Does cutting CEO pay increase corporate performance? Elon Musk has been found not liable in a lawsuit by shareholders. And a university student helps scientists identify 8 new “technological signatures” in the search for intelligent life in space.
Welcome to Trending Hashtags – today’s top tech news stories for Monday, February 6, 2023.
We all have heard about layoffs in the tech sector. More than 100,000 tech workers have lost their jobs as Google, Amazon, Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and many others furloughed employees in response to flagging demand and low profits.
But it is learned that CEOs and top executives are also being asked to share the burden by taking pay cuts.
Apple is cutting Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s compensation by more than 40 percent to $49 million in 2023. Cook was among the highest-paid executives in 2021, receiving a salary of several million dollars in cash and Apple stock.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announces senior executives There will be very less bonus this year.
However, Microsoft is bucking the trend. while it cut 10,000 jobs CEO Satya Nadella raised 10 percent to $55 million.
But deductions are always related to corporate performance to some degree because a significant amount of the CEO’s compensation is paid in the form of company stock.
c of amazonEO Andy Jassy receives a base salary of $175,000 per year, with the majority of his compensation coming from stock awards. With Amazon shares falling to nearly half of their 2022 value, this would reduce his overall compensation by a sizeable amount.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Takes a token salary of $1 per year with his entire compensation paid in meta stock, Zuckerberg could lose $100 billion in value in 2022 with his 13 percent stake in Meta.
But does the cut or freeze in senior executive pay have any impact on the company’s performance? executive salary deductions that are allowed for the employee growth, was shown to reduce turnover by about 50 percent According to a study by the Vienna University of Economics and Business published in Forbes. According to that article, researchers determined that “a pay cut was as good as finding a new CEO.” They also found that financial performance declined after cuts in executive compensation.
MAccording to another study referenced in the Forbes article, conducted by three universities – Naiyang Technological University, the University of Washington and the University of British Columbia, Adian profitability “increases from -8 percent to 10 percent over 3 years.
,
Elon Musk was found “not responsible” for a 2018 tweet in which he wrote that he had “funds secured” to take Tesla private. It is a major victory for Musk who has been in a huge public battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk settled a potential lawsuit with the SEC by agreeing to step down as Tesla’s chairman and pay a $20 million fine.
Although Musk settled the SEC lawsuit, he was sued by a group of investors who alleged that Musk “knowingly or recklessly made public claims, and suffered investment losses.” Last Friday, a San Francisco jury found him “not responsive” to those charges.
Musk said, “Thank God, the wisdom of the people has prevailed.”
Source: axios
,
another story involved Securities and Exchange Commission, power management giant Schneider Electric has developed a set of tools for its MSP and data center customers to provide proof of compliance with carbon emissions standards.
The SEC has proposed a rule change that would require companies to report “climate-related risks that are likely to have a material impact on their business.”
A recent article in Bloomberg noted that many companies were not effectively cutting their emissions, but were counting on That’s called “renewable energy credits” or RECs — essentially buying these certificates from clean electricity providers, allowing them to claim they’re using carbon-free electricity. But under these plans, companies don’t actually contract for clean energy; instead, they use credits to subtract an equivalent amount of fossil fuel-fired electricity from their climate ledgers.
Not surprisingly, these credits have come under heavy scrutiny, and the article states that once they are removed from a company’s carbon accounting, many businesses may be forced to “do Paris” to limit global warming. will not stay on track to meet the “climate targets” attached to the agreement.
A study published in the journal nature climate change does note with REC in their carbon accountingOf the 115 companies studied, their emissions decreased by 31 percent from 2015 to 2019. Without the credits, their emissions dropped by only 10 percent. The authors note the credits “allow companies to report emissions reductions that are not real.”
has caused Concern about penalties for “greenwashing”, where companies claim to be climate-friendly but are not. Schneider’s toolset aims to allow companies to measure and prove their emissions reductions.
Carsten Baumann, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Solutions Architect As noted in Schneider Electric, “The challenge right now is that companies want to appear sustainable and try to gain some kind of advantage over others, yet have no real accountability for what you say,”
Source: US SEC, data center knowledge
,
Southwest Airlines announced that it has appointed Lauren Woods, the company’s VP of technology, as its new SVP and CIO. Woods will replace CIO Kathleen Merrill, who has been at Southwest for more than two decades.
According to a company statement, Woods will “play a key role” in managing the much-needed technology transformation. Southwest is expected to spend $1.3 billion on system upgrades and maintenance.
The announcement of the leadership change follows a major IT outage during the crucial holiday travel season. According to an SEC filing by the airline, it said the cost of the outage exceeded $725 million, among additional operating costs and projected revenue losses.
Woods, who has been at the company for 12 years, has a tough task ahead of him in an industry that is struggling and has largely failed to keep up with technological modernisation, often spending far less on IT than other industries. does.
According to Ted Schadler, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. “The failure of Southwest’s crew scheduling system shows why technology investments are critical for any business”. In a January blog post, he wrote, “Southwest’s reputation was lost in an instant by not executing on what the company needed to do to be successful.”
,
And finally, some new AI developments devised by Peter Ma, a student at the University of Toronto, have allowed scientists searching for signs of extraterrestrial life to identify eight new signals that could be detected by a technologically advanced civilization. Can be understood as coming.
Ma’s new technique for training AI algorithms Being better able to pinpoint where in the sky the signal comes from would substantially reduce false positives from radio interference.
Using the improved algorithm, the team was fed 150 terabytes of data and identified 20,515 signals of interest, which they then had to manually inspect. From that sample, eight signals had “techno signature” characteristics that could not be attributed to radio interference.
Unfortunately, the team was unable to find these signals again, meaning they are probably false positives, but it gives hope to scientists who have had to sort through terabytes of data, now searching for intelligent life. Has improved AI-powered tools to assist. , If they ever succeed, a University of Toronto student may have helped us find out if “the truth is out there.”
,
And that’s the top tech stories for todayY Hashtag Trending is produced by ITWC Podcast Network and heard Monday through Friday with a special weekend edition hosted by me where we feature interviews on key topics in technology.
Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can get us delivered daily on your smart speaker. If you follow stories about cyber security, why not check out our sister podcast CyberSecurityToday.
You can find all our podcasts and text editions as well as many more in-depth coverage Thisworldcanada.com and on technewsday.com in America.
We hope you enjoy this new expanded format. Tell us in the comments below at itworldcanada.com/podcasts
I’m Jim Love – Back to you tomorrow with top tech news trending hashtags.
