You're only hearing about these guys because they are required to report it in their SEC filings.
... a refresh grant every year equal to 25% of a new hire grant for someone of your level vesting over 4 years, quarterly, with no cliff.
... a COL adjustment.
... a merit-based pay hike.
... a market adjustment if appropriate.
This is not a reduction in pay no matter how you slice it. It's going to be way more than 7%. It's going to be roughly 6.25% + 3% + 0-5%. 10-15% annually. 13-18% if they get the COL.
These are assessed relative to the market.
This is on top of your base pay, bonus, company bonus multiplier and vesting equity which has probably significantly appreciated year over year - potentially huge, as GOOG is up 37% YoY.
I'm not worried for the employees even though leadership didn't commit to making COL adjustments 6-7% this year instead of 2-3% like most years. It's a rounding error for these folks and there's no world in which they're getting a pay cut if they're meeting expectations.
“Company that pays exceptionally well is not doing an across the board CoL adjustment”
There is literally no story here.
Oh wow look another article from this spam site claims Google is the top paying employer in the US.
https://www.hcamag.com/us/news/general/top-50-companies-with...
The increase didn't happen. They declined to boost employee pay
Yeah, maybe the top 5% got bigger increases, but that's not whats being discussed
It sucks, but it seems that it is what it is. Fortunately people can vote with their feet and googlers in particular are likely to be able to get a pay increase by switching jobs.
Short of a straight up profit share it doesn’t seem like there’s a reliable way to guarantee pay increases - stock is a decent hedge but then you can have 80% drops in a year like Peloton.