We all know it's been a difficult year for Xbox at times in 2024, especially considering a bunch of people have been laid off along the way - and therefore a lot of industry folk are highlighting Satya Nadella's recently revealed pay bonus.
Nadella, who is the boss at Microsoft, took home a base salary of $2.5 million in 2022 and 2023, and that hasn't changed for 2024. What has changed is that he's generated over $70 million in stock awards, which ultimately represents a successful year for Microsoft as a whole - and a stock price that's risen heavily over the past 12 months.
Here's a bit of what Nadella had to say in the company's recent Annual Report for this year:
"Fiscal year 2024 was a pivotal year for Microsoft. We entered our 50th year as a company and the second year of the AI platform shift. With these milestones, I’ve found myself reflecting on how Microsoft has remained a consequential company decade after decade in an industry with no franchise value."
"Financially, the year was also marked by record performance. We delivered over $245 billion in annual revenue, up 16 percent year-over-year, and over $109 billion in operating income, up 24 percent."
The result is a pay package that totals $79 million for Nadella, which is a 63% increase on last year. This is actually after the Microsoft boss took a voluntary $5m "cash incentive" pay cut following a recent cybersecurity threat.
In terms of the "headlines" that we've mentioned, there have been a bunch of them - the likes of Eurogamer and IGN have been highlighting the Xbox layoffs as part of their coverage, and that's no surprise. Regardless of how Nadella got his increase, it still stings from an Xbox perspective following a series of job losses at various studios in 2024.
As part of that Annual Report we mentioned earlier, Nadella highlighted Xbox's Activision Blizzard acquisition, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and the PlayStation / Nintendo ports as some of the successes for the division over the past 12 months.
Comments 40
Am sure this will go down well.
If they cut his salary, they might’ve been able to afford one of those studios that they cut.
Man, for the folks at the top, capitalism really, seems to be doing wonders. For the vast majority of us not so much, especially in year with thousands of people laid off to meet profit targets(?).
Come on guys, don't be mean to Satya Nadella. Imagine all that hard work he put into something, and all the overwhelming stress of having to layoff employees in order to put a few million more dollars in his pocket. Don't you feel so bad for this poor multi-billionaire? I bet you don't even know the struggle of deciding which one of your mansions to sit down in daily.
Sadly, this is how the big machine works and likely always will. One person earned more than entire divisions that got shuttered did as a whole. Just wrong on every level.
Its not a great look. Makes me want to smash my Xbox and never give MS another dollar but its sadly the way big corpos work… its a sick amount of money though. Imagine all the laid off staff reading this news…
Throw us a $10 coupon at least, misers.
Wasn't he at the bilderburg meetings as well?
Microsoft prioritizing profits over people?
I’m shocked!
What do those people do with all that money? What do they need so much of it for? They won’t be able to spend much of it before they die. Luckily, the great equaliser that waits for all of us at the end cares not for how deep their pockets are. As for gaming, yeah, those employees MS laid off must be looking at this in disbelief.
Gross. Just like pro athlete contracts nowadays. What a world.
What has Satya even done to warrant the stock going up? Maybe it's all non-consumer side but i feel like Microsoft hasn't done much of anything since he took over.
It’s ***** but it’s also business and business is brutal. It is what it is.
@Sol4ris the same has historically happened under communism too, the money ALWAYS rises to the top. The problem isn’t the system, it’s people and greed.
No human being needs this amount of money. Cap yearly earnings after tax to 1 million. Still an obscene amount imo. But no can claim they can't live comfortably/lavishly on 1 mill per year.
@gollumb82 oh no, they believe it.
Headlines about Satya's huge package are not what I wanted to wake up to.
@LX_FENIX He's made endless (empty) promises on AI. That's literally the only thing driving their stock value, and he's seen as the messiah that makes it all (imaginarily) happen.
@gollumb82 "What do those people do with all that money? What do they need so much of it for? "
How cheap do you think it is to buy your very own politicians and law packages? Inflation means politician ownership and upkeep costs more than ever!
The guy is literally a billionaire, running a trillion dollar company. It is what it is. Par for the course for people in his position. Not fair or right but it's not changing anytime soon.
@Fenbops tell me you don't know what communism is without telling me.
@clvr I know what it is and I’m not sure how you figure I don’t from my comment? I’m smart enough to separate the theory of communism and how it works in reality. Nice try at trying to discredit me though.
@NEStalgia
Yeah, I guess Satya is just reaping the rewards of their ActiBlizz acquisition. Candy Crush makes more money than anything Xbox-related lol.
Well, I'm shocked he took any sort of pay cut. Even if it was literally worthless to him.
FYI the owner of Texas Roadhouse took a massive salary cut during covid to ensure layoffs wouldn't happen and staff wouldn't be affected. American companies can actually take care of their people, it just shows the caliber of the suits who don't even pretend to care while prancing around about their money.
The world is backwards...people are greedy ...people love being payed more money than they can ever spend....while others are working for peanuts
@somnambulance tbf the studios they cut don't seem to have just been a Financials issue. Ariane Austin hasn't had a good hit in a while (since prey and that was more collaborative) and they've kinda been more of a support studio. One of a support studio that was just absorbed into the main team it supported. One of a mobile game studio. Tango was the worst one but was more of a logistical issue being the only studio halfway around the world and really hard for Microsoft to support or for them to collaborate with other studios. It makes sense it changed hands. And similarly Toys4Bob wanted to go independent.
@WildConcept6 either which way, if Satya’s so well paid, I hope he gave generous severance packages for the thousands of people laid off!
@Sol4ris it's nuts the way it works. My boss just got $8 million for LEAVING the company.
@Elbow RE: Texas Roadhouse... hadn't heard about that, but that's awesome! Makes me feel even better about eating there fairly often.
Sat ya Nadella seems like a "fine" guy. Like I don't have an opinion on him. And that's the problem. It's the issue with all people in his position. What exactly is earning more money than most people in their lifetime can ever expect? More money than anyone could realistically even use? Like even economically speaking wouldn't it be better for the country's economic health if that money was spread out and people actually used it?? I hate that stupid claim of trickle down economics Richard Nixon started because realistically that's so far from the case. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and honestly it's bad for everyone because there's so much money holed up at the top that just stays there so they can comfortably have far more than they'd ever use.
I'm not of the opinion there's a magic solution where if Satya made less money there wouldn't be anymore layoffs. Especially after massive acquisitions, there's GOING to be layoffs for redundancies and corporations are always going to look where they can trim the fat (or unfortunately people) to save money and improve efficency. That said this money could easily be better spread out to the individual employees who actually make this success possible (the greater pay could even motivate them to do better work) and who could more importantly actually USE the money. Or it could just be reinvested into the company. Microsoft can cut what they feel they should cut to run a better organization, but that doesn't mean they can't expand elsewhere or hire reinvest the money they've gained to expand positions where they need it. Xbox for example has so many hats in the race. Cloud, console, PC, and soon mobile. All with a platform and storefront, not just games. They could certainly expand their efforts across those fronts even after having cut jobs to reduce redundancies. Like Xbox could desperately invest more in their PC launcher.
The position of a CEO is one that's hard to dislike. It's just the shareholder boards appointed guy in the chair who does have an important job running the company, but at the same time I don't see anything that tells me they deserve ALL this money (or that anyone realistically should even have this much money). Like really in this case the bonus is because Microsoft as a company is doing better... isn't that because of the individual workers and divisions? Idk. I'm just saying I grew up being told how it's a leader's job to support their teams who are actually the ones causing change and improvement. If we're saying Satya Nadella (or any CEO) is a good leader, doesn't that mean at best they are properly harnessing the potential of their TEAMS. The individual employees and workers. Are they also taking home enough money to give every citizen in Luxembourg like $5 dollars (I tried to make a clever analogy... not sure it works, but regardless we all know it's a lot of money)?
I have no objections to an earned salary, but the layoffs in the face of that just slime everything up.
@Skedaddle apply morality to for profit businesses and corporations is the problem. I'd even say to non profits. Despite what the law says (at least in the US businesses are kinda legally people (kinda... there's more to it than that but kinda)), they don't have moral compasses. At most they have goals which might appear moral in nature.
Getting back on track, I think people these days (especially in terms of brands) have forgotten that businesses and customers run directly counter to one another. There's no morality here but they ARE always the enemy. The goal of any business is to make money, our money and as much of it as possible. The goal of any consumer is to get the most value for the lowest cost possible. Employees and employers add another layer onto that. It's not a matter of being evil or heartless, what everyone wants and more importantly what benefits everyone runs counter to those of the other party involved. The "lie" of capitalism is a lie because it operates under the belief of fair play. This very idealistic mindset that running counter to each other we will all eventually find a mid point compromise that makes everyone happy. Ignoring of course that corporations have far more power than any individual customer or employee and only collective action can truly sway businesses which is incredibly difficult to coordinate and made harder specifically by companies. They straight up ban or otherwise circumvent the possibility. If you read the Black Ops 6 startup for example, Activision makes you waive away your right to class action lawsuit and on every license agreement (EULA) you agree to arbitration (to solve a matter outside of court). The law unfortunately even supports this one sided power move. And there's not nearly enough protections for collective action. Then there's the psychological tactics. People need to realize stuff like the "console wars" came up to keep customers arguing with each other and turning one another into scapegoats instead of overall demanding better treatment. I mean seriously imagine a market where the customers are trained to WANT and argue over having the privelege to BUY xyz game because their beloved brand paid money to deny other people the ability to buy said game... oh wait. Social media especially has been really defiled by bother corporations and the company that runs it to endorse this in fighting behavior. It's awful. I don't think we'll ever see something like a mass MASS boycott like during the Civil rights movement which forces real change for the better in any context ever again.
@somnambulance Imagine if Microsoft gave everyone they'd laid off ever just 5 to 10% of Satya Nadella's net worth. And then he got less of a bonus per layoffs. It wouldn't end layoffs, but as a leader discourage Satya from. Making unnecessary ones
@WildConcept6 in my entire life, I’ve probably cumulatively made less than 1% of Satya’s pay this year and I’m in my mid-30’s! If the severance was 5-10% of Satya’s pay, we’d see a lot of really happy people that would have the ability to create their own businesses! It’s a novel idea, enabling people to have the potential to have the economic freedom to do whatever they want to do and have control over their destiny.
@Sol4ris Socialism for the rich
@Ralizah It's one of very few positive corporate world stories I can recall. Class act.
While I do feel CEOs are overpaid in the west. Xbox is not a major pillar of Microsoft. Its implementation was to get the Microsoft ecosystem into more homes via a different product but people are not speaking at Ignite about xbox. Most folks that work the MS stack don’t care about a game system or the departments associated with it. Xbox’s woes don’t really erase the other profitable aspects of MS.
Misread the title as Satya's huge gay package
I hope he's not holding too much in MS stock as I have a feeling it'll be taking a dip next year unless they can get AI to actually make money.
Nadella is terrible CEO, terrible leader, and severely lacks vision to make Microsoft successful for the future.
He only cares about the cloud and finding a way to make everything a subscription. Microsoft Office is fantastic example. And not forget the canceling Xbox Live.
Willing to bet one the biggest reasons he canceled Windows Phone was due to no way of making it a subscription.
The sooner Nadella leaves or the board can find a way to get him out, Microsoft will have a shaky future.
@LX_FENIX Exactly. Nadella has hindered a lot of Microsoft's future and long term growth.
Willing to bet he chased Panos Panay out of Microsoft as he went to Amazon and look for him to make some incredible products there.
Nadella is just terrible. Lacks forward thinking, unable to see potential in products, and is overall short sighted.
@NEStalgia Yes, the AI garbage is a way he is hoping well lead to....subscriptions. Something he values over common sense. It does inflate their stock price.
Also not forget the huge government contracts he tries hard for. Probably to find a way to bill the government a....subscription.
If any of the above collapses Microsoft will find itself in dire situations that could lead to the company folding. Yes. It sounds crazy. But Nadella is just that bad for Microsoft. He needs to go.
@GuyinPA75 😆. It's true though.
Although I don't think he's doing AI for subscriptions. He's pushing local AI. I think he's a reactionary. See sees the trend and doesn't want to be behind that trend, then sacrifices everything to go all in on that trend. Then when the trend inevitably falters, he jumps on the new one that's out there. I think it's not about any particular direction, is just about buying relevance to maintain dominance.
Which is awful leadership. It's great smoke and mirrors to string investors along too stupid and cash drunk to realize he's undermining the company. But leaves a hollowed out house of cards.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...