11 Highest Paid Tech CEOs In The World: See How Much They Earn And Cry At Your Salary Slip

When companies do well, employees can hope to receive bonuses and salary hikes. But its the CEOs that reap the biggest benefits in most cases.

And if there's one sector where most companies are doing spectacularly right now, that's the tech industry.

Images courtesy: Reuters

1. Elon Musk - Tesla/SpaceX - $513.3 million

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is at the top of this list, and not because of that company either but rather because of Tesla. He's pulled a total compensation of $513 million last year, despite Tesla reporting a $1 billion loss. Though he's paid minimum wage as mandated by law, his actual gains come from massive stock options tied to performance goals.

2. Tim Cook - Apple - $141.6 million

As far as tech company CEOs go, Tim Cool is way up on the totem pole. In 2018 Apple gave him 280,000 time-based and 280,000 performance-based vested restricted stock worth $126 million all-told. And that was on top of a base salary of $3 million, cash bonus of $12 million, and perks worth $682,000.

3. Nikesh Arora - Palo Alto Networks - $130.7 million

Nikesh Arora has been CEO of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks since June 2018. And despite his lack of experience in the field he makes a significant amount of money. Arora received a $19 million in restricted stock as a sign-on award, as well as stock awards and options worth $39.3 million and $72 million respectively.

4. Mark Hurd - Oracle - $108.29 million

Last year, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd had a respectable base salary of $950,000. However, he was also getting stock options of $103.7 million, as well as perks of $32,470 and a bonus of $3.7 million. He wasn't the only one with a big paycheck either, with the top four highest paid executives at the company (including him) totaling a compensation of $400 million between them.

5. Satya Nadella - Microsoft - $42.9 million

Satya Nadella first joined Microsoft in February 2014, and he's managed to turn the company right around in the time since. He's successfully managed to shift Microsoft away from being an OS company to an online services provider. And for his troubles he just received a 66 percent hike, taking his total compensation up to $42.9 million.

6. Daniel Schulman PayPal - $38.8 million

Today, Daniel Schulman makes $38.8 million as head of PayPal. But his first paycheck in 1981 was for a paltry $208. It was only after 18 years spent working his way up the ladder at AT&T that he's reached where he is now.

7. Mike Lawrie - DXC Technology - $32.2 million

DXC Technology has done fairly well for itself, providing IT services in the enterprise market. As CEO, Mike Lawrie pulls in about $32.2 million a year. But the average annual salary of DXC Tech employees in India? Just a little over $10,000 a year.

8. Shantanu Narayen - Adobe - $28.4 million

Adobe owes much of its recent success to Shantanu Narayen, who took the company away from desktop software and towards the cloud. He's also been ranked among the world's top CEOs by Glassdoor, which might be why he pulls in $28.4 million each year.

9. Marc Benioff - Salesforce - $28.4 million

Marc Benioff isn't just the CEO and founder of cloud computing company Salesforce, but he's also made himself known as a capable angel investor over the years.

10. Chuck Robbins - Cisco - $21.3 million

Chuck Robbins has been at Cisco since he joined way back in 1997, before being named CEO in 2015. He now pulls in $21.3 million each year.

11. Ajay Banga - Mastercard - $20.4 million

One of the few Indians on this list, Ajaypal Singh Banga has been CEO of Mastercard. He's even previously served as a member of the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations under Barack Obama.