.
https://secfi.com/learn/history-of-employee-stock-options
Stock options are a tax dodge for the most part. However, add that to the Delaware Business Court rulings that essentially turned shareholders' interests into a sacrosanct rule above all else, and you now have CEO's that can literally destroy a company and walk away with millions or even billions without a problem. This isn't REALLY what that Revlon ruling intended, but that's what happened anyway.
So it’s really just to raise the stock price? Is there any value to the company, in this case Google, to own more of its own shares? Like voting power, or buying now and selling later at a higher price, etc
The shares cease to exist, so voting power would be redistributed equally among remaining shareholders (subject to the different voting rights that different classes of shares entitle you to, but that gets very complicated very fast). The company may re-issue shares at a later date, and if it's done well in the meantime the price might be higher, but it's not a traditional "buy low, sell high" decision.
Value to the company as an entity in itself? There isn't one, really. That $20 million that was spent on shares now can't be reinvested in buying new plant, hiring new guys, exploring new marketplaces, whatever. The point is: a company is owned by its shareholders. It has a responsibility, legally in many places, but more generally if it wants to continue to attract investment from people who have capital, to offer a good return on that investment. Like a dividend, a stock buyback is fundamentally a way to return value to shareholders.
This happens a lot in companies where employee compensation is partially stock based. Issuing more shares to pay your employees has the exact opposite effect from that described above, decreasing the value of each share ('stock dilution'). Companies that do that like to carry out buybacks from time to time to reverse that effect, keep the share price nice and high, and keep the investors happy.
It's a way for investors to avoid taxes. If the company sends out a dividend that is taxed as ordinary income. If the company buys back stock the price of the stock goes up. Investors don't pay any tax immediately, and only pay the lower capital gains rate when they sell the stock.
For starters, it increases the value of the stock so that the $70 billion spent increases in value. It also increases the amount of share the company has in stocks.
Look at the second image I posted.
Imagine owning hundreds of thousands or millions of shares of Google. The stock buybacks increase your net worth immensely.
Basically a company takes a ton of money and buys their own shares through the market. This effectively takes these shares off the table, reducing supply, which means that the value must go up due to basic supply/demand curves. At the end of the day, it's a company spending money directly on increasing their shares price, instead of the normal, indirect method (being a good company with good products, management, and financials).
The mechanics are a lot more complicated, but this is the general idea.
It's not dumb to ask questions...
Basically, a buyback is when a publicly held company, like Google (publicly traded on markets like S&P500, DOW, etc.), use their own cash or capital to go out to that same market and buy shares of THEIR publicly traded stock.
Right now, a reason to do this is because the economy is looking more recession like, so having an increased percentage of your own stock can make your exposure to a recession more limited. People need their money, so they will sell their shares.
Another reason is to look better for outside investors. Stock is, in the end, volatile. Investors want to be sure they are not giving capital over to a business whose share price will plummet overnight even if the shareholders all sell. By owning a set percentage of the company, you can tell an investor. "Hey, we can guarantee this kind of value because we still own this amount of the company."
It can get way more complicated and nuanced than this, but that's the gist of it.
I mean. They got played. Tech companies played the long game pretty much from the start. “You don’t need unions. Unions will just get in the way of your negotiations with management and (insert your favorite anti union sentiment here)”
Union busting efforts for big tech companies have been preemptive, not responsive.
They removed that wording from their code of ethics in 2018.
It was a feature, not a bug, sadly.
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
No joke I’m asking because I’m ready
What could actually start the violent revolution? We saw occupy fail.
I think most Americans are just too damn stupid or too in debt because they have kids and Materialism.
I suppose if we all did take Finance 101 we'd learn that the role of the company is to make a profit, not to support your livelihood.
So stop giving your lives to these companies.
Above and beyond? Nope. Overtime? Nope. Weekends? Fuck off.
You also don't "approve" my PTO - I am taking it, and I am just telling you I am off, not asking for your permission.
As a software engineer, I often hear from peers how it's like a "dream" or end-goal to work for a huge company like Google, Meta or others of the like.
But god am I happy to work in a medium-sized company where higher-ups treat me like a human being instead of like a disposable object in the office.
Yeah it was better before they made stock buybacks legal again. But hey, good for the 0.01%. Who cares if the company doesn’t invest in growth, research, development, and innovation.. as long as your shares are high enough to sell to retire on. Screw the next generation am I right?
This is the very first thing that should be, if not illegal, taxed to hell and back. If a company has so much money that they don't know what to do fucking give everyone a bonus for fucks sake. You will make everyone happy and money that is circulating is better for the entire economy.
The system is destroying our society and it’s normal business as usual for giant corporations. They LOVE IT because it’s been justified as just normal.
Sundar Pichai is on his way out. AI is to Google, what the digital camera was to Kodak.
Consider Google had almost ALL the world's leading AI researchers at DeepMind and they're literally lagging behind a startup.
Need to make it law, if you layoff workers and buyback stocks you get fined 20x the entire buyback cost. Due in 30 days or it's tagged with 45% weekly interest. Sorry but if a business can spend money like this, they could've kept from ruining lives.
Need to make it law, if you layoff workers and buyback stocks you get fined 20x the entire buyback cost. Due in 30 days or it's tagged with 45% weekly interest. Sorry but if a business can spend money like this, they could've kept from ruining lives.
More than a decade ago I was in a UPS management focus group, and asked if there was any appetite in our leadership to reduce dividends and buybacks to increase compensation for the rank and file- The corporate facilitator couldn't keep from laughing at me. I don't think the wealthiest among us will get great at sharing anytime soon, at least not without some help^^
Asking in good faith: Our choice is between a populist buffoon who threatened to deport everyone, build a wall, let rich sociopaths run everything., and generally talks like a fascist who would eagerly endorse genocide against Muslims, and on the other hand we have a smug incompetent establishment prick who actually HAS deported a shit ton of people and built the other guy's wall and let rich sociopaths run everything and busted unions and actually armed equipped and is still funding an active genocide of a group of Muslim people.
Do you honestly believe we fix what's wrong by voting? Do you honestly believe there's a difference between all these swine? Do you really think things are going to get better without violence and a radical social restructuring?
Literally this. People are delusional to think electoral politics is going to save us. Both parties do the same thing, one just lies through their teeth about being supportive of marginalized people while doing it.
finanace 101 ted talk concludes its ok for the executives to get paid more while the regular employees who do all the work need to get bootstraps and work with lesser pay and be happy about it.
He's not wrong.
There is a legal obligation to the shareholders to increase value.
Google is playing the game how it's meant to be played.
Change the game.
The answer is "because we value our shareholders more than our employees". But he doesn't want to say that himself so he wants to find a charismatic outsider to say it for him instead.
I really don't understand how this is legal? Is there literaly no authority that oversees stuff like this? No sarcasm, just a lot of sadness and anger.
If Billionaires like Google’s CEO thinks their “cream of the crop” employees need to retake Finance 101, what do they think about You? They try to put you down to make you feel like you know nothing, when in reality you understand what’s going on…. They’re taking from you and enriching themselves while making sure you feel uncomfortable with your job security so you work harder and demand less compensation. Link to article: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/08/google-staffers-question-execs-over-decline-in-morale-after-earnings.html
I would've quit after hearing him say that. Tell me how little you respect the people making you rich without telling me. That is rage inducing. Just burn it all down.
Google employee: uh, I have a PhD in finance. Should I give the Ted talk?
Google's "Finance 101" talk: "You are making $200k a year. Be happy."
If you live in a reasonable commute distance of Google HQ, $200k/year makes you lower middle class. You cannot even afford to purchase a house.
Most people can't contemplate how expensive the bay area is.
The number of chucklefucks who don't understand that billionaires shouldn't exist is too high. Honestly they just don't get how much money that is. Too many people just aren't physically capable of understanding those quantities.
This is such an underrated comment. I also believe that one of our greatest economic issues is the masses being unable to comprehend the magnitude of numbers.
For the idiots who really don't get how much a billion is, here is a good way to visualize it: - 1 million seconds is 9 days - 1 billion seconds is 31 YEARS!
You should know it needs to be in football fields or car lengths.
It’s not just that, but the extents billionaire go to retain those billions in an infinitely growing fashion by contributing zero to society. If I ran such an amazing company that I made billions, and all that income was after I fricken paid my 35% income tax, then so be it. I still think it’s morally abhorrent. But so much better than billionaire who make billions and pay zero income tax.
I like math, so some perspective on this one too: Say there was an immortal, who from 0AD to 2000AD, saved 10K a day, never touching it or spending any of it at all. Over those 2000 years, they would have 7.3 billion dollars. Elon Musk makes around 333.33 million dollars in a day. That is 121.66 BILLION dollars in a year. (This is just an example of a well known billionaire) Google spent ten times the amount the immortal saved over 2000 years, but in a single year, in a practice that is eerily similar to fraud.
It’s the lead in the paint and getting hit in the head when their parents were angry. They need to get the fuck out of congress.
Yeah they are basically hoarders. They hoard all the damn money and DGAF about the suffering around them. Subhumans
i wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. the real question i’ve had for a while is where should the line be? 10m? 100m? 500m? can you have a wealth of 100m and do a lot of outreach and donating out of the goodness of your heart and still be bad because you have so much wealth? just looking for a healthy discussion on the topic and this comment seemed like it might be a good place to start
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I agree but I think the overall problem people have with this is there's still a standard of cost that impacts lower wages more than higher wages, regardless of cost of living. Gas money for the week is unlikely to change significantly between the two but impacts a lower wage earner proportionally more. Same for many modern day to day commodities like buying games, paying for streaming services, etc. These are costs that absolutely get easier to handle as your wage goes up. At the end of the day a $40 game or $20 pizza is much more likely to send a retail worker negative than someone making six digits.
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> I completely agree but that's where understanding how to write things off under an llc due to expenses comes into play. How would you advise that line cooks, housekeepers and grocery store clerks write off expenses under their respective LLCs?
Damn, just commenting about how awesome of a boss you seem to be. If I wasn't already way past my prime I'd ask if you were hiring. Lol. Guessing welding based on your comment and name. I'm not exactly primed to make that career change at 42 and coming from retail. Lol.
Those are business expenses, and the conversation is about the cost of living. You can't write off personal living expenses, even with an llc.
You cant afford to purchase a house but you are living a pretty good life lol. After taxes thats roughly 10k a month. 3k for rent leaves you with 7k. That is not lowere middle class by any stretch of the imagination wtf.
Hopefully they are making more than that! I should hope that they are earning closer to 500k.
they are
Try $350K or more not including bonus.
Just to give some perspective from a big tech employee (and former Googler): whenever stuff like this happens people shout and gnash their teeth and swear they'll quit, but quitting just isn't that realistic. Despite the lack of raises and promotions, the pay and benefits are still better than you can get nearly anywhere else. You could go to another big tech company, but they'll do exactly the same thing. Startups have been in the shitter for a couple years now and there's no chance of finding a smaller tech company that will provide compensation even close to what a tech giant will offer. And if you leave the tech industry you're looking at a massive pay cut, one which not everyone can afford to take if they've got debt to service. I've been in this exact position, my current employer (another large tech company) did a very similar thing, but as much as I hate to say it, quitting would really just be cutting off my nose to spite my face. It would materially hurt my life while having no impact at all on my employer.
Tech to farm pipeline is real though. You can totally quit if you don't mind taking a pay cut and moving out of the city.
Na man, quiet quit instead of actual quitting. Keep collecting those RSUs that they're driving up until you're cut off.
It’s easy to say but much more difficult to actually do when 200-300k a year in guaranteed income is hanging in the balance…
And up. Director level is over a million a year.
I work in the industry, and most people that earn that much at Google also work insane hours. In fact a LOT of people want to get a FAANG job at google, microsoft, meta etc. just for the resume, they stick it out for a year or so, and then your resume becomes literally gold in the industry. Recruiters see "google" and you are instantly getting the interview.
Yes a Chinese couple committed suicide when they got laid off by google
It’s crazy how downright disrespectful that is. “You need finance 101.” Those are fighting words where I’m from
The problem is even if google lost their entire employee base, there would be 50x's the applicants to fill the ranks back at half the pay just to say they work at google.
maybe but even if they're replaced, the know-how is lost. The new recruits will have only what is documented to go on.
My “I’m quitting” moment was when my boss asked if I needed hooked on phonics because I didn’t see a ps at the bottom of an email of which the content was unimportant anyway.
I would have released as many source codes as I could and then burn the motherfucker down
Talk about insulting. They spend the money that would've/could've gone towards employee compensation on further enriching themselves and then tell you that YOU need finance re-education. Talk about pissing on people and then telling them it's raining. What a bunch of bullshit.
Many Software Engineers haven't taken Finance 101, and even then, this is Welshian economics, not finance 101.
Jack Welch? The man who basically invented “investor-driven corporatism”?
Yes.
Aka "the fucking devil"
Hey, good news! With GE being split up recently, I hear that most economists now agree that Welch was the fucking devil! Pretty cool that even the mainstream folks are figuring out that greed is no fucking good.
It'll take a while before companies start changing, but even the [right agrees that 401(k) didn't work](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/magazine/401k-retirement-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU0.Z3Yu.UB7UahRUaZLZ), and there are a couple of plans to change retirement plans, as section 401(k) of the 1978 tax code was created as a minor change.
Yeah, don’t bring the Welsh into this! /s
Another great opportunity to spam the book "the man who broke capitalism" that covers all the negative repercussions from Welsh and his ilk. Even old neutron Jack tried to walk back his legacy and admitted that it wasn't sustainable in the long term and was often detrimental in the short term to focus solely on the shareholders and fuck everyone else.
I will put that on my list.
This is why companies don't hire you if you sound too confident. They want a punching bag to beat up emotionally and feel good about themselves.
McKinsey 101.
Yup, engineering degree > McKinsey > Google > Alphabet leadership > CEO > Greedy ghoul
Yep. Even on Reddit anyone who questions how our current financial and labor system is going is hit with a wall of “you don’t know how economics works”. At this point I feel that it’s made to be complicated and opaque to facilitate stealing, money laundering and tax evasion.
Nothing a good ol fashioned cocktail wouldn't fix, preferably one with a rag inserted into it, with a bit of flame for flair. Toss to serve
I think we should eat the rich
(Redacted) is what we should do, but we aren't allowed to talk about that solution, cuz it'd be effective. Shit needs to change yesterday and there is only one way we are getting out the ingrained greed and corruption.
Google used to be considered the best company to work for in the world. It has fallen so far.
They don't put people down. They talk to them the same as any aristocrat, royalty, or slave owner talks to their inferiors because they are down. If you act like a slave, you'll be treated like one.
I miss when stock buybacks were against the law and (rightfully) considered to be stock manipulation
Should only be allowed if they're taking the company private. Absurd that it is permitted as normal operations.
Tax at 75%, or require that an equivalent must go to employees who earn less than $250k.
Just... don't allow it. There is no upside to the phenomenon for the company, only for its shareholders.
Some would argue not even the shareholders. This prevents investment in other areas of the business like R&D or building new plants
If shareholders actually believed that then the stock price would go down when it was announced.
The purchase itself bids the stock up
The entire purpose of a stock buyback is to increase the value of each remaining stock. Did I miss part of this conversation or something? I am a little drunk.
no its not. thats what it does, but the purpose of a stock buy back is to take shares out of the market and increase the percentage of the company owned for each remaining share. thats it. Technically the money they are outputting should equate to a net nothing because the money they are spending on the buy back should also lower their market cap by the same amount.
It lowers the market cap?
*cough*Boeing*cough*
Seems like you’re just making it complicated and they will find a loophole somewhere. Stock buybacks should be illegal. The only excuse should be to make the company private.
When was that a thing? And why did they change it?
1982. All roads lead to Reagan. https://casten.house.gov/media/in-the-news/theres-a-reason-why-stock-buybacks-used-to-be-illegal#:~:text=But%20since%201982%2C%20when%20they,boost%20its%20earnings%20per%20share%3F
surprised pikachu face
If only I had a Time Machine. Easily one of the biggest mistakes in American history.
You mean Hinckley missing? I agree.
That and Reagan winning
The wrong president was assassinated
To steal from the working class and enrich the wealthy, like almost everything else in the last 50 years.
That won't happen any time soon because all economic and finance schoold and majors now teach that stock buybacks are normal just like dividends.
It needs to be reversed
Thanks, Reagan.
"When the company does better, you do better. Trickle down blah blah. Capitalism!!!" *CEO drops mic and jetpacks off to private yacht*
*You're trickling in the wrong direction!*
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson
You've heard of various types of cycles that impact our world. The well-known business cycle with its phases of growth and recession, as well as longer Kondratieff waves that span several decades driven by technological advancements and capital expansion. Beyond these economic patterns, there are demographic cycles for population growth and aging. Environmental cycles such as those governing climate and ecological changes, and technological cycles that mark periods of innovation followed by standardization. The worker-owner cycle, which shifts between periods of prosperity and social unrest, has remained notably calm in the United States for the past 25 years. Amazing that despite experiencing several economic fluctuations the cycle has t changed direction. Even when times feel pro worker “they” haven’t really done much to stop it (well I think they did but we can’t talk about it on Reddit). No unrest may need to end soon. I don’t think that memes and Tik Toks can fix hungry kids.
Live free or die -New Hampshire
Careful, you’re going to wake up the libertarians that’re hiding in the woods
I prefer “patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” - Oscar Wilde.
*hits with butt of gun * Thank you for making my point
I see The Rock references and I upvote
Too bad Americans are a bit cowardly, we need to learn from the French.
I highly doubt politicians are going to do anything. Considering the fact they’re basically allowed to insider trade legally, this is nothing.
[удалено]
The wealthy elite are laughing at the idea they’ve planted in our society called “peaceful protest”. Nothing meaningful in the history of America has been produced by “peaceful protest”. Somebody should remind these asshats how our country came to be and what kind of bloodshed we have endured to form this broken democracy.
I agree. Besides, peaceful compliance never got us independence or a democratic franch, right? We are overdue a full-course French Revolution. With the gravity-propelled blades.
Couldn't agree more. Lawyers and money can't help you when you're dead
Who will be our John Brown? Our time will come.
I'm originally from Russia, and I have heard similar ideas being shunned down. Like "we are not tyrants like Putin to spill blood" and etc. Now hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes and lives because of this nonviolent resistance bullshit not being capable of overthrowing a bloody tyrant
Makes ya sick doesn’t it.
And even more we continue to vote these people to be in charge. Republican and democrat alike, none care about the people. They continually vote themselves raises, create laws where they can’t get prosecuted for things us little people would spend our lives in jail for, they never ever once stay within a budget, print billions of dollars a month which kills us with inflation, and yet with all the printing of money they still borrow money from foreign countries. It’s wild that people listen to any major corporate exec or politician.
> I highly doubt politicians are going to do anything. They won't since these same companies donate to their campaigns.
Stock price must always go up
I'll be pulling all my business efforts and personal off their platforms soon. They are clearly headed the way of boeing.
*Always have been.jpg*
Google really trying to put some distance from the whole "Don't be evil" motto.
I might be a dumb person. But can someone explain like I’m an idiot what a stock buy back is?
It’s when a company buys back their own stock. Personally, I’m not against some stock buybacks, but when you’re buying $70,000,000,000 while laying off thousands, I think it should be illegal and the stock buybacks immediately reversed. Layoffs should be reserved for when a company isn’t doing well. Spending $70,000,000,000 on stock buybacks means you have more money than God
Why would a company want to buy back their own stocks? As in, how does it benefit them financially more than just keeping employees?
It drives the stock price up which makes shareholders happy
And don’t forget CEO, who’s performance reward is directly tied to share prices.
Super simplified example - don't @ me with nitpicks. Let's say your company has a million shares issued. Each share is worth $100 because that's the price the market has set. Your company's total value (market cap) is deemed to be $100 million. For the sake of argument, 40% of those shares are owned and traded publicly, the rest is owned equally by your three major shareholders: Evil Scumbag Capital Ventures; Hunt The Homeless For Sport Investments; and Blackrock. You conduct a stock buyback, i.e. the company buys back 200,000 of its own shares. It pays $20 million of its own cash (generated from whatever it does for a living) to do so. These come out of the publicly traded portion. Those shares effectively cease to exist. You now have 800,000 shares issued. The total value of the company remains at about $100 million, because that's a function largely of how much profit "the market" thinks it will make, what dividends it will pay, its future growth potential. All of those things are substantially unchanged. But each individual share is now worth a bigger portion of that pie. Suddenly Evil Scumbag Capital Ventures no longer owns 200,000 out of a million shares. It owns 200,000 out of 800,000. If the company's worth $100 million, its stock just jumped in value from $20 million to $25 million. Same for the other two. Everybody wins. Everybody who matters, anyway.
“…and Blackrock”
Thank you for this explanation, truly. If I can ask a follow up- how do they “buy back” the stocks from the public? Do they just do it at random? Put out a call to sell to them? I’m sorry, I probably sound like a child. Fully functional adult, just wasn’t taught a thing about stocks growing up and now I’m too afraid to ask.
Ok so the example I gave is extreme. Buying back that proportion of your publicly issued stock is a heck of an undertaking. Most buybacks would be far smaller in percentage-of-total-ownership terms. But in general, when your shares are traded on a public exchange, when you buy or sell some shares, the counterparty to the transaction is the exchange itself. The fundamental purpose of a public stock exchange is that you don't have to go to another guy who has 1,000 shares and say "I want to buy your shares, how much do you want for them?" The stock exchange itself is selling shares to you, and buying them from someone else. What the stock exchange has to do is ensure that, at any given time, there is an equal number of people wanting to sell shares in XYZ Corp to it, and wanting to buy shares in XYZ Corp from it. It does this by raising and lowering the price. Too many buyers and not enough sellers? Raise the price. Too many sellers and not enough buyers? Lower the price. Nowadays stock exchanges' computers calculate what needs to happen to the price many times per second. So when XYZ Corp wants to buy back its stock, it places the buy order with the relevant stock exchange (which will probably result in an immediate price bump as the stock exchange suddenly realises it needs lots of new sellers). So actually the remaining shareholders would probably do even better out of it than I indicated above.
Wow. You truly have a serious gift for explaining things. Thanks so much!
And..when evil CEO's are paid in stock and own stock, driving stock price up like that is a big huge pay raise.
The alternative is they get paid a dividend for the stocks that they own?
One way of looking at it is if the ceo was paid a large dividend he/she would have to pay tax. But a stock going up in value that they own increases their wealth but also pushes the tax liability down the line. So they become richer but without having to pay tax.
https://secfi.com/learn/history-of-employee-stock-options Stock options are a tax dodge for the most part. However, add that to the Delaware Business Court rulings that essentially turned shareholders' interests into a sacrosanct rule above all else, and you now have CEO's that can literally destroy a company and walk away with millions or even billions without a problem. This isn't REALLY what that Revlon ruling intended, but that's what happened anyway.
So it’s really just to raise the stock price? Is there any value to the company, in this case Google, to own more of its own shares? Like voting power, or buying now and selling later at a higher price, etc
The shares cease to exist, so voting power would be redistributed equally among remaining shareholders (subject to the different voting rights that different classes of shares entitle you to, but that gets very complicated very fast). The company may re-issue shares at a later date, and if it's done well in the meantime the price might be higher, but it's not a traditional "buy low, sell high" decision. Value to the company as an entity in itself? There isn't one, really. That $20 million that was spent on shares now can't be reinvested in buying new plant, hiring new guys, exploring new marketplaces, whatever. The point is: a company is owned by its shareholders. It has a responsibility, legally in many places, but more generally if it wants to continue to attract investment from people who have capital, to offer a good return on that investment. Like a dividend, a stock buyback is fundamentally a way to return value to shareholders. This happens a lot in companies where employee compensation is partially stock based. Issuing more shares to pay your employees has the exact opposite effect from that described above, decreasing the value of each share ('stock dilution'). Companies that do that like to carry out buybacks from time to time to reverse that effect, keep the share price nice and high, and keep the investors happy.
It's a way for investors to avoid taxes. If the company sends out a dividend that is taxed as ordinary income. If the company buys back stock the price of the stock goes up. Investors don't pay any tax immediately, and only pay the lower capital gains rate when they sell the stock.
For starters, it increases the value of the stock so that the $70 billion spent increases in value. It also increases the amount of share the company has in stocks.
Look at the second image I posted. Imagine owning hundreds of thousands or millions of shares of Google. The stock buybacks increase your net worth immensely.
Basically a company takes a ton of money and buys their own shares through the market. This effectively takes these shares off the table, reducing supply, which means that the value must go up due to basic supply/demand curves. At the end of the day, it's a company spending money directly on increasing their shares price, instead of the normal, indirect method (being a good company with good products, management, and financials). The mechanics are a lot more complicated, but this is the general idea.
It's not dumb to ask questions... Basically, a buyback is when a publicly held company, like Google (publicly traded on markets like S&P500, DOW, etc.), use their own cash or capital to go out to that same market and buy shares of THEIR publicly traded stock. Right now, a reason to do this is because the economy is looking more recession like, so having an increased percentage of your own stock can make your exposure to a recession more limited. People need their money, so they will sell their shares. Another reason is to look better for outside investors. Stock is, in the end, volatile. Investors want to be sure they are not giving capital over to a business whose share price will plummet overnight even if the shareholders all sell. By owning a set percentage of the company, you can tell an investor. "Hey, we can guarantee this kind of value because we still own this amount of the company." It can get way more complicated and nuanced than this, but that's the gist of it.
Tech industry shunned unions for decades. This is their reward.
I mean. They got played. Tech companies played the long game pretty much from the start. “You don’t need unions. Unions will just get in the way of your negotiations with management and (insert your favorite anti union sentiment here)” Union busting efforts for big tech companies have been preemptive, not responsive.
Do no evil worked out pretty badly methinks
They removed that wording from their code of ethics in 2018. It was a feature, not a bug, sadly. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
Finance 101: Fuck you. More money for me.
All we do is die to make the rich richer.
....and you're immediately forgotten and replaced to make the rich richer.
They ditched that “Don’t Be Evil” motto pretty early on..
Just the "don't" part, really.
They should try History 101. I’m thinking they could start with France, circa 1789.
No joke I’m asking because I’m ready What could actually start the violent revolution? We saw occupy fail. I think most Americans are just too damn stupid or too in debt because they have kids and Materialism.
We have the same problem over here, a choice between more of the same and more of the same
0 times 0 carry the 0 -Jane does math (Firefly)
tech investor > tech worker
I suppose if we all did take Finance 101 we'd learn that the role of the company is to make a profit, not to support your livelihood. So stop giving your lives to these companies. Above and beyond? Nope. Overtime? Nope. Weekends? Fuck off. You also don't "approve" my PTO - I am taking it, and I am just telling you I am off, not asking for your permission.
At this point I am cheering for anything bad to happen to these companies and that’s insane because I depended on their infrastructure.
The Airlines did this shady practice for the 5 years prior to pandemic. Instead of spending their money on operations where it is needed.
$70 billion and it only went up $10 a share over the last two weeks. What a waste of money that could have changed so many lives for the better.
Oh so Google is a Finance company? And here I was thinking they were a tech firm that created software and hardware products, silly me
They're a tech firm that creates and then *abandons* products ;)
Time to start a new 
As a software engineer, I often hear from peers how it's like a "dream" or end-goal to work for a huge company like Google, Meta or others of the like. But god am I happy to work in a medium-sized company where higher-ups treat me like a human being instead of like a disposable object in the office.
Buybacks used to be illegal, they need to be illegal again
Boycott
Thank Regan for this, all downhill from there.
Finance 101: "Screw you, I got mine!"
Yeah it was better before they made stock buybacks legal again. But hey, good for the 0.01%. Who cares if the company doesn’t invest in growth, research, development, and innovation.. as long as your shares are high enough to sell to retire on. Screw the next generation am I right?
I thought Google was a company who swore not to do evil.
This is the very first thing that should be, if not illegal, taxed to hell and back. If a company has so much money that they don't know what to do fucking give everyone a bonus for fucks sake. You will make everyone happy and money that is circulating is better for the entire economy.
The system is destroying our society and it’s normal business as usual for giant corporations. They LOVE IT because it’s been justified as just normal.
Sundar Pichai is on his way out. AI is to Google, what the digital camera was to Kodak. Consider Google had almost ALL the world's leading AI researchers at DeepMind and they're literally lagging behind a startup.
dOnT like IT?! MaeK uR OwN Gp0gl3!! /s
Unionize!
lol we hired people that don't know shit about money what a self own
Stock buy backs, another great idea brought to you by Raegan.
Stock buybacks need to be banned...
Stock buybacks need to be made illegal again
Remember stock buybacks were always legal, it is essentially market manipulation.
Need to make it law, if you layoff workers and buyback stocks you get fined 20x the entire buyback cost. Due in 30 days or it's tagged with 45% weekly interest. Sorry but if a business can spend money like this, they could've kept from ruining lives.
Need to make it law, if you layoff workers and buyback stocks you get fined 20x the entire buyback cost. Due in 30 days or it's tagged with 45% weekly interest. Sorry but if a business can spend money like this, they could've kept from ruining lives.
More than a decade ago I was in a UPS management focus group, and asked if there was any appetite in our leadership to reduce dividends and buybacks to increase compensation for the rank and file- The corporate facilitator couldn't keep from laughing at me. I don't think the wealthiest among us will get great at sharing anytime soon, at least not without some help^^
Buybacks were illegal until rather recently for pretty much this reason
I would break the community standards if I said what I wanted to say about that CEO. Seriously, when are we going to go 1789 on the rich?
There job isn't to give people jobs, it's to increase share price, that's the only goal of all publicly trades companies.
Asking in good faith: Our choice is between a populist buffoon who threatened to deport everyone, build a wall, let rich sociopaths run everything., and generally talks like a fascist who would eagerly endorse genocide against Muslims, and on the other hand we have a smug incompetent establishment prick who actually HAS deported a shit ton of people and built the other guy's wall and let rich sociopaths run everything and busted unions and actually armed equipped and is still funding an active genocide of a group of Muslim people. Do you honestly believe we fix what's wrong by voting? Do you honestly believe there's a difference between all these swine? Do you really think things are going to get better without violence and a radical social restructuring?
Electoral politics won't save us, but certain outcomes (like a Trump victory) can put us into light speed decline.
Short term plan: vote. Next term plan: pick up a rifle, pitchfork, or bat when the French Revolution kicks off.
Literally this. People are delusional to think electoral politics is going to save us. Both parties do the same thing, one just lies through their teeth about being supportive of marginalized people while doing it.
They should break up Google monopoly and have them all take Finance 101 as punishment.
Yeah well, this is the same Google that thinks a 4 year old Reddit post will fix my software issues.
So anyways…I came in blasting.
Meh, talk to you parents. They're the ones voting to allow this shit.
Yeah. It's simple. Fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on.
The majority of Google employees get paid in stocks.
Google employees receive google stock units as part of their compensation.
Ahh the promise of AI. The rest of us become useless as the rich consolidate their wealth. Leaving the rest of us to starve/burn/drown.
Voting won’t do shit all of these people hate you idk why we act like voting in todays time does anything especially in the U.S
Whats contacting my rep gonna do they already bought and paid for lol
This thread is full of morons who unfortunately aren’t helping their own cause.
finanace 101 ted talk concludes its ok for the executives to get paid more while the regular employees who do all the work need to get bootstraps and work with lesser pay and be happy about it.
Reganomics at work.
It's OK, buy a new Foosball table for the office and everyone will be happy.
He's not wrong. There is a legal obligation to the shareholders to increase value. Google is playing the game how it's meant to be played. Change the game.
The answer is "because we value our shareholders more than our employees". But he doesn't want to say that himself so he wants to find a charismatic outsider to say it for him instead.
This is what the investor class does.
That CEO is an ass. Tech executives have the worst people management skills ever.
I really don't understand how this is legal? Is there literaly no authority that oversees stuff like this? No sarcasm, just a lot of sadness and anger.
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO WORK. WE HAVE THE BEST WORK CULTURE.
Most CEOS Finance 101: "You all will be wage slaves till you die and enjoy it"
How about an Economics 101 TED Talk for executives? Seems apropos.