kothavani Posted April 8, 2020 Report Posted April 8, 2020 CEOs of Palo Alto Networks, other Silicon Valley tech giants commit to making no pandemic layoffs By Ryan Fernandez – Associate editor, Silicon Valley Business Journal Apr 1, 2020, 7:30am PDT Updated Apr 2, 2020, 6:33am PDT See Correction/Clarification at end of article No layoffs and a big cut to his paycheck — that’s what Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks Inc., is committing to in order to help his company and employees get through the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have committed to no COVID-19 layoffs in our company because people are very insecure, people are concerned about whether they’ll have a job once this economic thing comes back around,” Arora said on “Mad Money” with CNBC’s Jim Cramer. Oh, and how big of a cut will Arora take to his salary? All of it, he said on CNBC. According to Factset, Arora had a base salary of $1 million in 2019. (Including stocks, options and other compensation, Arora earned more than $125 million in fiscal year 2018, according to Palo Alto Networks' latest executive pay disclosures, making him one of Silicon Valley's highest-paid public company CEOs.) Arora also said that Palo Alto Networks was working to raise about $5 million — $4 million from himself, the company and the board, and a possible $1 million in donations from employees — to support wage earners like cafeteria and security staff. TRENDING CAREER & WORKPLACE Cypress Semiconductor's CEO has a classic muscle car with a tech twist MANUFACTURING Tesla shows off ventilator development HIRING IN SALES Product Marketing Manager, Graphics & Media Apple The news comes on the heels of Palo Alto Networks’ $420 million purchase of CloudGenix, a cloud-managed networking competitor of Cisco Systems Inc., Fortinet Inc. and VMware Inc. CNBC reports that Palo Alto Networks says it will be maintaining headcount at its new acquisition. Santa Clara-based Palo Alto Networks is just the latest large company to commit itself to not laying off staff in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Tuesday, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman and Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy told CNBC that neither of their companies would be cutting jobs. “This is the right thing to step up, to make sure they know that we’ve got their back,” Schulman said on an interview for CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”“… If they’re sick, we pay them. If an office closes, we pay them. We really need to be sure that we have their health and their finances at heart as we deal with this crisis right now.” All three have now joined the ranks of large companies — mostly banking firms — that have pledged not to cut employees in the face of looming job losses due to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns ordered to stem its spread. According to Forbes, banks that have pledged not to cut jobs during the pandemic include Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Visa, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Among the most prominent voices calling for a halt — at least temporarily — to layoffs is Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, who tweeted last week that his San Francisco-based company would not be conducting any significan Quote
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