This is a very naive misunderstanding of how the labor market for executives actually works. Executive compensation is set by the Board. Who is the Board? They’re all CEOs of other companies, who have no interest in seeing executive pay tied to performance. This is all a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours situation, from people all in the Good Old Boys network of Harvard and Stanford MBAs. Tying compensation to performance is in nobody’s interest in this network.
Frances Arnold - Chemical Engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the use of directed evolution to engineer enzymes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Arnold)
R. Martin “Marty” Chávez - Investment banker
L. John Doerr - Investor and VC. He backed the Google founders.
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. - economist, attorney and corporate executive who served as the 17th vice chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1999 to 2006. Prior to his term as vice chairman, Ferguson served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Ann Mather - Technology and Media Board Member Ann Mather is an English business executive. She serves on the boards of directors of Alphabet, Netflix, Bumble and Blend. Her prior board experience includes Airbnb, Arista Networks, MGM Studios and Zappos.
K. Ram Shriram - Indian-American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is a founding board member and one of the first investors in Google. He worked earlier in Amazon.
Robin L. Washington - Has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gilead Sciences, Inc.
You’ll be happy to see that I included hyperlinks to their Wikipedia pages for deeper context.
The thing you should take away is that, contrary to the GP’s assertion, the Google board is in fact not composed of juts a bunch of CEOs from other companies.
It’s true, some of them are former CEOs of other companies. Some held other executive positions in Alphabet and non-Alphabet companies in the past or present.
They still have a vested interest in perpetuating high levels of executive pay.
