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The price of failure: Yahoo's Marissa Mayer could leave with $137m

22 points by ghosh 11y ago

lordleft 11y ago
Is there any sort of compelling evidence that CEOs ought to be paid so much money? Seems like you get a fairly sweet haul whether you help the company thrive or run it to the ground.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  No it's cartel-style behavior. There's significant overlap between CEO's, boards, VC's, and so on. Reduced down to something like this: "I'll authorize you to get stupid rich so long as you let me fo it. We'll keep doing it because we can." Type "leaked citigroup memos and political gates" into Google to see their people say it. They even went so far as encouraging them to pay themselves even more and invest in luxury goods. Haha.
- bitlax 11y ago
  It's what she negotiated for based on her track record. Obviously someone who runs a company into the ground is not worth anything. But a CEO can increase the value of the company enough to justify their compensation package.
- gmarx 11y ago
  It used to be that CEOs of large companies were not expected to make this much. Her base salary would have been typical in the old days but not the rest of it. The change occurred in the 1990s when the CEOs of companies like GM looked at the CEOs of companies like Oracle and figured, we are bigger than they are so I should be worth at least that much money.
leekh 11y ago
maybe she'll run for president in a few years.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
That's a success story per theory of capitalism. Notice they're not griping about the fact that they could collectively do CEO pay at $100-300k with same results given underlings effectively run the company. They didn't even gripe much about her overdone ckmpensation. No, they were pissed that she tried a turnaround instead of something that would only benefit one group: the shareholders. Serve's their asses right. A taste of their own medicine. She certainly did fail in the turn around because it was beyond saving. She succeeded as a capitalist. Now, she has the capital to invest in better models that care about stakeholders instead of just shareholders. Interesting to see what she does next.
junto 11y ago
I'm honestly not sure that anyone can turn Yahoo into something that the shareholders don't know what they want.

22 points by ghosh 11y ago

Is there any sort of compelling evidence that CEOs ought to be paid so much money? Seems like you get a fairly sweet haul whether you help the company thrive or run it to the ground.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
No it's cartel-style behavior. There's significant overlap between CEO's, boards, VC's, and so on. Reduced down to something like this: "I'll authorize you to get stupid rich so long as you let me fo it. We'll keep doing it because we can." Type "leaked citigroup memos and political gates" into Google to see their people say it. They even went so far as encouraging them to pay themselves even more and invest in luxury goods. Haha.
bitlax 11y ago
It's what she negotiated for based on her track record. Obviously someone who runs a company into the ground is not worth anything. But a CEO can increase the value of the company enough to justify their compensation package.
gmarx 11y ago
It used to be that CEOs of large companies were not expected to make this much. Her base salary would have been typical in the old days but not the rest of it. The change occurred in the 1990s when the CEOs of companies like GM looked at the CEOs of companies like Oracle and figured, we are bigger than they are so I should be worth at least that much money.

leekh 11y ago

maybe she'll run for president in a few years.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

That's a success story per theory of capitalism. Notice they're not griping about the fact that they could collectively do CEO pay at $100-300k with same results given underlings effectively run the company. They didn't even gripe much about her overdone ckmpensation. No, they were pissed that she tried a turnaround instead of something that would only benefit one group: the shareholders. Serve's their asses right. A taste of their own medicine. She certainly did fail in the turn around because it was beyond saving. She succeeded as a capitalist. Now, she has the capital to invest in better models that care about stakeholders instead of just shareholders. Interesting to see what she does next.

junto 11y ago

I'm honestly not sure that anyone can turn Yahoo into something that the shareholders don't know what they want.