Yes. But much less so about reduced bonuses, RSU grants (and esp. stock appreciation), and not matching inflation. At a lot of tech sector companies among others, you're already seeing pretty large effective comp decreases.
It's also the case that, as people often observe, large comp increases often come from switching jobs and that's probably going to be more difficult in general for the next few years.
ADDED: And one of the escape valves for people at smaller companies especially over the last year or two has been to try to get a job at Big Tech. (This doesn't only apply to developers.) Increasingly this looks to be a much tougher option.
One side effect of inflation being ~10% is that if you want to give your staff a pay cut all you have to do is do nothing.
https://austinwealthmgmt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SP-5...
Yes, Google makes money from ads. Then again, advertising is to "describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance." Google is in the business of connecting people with what they want, more of a personal assistant than a billboard.
Running a campaign on Google is a lot more like having a robot salesperson than a billboard. There are different kinds of advertising, such as general brand awareness which indeed might not be worth keeping short term. But if I were in the business of selling widgets, I think I'd cut the r&d budget rather than firing salespeople who are directly in the conversion path that brings in dollars today.
Huh? Every time the stock price goes down people's comp is cut since most of their comp is RSUs.
In contrast, inflation or explicit wage cuts are things that, ceteris paribus, every employer would like to do, and does improve their bottom line. (But explicit wage cuts are such a morale killer that they're de facto impossible right now.)
Given what you just said about how people cut costs during a down cycle, why GOOG and not AMZN? Seems like discretionary spending (and a lot of Amazon's sales are impulse-buy junk rather than essentials) is also likely to take a huge hit.
1. The fluctuations in stock prices. Like many tech companies, Google uses its shares in place of currency. This work great when prices are going up.
2. Business spending on advertising. Despite ambitions in other areas, the company still just mostly sells ads. One of the first things companies cut back on when they start hurting is advertising.
When the stock market declines because the business cycle turns, Google gets a double whammy. In many ways, it's the canary's canary in the coal mine. Doubly levered to the business cycle.
There is such a taboo around pay cuts, that then the inevitable downturn happens, the only option is to first stop hiring and then start laying off.
I expect GOOG to be the epicenter of tech worker pain for this leg of the cycle.
During these booms, tech leaders take on a mythological quality. To even suggest that they could begin a protracted decline seems absurd. But it has happened time and again. Maybe it's this time or the next cycle that does it, but there's no version of the future where GOOG retains its dominating position.