The top earning tech CEO’s were announced recently, and  the take-home pay for these folks is pretty impressive.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison topped the list at $84.5 million. A very distant second was BMC software chairman and CEO, Robert Beauchamp, who raked in a paltry $26.5 million.

Even badly behaving, disgraced and discharged CEO’s in the industry didn’t do badly. Take the recently dumped Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd (please), who trotted off into the career sunset with a satchel full of money. At $24.2 million, Hurd came in No. 3 on the list that’s available on the IT Business Edge site here.

Meanwhile, many techies  — stressed-out over pay freezes and heavy workloads — are looking to jump ship as the economy improves, according to the latest IT Employee Confidence Index.

Harris Interactive surveyed 4,367 employed tech workers, including 241 in IT operations, in Q2 of 2010 and found that 38% think the economy is getting stronger, compared to 32% in the first quarter. (Technisource Inc., a national staffing and recruiting firm, commissioned the survey.)

Breakout data from the survey indicates that many IT workers are already preparing to look for new jobs over the next year.

If they’re smart, they’ll set their sights on those CEO jobs at tech giants. We hear there’s an opening at HP.

Nothing motivates employees to boost performance like the green stuff. Unfortunately, almost half of the people responsible for bringing in new customers feel their compensation and incentive plans are too complex.

That’s according to Deloitte and Oracle’s latest Strategic Sales Compensation Survey of company salespeople. What’s making the plans so complex?

Increased team selling, more convoluted quotas and territory assignments, and a demand for more precise metrics, found the study.

As a result:

• over 40% of companies failed to meet their sales and revenue goals last year

• less than half (46%) of those surveyed believe their compensation plan is driving the right selling behaviors, and

• the amount of managers and directors “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the performance of their sales force dropped sharply from 56% in 2006 to 49% today.

The study drives home the fact that for marketing and sales efforts to be successful, companies must have compensation plans that makes sense to their salespeople.

Now may be the time for the corporate suite (CEO, CFO, Marketing execs and Sales managers, etc.) to discuss ways to simplify compensation plans as much as possible.

Three best practices to consider:

• Look at the measurements. Confusing compensation plans usually have many performance measurements. Effective plans use three or fewer measurements.

• Review. It’s good practice to review compensation plans, and how satisfied employees are with them, once a year.

• Consistency. Changing compensation plan metrics sparingly helps reduce confusion among employees.

For more background, download Deloitte and Oracle’s Strategic Sales Compensation Survey.