Appropriately top Microsoft executives, coming off  the “worst year ever” for the company, are sharing some of the pain. As PaidContent reports, the top executives at the company took a compensation hit based on the sales and revenue declines. Here are some of the numbers:

• CEO Steve Ballmer $1.265 million vs. $1.34 million a year ago
• CFO Chris Liddell: $3.5 million vs. $4.8 million
• COO Kevin Turner: $5.4 million vs. $8.6 million
• Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach: $6.2 million vs. $8.3 million

The snark impulse is pretty strong and I’m trying not to write something very sarcastic about struggling to get by on $3.5 million — but I won’t.

This is appropriate action for the company at a time of underperformance. If you really want to dig into these salary figures you can read the SEC filing (page 16).

Related Topics: Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling