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I don't see it as direct payment for the job that she's doing, but rather paying to cover her downside risk. An engineer at Yahoo, if they're sufficiently good
by skuhn 10y ago
I don't see it as direct payment for the job that she's doing, but rather paying to cover her downside risk. An engineer at Yahoo, if they're sufficiently good (and they do exist), can make it to a life raft and continue their career elsewhere.
Marissa likely has no post-Yahoo career. I doubt she will ever have another regular job after Yahoo, and instead after a little while she'll be a board member and have advisory roles at some places. I don't see how there is another CEO role in her future after Yahoo gets ripped apart by an acquiring iceberg.
The money she stands to make is meant to compensate her for that scenario. It's also meant to be a deterrent to proceeding with a sale in the first place, although I think it will prove to be insufficient.
- csallen 10y ago55M is an absurdly big life raft.
- 0xmohit 10y agoOK. The takeaway from this: As a CEO, you can screw up a company -- as a result, the employees and shareholders. However, the CEO's future must be secured. Not bad.
- superuser2 10y agoThere aren't daily HN threads with hundreds of people bashing the employees. The employees aren't walking into every job interview as "the person that killed Yahoo." We like to hold CEOs accountable for failures (i.e. they may never work again). Nobody who can help it is going to take that gig unless they know they're set for life in case of failure.
- Rexxar 10y agoWhat downside risk is worth 55M ? She don't risk her life. Why couldn't she have a regular job and a normal life after being yahoo CEO ?
- 0xmohit 10y ago55M is the price for not realizing the (in)competence upfront.
- fullshark 10y agoI see it as she negotiated it into her compensation package, so she gets it. They wanted her, that was the price to get her.
- chris_wot 10y agoLet's say you are 30 and you earn quarter of a million a year. I think that's pretty good. You will likely end your career, if you do well, on half a million a year. If you were given $55 million and left tomorrow, then never worked again, by the time you hit 60 you won't have spent even half of it. Frankly, $55 million is an obscene amount of money.