Eric Schmidt in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shared responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. Prior to the Google initial public offering, Schmidt had responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focused on the management of the vice presidents and the sales organization. According to Google, Schmidt's job responsibilities included "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while the product development cycle times are kept to a minimum." Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $250,000
Executive compensation in the United States Former SEC Chairman, William H. Donaldson, called executive compensation "and how it is determined ... One of the great, as-yet-unsolved problems in the country today." One factor that does "not" explain CEO pay growth is CEO productivity growth if the productivity is measured by earnings performance. Measuring average pay of CEOs from 1980 to 2004, Vanguard mutual fund founder John Bogle found it grew almost three times as fast as the corporations the CEOs ran—8.5 percent/year compared to 2.9 percent/year. Whether CEO pay has followed the stock market more closely is disputed. One calculation by one executive compensation consultant (Michael