Is Silicon Valley executive pay out of control?

May 22, 2006 | Matt Marshall

Omid Kordestani

In case you missed it, here is the list of Silicon Valley executives who made the most money last year.

It is part of a package of stories in the Merc about executive pay, and the debate surrounding it. A union guy says “executive compensation is the last unaddressed corporate scandal.” Critics of that view say pay is what lures people to Silicon Valley and gives them incentives to do great things.

Google’s Omid Kordistani heads the list, knocking off Yahoo’s Terry Semel and Oracle’s Larry Ellison from leadership position of past years. Where are Larry and Sergey on the list? At the bottom. Their stock gains came from shares they own outright, and so don’t qualify as pay from their companies, according to the Merc’s methodology.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.