Google senior execs getting 30 percent raises

Google gave all of its employees raises earlier this week, but it saved the best raises for its senior management team.

Four of Google's seven named executive officers--Patrick Pichette, Nikesh Arora, Alan Eustace, and Jonathan Rosenberg--are getting 30 percent raises for 2011, bringing each of their base salaries to $650,000 from $500,000, Google announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday. Earlier in the week, Google gave everybody else a 10 percent raise, along with a $1,000 bonus, as it tries to hang on to employees amid a talent war in Silicon Valley.
Those executives are also getting hefty restricted-stock awards, with Pichette and Arora receiving $20 million, Eustace getting $10 million, and Rosenberg getting $5 million in grants and options. The numbers are interesting, considering that TechCrunch reported this week that a single Google "staff engineer" was given a restricted-stock award of $3.5 million as an incentive to remain with the search company and pass up an offer from Facebook.
The Google ruling triumvirate--CEO Eric Schmidt, and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page--will continue to accept a salary of $1 and did not take any additional stock rewards. Not that they really need it: together, the three control more than half of Google's outstanding stock, with Brin and Page supplementing their incomes this year by selling off shares in a diversification strategy.