Archive for the ‘CEO’ Category
It’s official: the guys who founded Google are grown up.
That was the pronouncement Thursday from Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who was hired in 2001 to provide mature, traditional business savvy to the Internet search company founded by whiz kids Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
“The boys have grown up,” Schmidt told a news conference ahead of the wildly successful company’s annual meeting.
Now billionaires, the two who formed the company, which has the motto “Don’t Be Evil,” were seen as “brilliant young founders,” Schmidt said.
“They now function in the company as the senior executives with the kind of skills and experience –“
“– We wish he had five years ago,” Page said, finishing Schmidt’s thought.
Page, 35, and Brin, who was born in the Soviet Union 34 years ago, made history in their 20s when they set up the Google search engine.
“Now we don’t have to have the same kind of arguments,” said Schmidt, who at 53 qualifies as an old man by the standards of the youthful Google campus.
“In fact, they really are running the companies that they founded at the scale and with the insights that you would expect of people who are no longer young founders but are mature business leaders,” he offered.
Brin and Page ranked as number 32 and 33 on Forbes’ 2008 list of billionaires, with more than $18 billion each, but Thursday they downplayed the effects of overwhelming wealth.
“I don’t think at a certain scale it matters, but I do have a pretty good toy budget now,” Brin said when asked about how vast wealth had changed his life. “I just got a new monitor.”
Page mentioned an even more modest benefit: “I don’t have to do laundry.”
To which Schmidt, who favors a more traditional coat and tie to the founders’ more casual dress, replied: “I think the clothes are pretty much the same.”
Brin wore a black pullover shirt. Page wore a black jacket over a gray pullover shirt.
“Those aspects of their personalities have not changed,” Schmidt said. “They care a lot about the principles of the company. They don’t care a lot about the other things.”
NO MORE ALL-NIGHTERS
Both Page and Brin got married over the past year but closely guard their personal lives. At the news conference, both said their work lives had certainly changed.
“One thing is that we have 10 or 20,000 people to help us,” Brin said. “Certainly I am not pulling all-nighters all the time like we were when we were in the garage, when we were only three or four people doing everything.”
It’s official! Steve Jobs should ask for a pay raise! According to Forbes, Oracle’s Larry Ellison came first in 2007 as the best paid CEO (although he doesn’t seem to need his salary, since he is no. 14 among the world’s billionaires, with an estimated $25 billion of assets), topping big names such as Apple’s Steve Jobs (no wonder, the poor man is paid $1 for the job!).
The top 10 best paid CEO are as follows: Larry Ellison (Oracle) – $192.9 million, Nabeeb Gareel (MEMC Electronic Materials) – $79.6 million, John Cambers (Cisco) – $54.8 million, Mark Hurd (HP) – $27.6 million, Jen-Hsun Huang (NVIDIA) – $24.6 million, Samual Palmisano (IBM) – $24.3 million, Wendell Weeks (Corning) – $22.6 million, Joseph Tucci, EMC – $20 million, William Sullivan (Agilent) – $17.4 million, Paul Otellini (Intel) – $16.3 million.
Steve Jobs not only didn’t make it on the top 10 list, but 2007 was far less productive than 2006: this time he took home an estimated $14.6 million in compensation, compared to 2006 when he took compensations estimated at $646 million (oh, it’s nice to have stocks!).
The secret to making it to Forbes’ top list: don’t lose your job! Yahoo’s former Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel didn’t make it this year, and neither did Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, who is currently working hard to bring Dell to the light (however, he does have some pretty good savings, in case things don’t work out so well; Forbes estimated his value at $16 billion, making him the 40th richest person in the world).
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