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Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. I'm ve

Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership. No, really. Principles not tested in the fire mean nothing (i.e. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg"). I know how much grinding I put in and I'd be happy to strap a Fitbit to Bezos and run a day shift side by side. Dogfooding is a principle I'll never abandon.

newsat13 10y ago
What video are you referring to?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
pryelluw 10y ago
Ill smile a whole 14 hour shift at some warehouse if im a billionaire who only does this once or twice for pr.
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  Yea, the video you want to see is a month in when he really should be taking a sick day, but San Bernardino's hot as shit and he can barely afford to keep the AC on, and his wife's eight months pregnant so maintaining health insurance is sorta important. That's Bias for Action!
knucklesandwich 10y ago
> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. > I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership. Sometimes I just have to sit and marvel at how many layers of ideology some of you folks are on.
- khazhou 10y ago
  Please explain.
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    Looking at his comment history I'm started to think I misread irony for sincerity, but its still not clear to me where that's delimited. The 100x line sounds like the kind of deluded optimism about meritocracy you hear from a lot of people in tech, and the line about "dogfooding" is like a startup school trope that is kind of beside the point when you're talking about basic human decency towards your workers. You shouldn't have to "test" the ethicality of overworking your employees or paying yourself a huge amount of money while your worker' wages stagnate. Then again, I'm a socialist and find the entire idea of these companies to be ethically compromised because they aren't worker coops.
    - otalp 10y ago
      He was clearly being sarcastic, I don't know how you can think that he was serious.
      - knucklesandwich 10y ago
        lol thanks for popping in. It sounded like he was being derisive, but not sarcastic. Sounded like he was legitemately trying to level a critique about Bezos not dogfooding, in other words (instead the fact that he's a garbage human being). Fair enough if I'm wrong, but the same kind of shit has and will continue to be said here in complete sincerity.
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- throwaway6556 10y ago
  The shilling is high with this one. I think he's using the "repeat it until it becomes true" tactic.
rileymat2 10y ago
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership. I feel like there is a big difference between getting through some shifts, and looking at it for the next few years.
- krapp 10y ago
  Yeah... I doubt any managers are shouting at Jeff Bezos about not meeting speed and quality metrics. It's a farce.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
reitanqild 10y ago
Now I really don't think this is completely fair or that you have to pay this much to attract top talent [0]... but I think I can see a different reason why top executives are paid like this. It is the same as with pro sports, e.g. soccer where the top players in the big leagues earn more money than they know what to do with, decently good ones seems to earn a living and everyone else is sponsoring by paying for their kids to play on a team etc etc. Actually a bit of the same thing as lotteries: Big payouts to a few more (lottery) or less (CEO) randomly selected individuals to make sure everyone else keeps putting in money or effort. [0]: IIRC Norways pension fund have done fairly well even if their experts are paid fairly normal salaries.
enraged_camel 10y ago
That seems like the Tu Quoque fallacy to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Basically, just because someone doesn't practice what they preach does not make the thing they preach any less valid. To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!"
- draugadrotten 10y ago
  > To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!" No, but one would say "You are beating your wife, you are a hippocrite and have no moral authority to preach to me what I should or should not do". If the Amazon leadership is "beating their wifes", they have lost the moral authority to lead the Amazon staff.
maxlybbert 10y ago
> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center It's not quite the same, but I do recall that in an interview on a late night show (probably Leno), Bezos referred to shipping things out of his garage when the company started. The story he told was about finally having enough profit to buy a table and save his and his co-founders' knees.
- ash_gti 10y ago
  I work at Amazon and that's the explanation for our table desks we all have at work (unless you request a custom desk).
maxlybbert 10y ago
> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. There are several reasons for the salary differential. But, fundamentally, one issue is that some things don't scale linearly. To use a simpler example: Richard and Maurice McDonald created a hamburger stand in 1948. They created the original recipes, came up with the original ideas, and opened the original stores. Apparently, they even started offering franchises. But their ability to grow McDonald's was limited. Ray Kroc managed to make McDonald's scale. Without the McDonald brothers, there was no restaurant to scale. Without Kroc, there was no chance that McDonalds would eventually have signs saying "billions served." What is the fairest way to allocate their rewards based on their contributions? What about Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan ( https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1/ https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1... )? Durant figured cars were going to be profitable. He managed to get loans to buy several car companies and called the combination General Motors. He actually created a good sized business. At some point, though, the banks lost their nerve and convinced Durant to turn over control of GM to Alfred Sloan. Sloan's book, My Years With General Motors describes his approach to R&D, accounting, marketing, and trying to organize the world's largest company in some sane way. Without Durant (and the bankers) there would be no GM. But without Sloan, GM would have never grown as large as it did. When a company gets that large and accumulates that much capital, how do you fairly divvy up the revenue? Without the people on the assembly line, there are no cars. But without the people in the board room, there's no assembly line. I don't think Bezos is a god, or a saint, or even necessarily a good guy. But it is clear that without him, there would be no warehouses and no inventory. We live in a world where small teams of people can create hugely profitable companies. When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives?
- jrimbault 10y ago
  > When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives? Do I even have to spell it out? There shouldn't be a 100x factor between the lowest and highest salary. There's no degree of merit that should guarantee that privilege. Merit doesn't scale linearly, if I wanted to use your language, but there's no reason income should follow the same model. I really want to know what's the reasoning for allowing such ridiculous income gaps. If there's money left at the end of the year and the company doesn't want to invest more (which should be the first thing to do?), why pay the executives even more when the employees would benefit far more from the bonuses.
bambax 10y ago
> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary... "Leaders" take a huge salary because they can.

newsat13 10y ago

What video are you referring to?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

pryelluw 10y ago

Ill smile a whole 14 hour shift at some warehouse if im a billionaire who only does this once or twice for pr.

thesmallestcat 10y ago
Yea, the video you want to see is a month in when he really should be taking a sick day, but San Bernardino's hot as shit and he can barely afford to keep the AC on, and his wife's eight months pregnant so maintaining health insurance is sorta important. That's Bias for Action!

knucklesandwich 10y ago

> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. > I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership. Sometimes I just have to sit and marvel at how many layers of ideology some of you folks are on.

khazhou 10y ago
Please explain.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  Looking at his comment history I'm started to think I misread irony for sincerity, but its still not clear to me where that's delimited. The 100x line sounds like the kind of deluded optimism about meritocracy you hear from a lot of people in tech, and the line about "dogfooding" is like a startup school trope that is kind of beside the point when you're talking about basic human decency towards your workers. You shouldn't have to "test" the ethicality of overworking your employees or paying yourself a huge amount of money while your worker' wages stagnate. Then again, I'm a socialist and find the entire idea of these companies to be ethically compromised because they aren't worker coops.
  - otalp 10y ago
    He was clearly being sarcastic, I don't know how you can think that he was serious.
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      lol thanks for popping in. It sounded like he was being derisive, but not sarcastic. Sounded like he was legitemately trying to level a critique about Bezos not dogfooding, in other words (instead the fact that he's a garbage human being). Fair enough if I'm wrong, but the same kind of shit has and will continue to be said here in complete sincerity.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwaway6556 10y ago
The shilling is high with this one. I think he's using the "repeat it until it becomes true" tactic.

rileymat2 10y ago

> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center and walk out with a smile. Can you do what you ask of others? That's leadership. I feel like there is a big difference between getting through some shifts, and looking at it for the next few years.

krapp 10y ago
Yeah... I doubt any managers are shouting at Jeff Bezos about not meeting speed and quality metrics. It's a farce.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

reitanqild 10y ago

Now I really don't think this is completely fair or that you have to pay this much to attract top talent [0]... but I think I can see a different reason why top executives are paid like this. It is the same as with pro sports, e.g. soccer where the top players in the big leagues earn more money than they know what to do with, decently good ones seems to earn a living and everyone else is sponsoring by paying for their kids to play on a team etc etc. Actually a bit of the same thing as lotteries: Big payouts to a few more (lottery) or less (CEO) randomly selected individuals to make sure everyone else keeps putting in money or effort. [0]: IIRC Norways pension fund have done fairly well even if their experts are paid fairly normal salaries.

enraged_camel 10y ago

That seems like the Tu Quoque fallacy to me. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Basically, just because someone doesn't practice what they preach does not make the thing they preach any less valid. To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!"

draugadrotten 10y ago
> To give an extreme example, if someone argues against domestic violence, then you find out they beat their wife, you don't suddenly go "gosh, clearly domestic violence is not bad, otherwise you wouldn't partake in it!" No, but one would say "You are beating your wife, you are a hippocrite and have no moral authority to preach to me what I should or should not do". If the Amazon leadership is "beating their wifes", they have lost the moral authority to lead the Amazon staff.

maxlybbert 10y ago

> I'm very excited to see the helmet cam video of Jeff Bezos serving a customary 8-10-12-14 hour shift at the Dallas Amazon Fulfillment Center It's not quite the same, but I do recall that in an interview on a late night show (probably Leno), Bezos referred to shipping things out of his garage when the company started. The story he told was about finally having enough profit to buy a table and save his and his co-founders' knees.

ash_gti 10y ago
I work at Amazon and that's the explanation for our table desks we all have at work (unless you request a custom desk).

maxlybbert 10y ago

> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary compared to their line employees because they know they can hustle hard enough to live up to the expectations. There are several reasons for the salary differential. But, fundamentally, one issue is that some things don't scale linearly. To use a simpler example: Richard and Maurice McDonald created a hamburger stand in 1948. They created the original recipes, came up with the original ideas, and opened the original stores. Apparently, they even started offering franchises. But their ability to grow McDonald's was limited. Ray Kroc managed to make McDonald's scale. Without the McDonald brothers, there was no restaurant to scale. Without Kroc, there was no chance that McDonalds would eventually have signs saying "billions served." What is the fairest way to allocate their rewards based on their contributions? What about Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan ( https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1/ https://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1... )? Durant figured cars were going to be profitable. He managed to get loans to buy several car companies and called the combination General Motors. He actually created a good sized business. At some point, though, the banks lost their nerve and convinced Durant to turn over control of GM to Alfred Sloan. Sloan's book, My Years With General Motors describes his approach to R&D, accounting, marketing, and trying to organize the world's largest company in some sane way. Without Durant (and the bankers) there would be no GM. But without Sloan, GM would have never grown as large as it did. When a company gets that large and accumulates that much capital, how do you fairly divvy up the revenue? Without the people on the assembly line, there are no cars. But without the people in the board room, there's no assembly line. I don't think Bezos is a god, or a saint, or even necessarily a good guy. But it is clear that without him, there would be no warehouses and no inventory. We live in a world where small teams of people can create hugely profitable companies. When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives?

jrimbault 10y ago
> When it comes time to divvy up the revenue, how do you reflect the fact that companies don't necessarily scale linearly based on the effort and contributions of their founders and executives? Do I even have to spell it out? There shouldn't be a 100x factor between the lowest and highest salary. There's no degree of merit that should guarantee that privilege. Merit doesn't scale linearly, if I wanted to use your language, but there's no reason income should follow the same model. I really want to know what's the reasoning for allowing such ridiculous income gaps. If there's money left at the end of the year and the company doesn't want to invest more (which should be the first thing to do?), why pay the executives even more when the employees would benefit far more from the bonuses.

bambax 10y ago

> Leaders are willing to take a 100x salary... "Leaders" take a huge salary because they can.