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I read something really dumb this morning. (Volume 2!)
Google’s gonna cut their remote employees’ salaries by as much as 25% (Here.)
Google, who set an all time record profit of $18.5 billion last quarter. (Here: )
Google, whose stock is up 59% year to date. (Here.)
Not since Frank Shirley cut bonuses and gave Clark Griswold a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club have I seen a company do something so absurd.
I get what the thought process was. Internal equity based on cost of living data yadda yadda yadda. When you’re sitting at the top, it’s really easy to convince yourself it’s the right move for “fairness.”
But one red flag to the egghead-number-crunching approach to fairness is CUTTING EMPLOYEE SALARIES WHEN YOU’RE ONE OF THE RICHEST COMPANIES IN THE WORLD. (Sound up for further audio emphasis here.)
Incredible hubris, thinking you won’t have retention issues when new hire salaries in the rest of the market are skyrocketing up. And the people you’re targeting for cuts can literally work anywhere.
Disruption is hard to see when it’s happening. But it seems obvious in retrospect.
The largest companies by market cap in 2000:
Microsoft
General Electric
NTT Docomo
Cisco Systems
Walmart
Intel
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone
ExxonMobil
Lucent
Deutsche Telekom
Only Microsoft is still in the top 10 today.
What makes the juggernauts fall? Stupid decisions like this, on repeat.
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