Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, have agreed to take a pay cut.
In 2004, they each had been earning a six-figure salary, but during the second quarter they decided to reduce their salaries to $1. The company’s compensation committee offered to give them raises this year, but the co-founders declined, keeping their $1 salary for 2005.
They can afford to do this, of course, because of their enormous stake in the company. They can make their money through returns on their investment.
Steve Jobs from Apple has also taken this approach since returning to his company in 1998. Several executives at Cisco Systems had the same idea.
It would be nice to be able to afford to take a $1 salary. All I need to do is start a wildly successful business.
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Updated February 6, 2012 and originally published April 8, 2005. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
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In this day and Age, it is nice to hear of CEO’s doing this.
The CEO’s aren’t exactly doing this to be benevolent. It’s largely for tax reasons.