Top tech company CEOs tend to make millions of dollars each year thanks to bonuses and stock awards.

In fact, salaries typically only account for about 20 percent of a CEO's annual compensation, according to Wayne Cooper, president of Executive Chief Group, a research-based publication. The rest of their compensation depends on whether they can meet certain goals like revenue growth, profitability, and stock price.

While base salaries are determined by a company’s board, the CEO is usually the one who picks its board. “Board members do like to have good relationships with their CEOs, so it does create less objectivity in many cases,” Cooper said. “However, usually there’s some external benchmark or opinion that the committee uses to justify [salaries].”

“Those with the best tech experience tend to be on the underside, so finding a convergence of someone who has many years of deep leadership experience that also has this high-level tech understanding is a small number of people,” said Andy Challenger, vice president of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Of the companies SDxCentral covers regularly, it appears that some shareholders are pretty comfortable paying a high premium to CEOs. We studied SEC documents and compiled this list of executive earnings from the top publicly-held tech firms.

1. Oracle
  • CEOs: Safra Catz and Mark Hurd — Sept, 2014 - present

Safra Catz

  • Total 2016 Pay: $40.94 million
  • Salary: $950,000
  • Stock Awards: $21.9 million
  • Option Awards: $18.1 million
  • Other: $20,537

Mark Hurd

  • Total 2016 Pay: $41.1 million
  • Salary: $950,000
  • Stock Awards: $219 million
  • Option Awards: $18.1 million
  • Other: $198,621
2. HPE
  • CEO: Meg Whitman — November 2015 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $35.6 million
  • Salary: $1.5 million
  • Stock Awards: $19 million
  • Option Awards: $11.7 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $3.1 million
  • Other: $283,521
3. IBM
  • CEO: Ginni Rometty — October 2012 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $32.7 million
  • Salary: $1.6 million
  • Stock Awards: $12.8 million
  • Option Awards: $12.1 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $5 million
  • Change in Retention Plan Value: $87,660
  • Change in Pension Value: $300,605
  • Other: $840,782
4. AT&T
  • CEO: Randall Stephenson — May 2007 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $28.4 million
  • Salary: $1.8 million
  • Stock Awards: $16.1 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $5.7 million
  • Change in Pension Value and Non-qualified Deferred Compensation Earnings: $3.5 million
  • Other: $1.4 million
5. Intel
  • CEO: Brian Krzanich — May 2013 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $19.1 million
  • Salary: $1.25 million
  • Stock Awards: $11.71 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $3.7 million
  • Change in Pension Value and Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation Earnings: $3,000
  • Other: $2.4 million
6. Verizon
  • CEO: Lowell McAdam — August 2011 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $17.75 million
  • Salary: $1.6 million
  • Stock Awards: $12 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $3.2 million
  • Change in Pension Value and Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation Earnings: $233,155
  • Other: $641,374
 7. Cisco
  • CEO: Chuck Robbins — July 2015 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $16 million
  • Salary: $1.2 million
  • Stock Awards: $10.3 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $4.59 million
  • Other: $98,657 
 8. Juniper Networks
  • CEO: Rami Rahim — November 2014 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $7.54 million
  • Salary: $1 million
  • Stock Awards: $6.1 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $437,500
  • Other: $7,110
9. Brocade
  • CEO: Lloyd Carney — January 2013 - present
  • Total 2016 Pay: $6.1 million
  • Salary: $825,000
  • Stock Awards: $4.54 million
  • Non-Equity Incentive Plan Compensation: $721,463
  • Other: $3,000