You know things are bad when your employees start comparing you to a Shrek villain.
Movie fans will no doubt remember Lord Farquaad, the diminutive despot of Duluc, who was voiced by actor John Lithgow in the 2001 film.
DON'T MISS: Google Suffers a Major Loss
Farquaad famously farms out the rescue of Princess Fiona to others by declaring "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
The tech sector is currently going through a period of sacrifice as some of the biggest names in the business are laying off their employees.
Tech companies have eliminated nearly 190,000 jobs so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, compared with about 165,000 for all of 2022.
Amazon (AMZN) laid off 27,000 workers in the last several months, the largest number of job cuts in the internet giant's 29-year history. Facebook parent Meta (META) said it will cut about 21,000 jobs.
And Alphabet (GOOGL), Google's parent company, has laid off about 12,000 employees.
"Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth," CEO Sundar Pichai said in a Jan. 20 blogpost. "To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."
Angry Memes Circulate
"The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here," he said.
This sentiment contrasted sharply with Pichai's feelings when he took over the top spot in 2019, saying in a blogpost that "I’m excited about Alphabet and its long-term focus on tackling big challenges through technology."
Some Googlers are not happy about Pichai's rather sizable paycheck amid of all the layoffs.
The top executive's total compensation jumped to almost $226 million in 2022, mostly due to a triennial stock grant, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
More than a dozen memes from employees have filled Google’s internal discussion forums, many with several hundred likes, CNBC reported.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
Memes began circulating comparing Pichai to Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, who in January received over a 40% cut from his 2022 target total compensation.
Zoom Video Communications (ZTNO) CEO Eric Yuan said he would reduce his salary by 98% and decline his bonus after the company cut 1,300 jobs.
There’s also anger about Google’s plan to repurchase $70 billion in stock, a sign the company has more than enough cash to cover its operations and investments.
There are also comparisons to Lord Farquaad, the guy who tortured the Gingerbread Man, with some of the memes using the sacrifice quote.
Anger on Social Media
The mood on social media wasn't much better.
"Sundar waters his flowers with the tears of the google underlings," one person tweeted.
"Nothing to see here!!," another person wrote. "Just another CEO, not even a founder telling everyone else, 'let them eat cake.' Why? Because the board members get goodies too and are more than happy to comply with these ridiculous compensation packages and stock buybacks."
"What a parasite! " another tweet read. "His work isn’t even worth a fraction of that. How can his pay go up while firing 12000 people ?? Disgusting."
A survey in September by the IT consulting firm Gartner found that 77% of employees believe senior executives should be willing to take a significant pay cut before they reduce headcount or make changes to employee compensation.
"CEOs make, on average, about 300 times the salary of their rank-and-file employees, and employees and shareholders want to see their leaders willing to make sacrifices along with the larger organization," Tony Guadagni, senior principal in the Gartner HR practice, said.
"Reductions in force and a potential recession are critical moments for organizations," he added."Layoffs hurt employee morale, productivity and corporate reputations."
And anyone who has seen Shrek knows that Lord Farquaad doesn't end up so well.
