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Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not gr

Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not greedy and spread the wealth with the employees and who are not just out there to buy jets and ferrari's. (Actually, I have a natural aversion to people who buy sportscars with their wealth as I find it rancid and decadent in this day-and-age, but that's another story. Also probably because I'm Dutch and know many very rich people over there who drive shit cars, live in small houses and go by car and caravan to France on vacation.) I do see why CEO's (and all c-level if they are founders, have board seats, are early investors, have a high amount of %) should be compensated well over employees; they take the risks. Or rather; they should take the risks. If times are bad, I am looking to work with people who cut their own salary or reinvest to keep the employees and not just throw everyone out and take the bonus and then close up shop (which seems to happen a lot with startups right now). 200x is over the top I guess; I cannot see how you bring that much more value than your employees. Like said; no idea how it works at real enterprises, but in companies I see with few 100 to few 1000 people; I can walk around and remove a few dozen people (employees) and the entire company will grind to a halt. There are always vital things that are governed by a few (early?) employees which, if removed, are extremely hard to replace. This means that at least those employees cannot earn 200x less than the CEO, not 100x less either. I saw a post on Twitter a few days ago about those kind of employees of these kind of companies starting a company together, resigning and then having the new company acqui-hired by the old company for many millions. That's how you should handle that situation if you have a CEO that is that greedy indeed.

WalterBright 6y ago
> 200x is over the top I guess; I cannot see how you bring that much more value than your employees. Steve Jobs took over Apple when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and turned it into the most valuable company in the world. Apple had a series of CEOs before Jobs that didn't. Essentially, the CEO decides which hill to climb. The right hill, the company makes $$$. The wrong hill, the company languishes. That's worth a heckuva lot of money. Nobody else in the company has that kind of influence over its fortunes.
- fsh 6y ago
  That's just cherry-picking one particular case with a positive outcome. The last few Boeing CEOs were also paid tens of millions per year and ended up running the company (and two planes) into the ground.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Yes, but this is in response to "nobody should make 200x their employees". But it's really not that simple. Some CEOs are that valuable. Some are not. You need to figure out if they're a Boeing CEO or a Steve Jobs and compensate them accordingly.
    - tluyben2 6y ago
      Yes, some are probably. Steve Jobs, Nadella probably but it's maybe 10 in the world? The rest really are not.
    - quickthrower2 6y ago
      How do you figure that out? If someone is genius looking 20 years into the future like a time machine, they may look like an idiot today.
      - fastball 6y ago
        I have no idea. But that’s not the point. The point is that Apple and Apples shareholders (and probably Apple customers) would probably trade 1000 existing Apple employees if they could just get Jobs back. Some leaders are worth it. This is why blanket statements like “no CEO should make 200x another employee” or (in the same vein) “nobody should have $1B” are silly. Constructive conversations don’t start with highly subjective absolutes.
        quickthrower2 6y ago
        Yeah I agree and with Jobs, Bezos etc. I mean they have all the power right? Is someone going to cap their pay at their height. It’s like not feeding the golden goose. I’m not sure how this fairs for the “average” ceo though.
RivieraKid 6y ago
What risks are they taking? If your general argument is that the job has downsides, it's bullshit. Even if CEOs had the same salary as fast food workers, people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs because of social status, meaning, power to improve and change things, freedom and perhaps most importantly, you don't have to actually physically work, you basically just talk to people, think and make decisions.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  > people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs Really? How many people with a steady job you know who want to be CEO? Of a company with more than 10 people that is and that's even a bit pretentious to call that a CEO, but let's say; 10+ company. How many people do you personally know that would say; 'hell yeah, that sounds great'. I know 0 who are not CEO's already; the rest do not want the responsibility, the insecurity, the vagueness, the long hours, the decision making. They like to make 100k/year following whatever their manager says 9-5. Maybe you move in different circles, but I find that very unlikely. Most people definitely do not want to lead.
  - RivieraKid 6y ago
    The preceding part of the quote is important: > Even if CEOs had the same salary as fast food workers, people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs Yes, I think most people would prefer to be CEOs if all things except salary were unchanged. Being a fast food worker is not something people enjoy to do 5 day in a week and it's a boring, low status, manual job.
pravus 6y ago
You work 8 hours a day for your survival. They work 8 hours a day for their survival. Somehow we justify giving them 200 times the share of the output regardless of individual effort because they had some good ideas. I'm not saying these ideas aren't worth anything. Are these ideas really worth a continual system where someone else is always getting 200 times the extracted benefit than you? The problem is that at that rate of pay they can rapidly accumulate a financial engine that moves that multiplier externally from say 200-1000 while you can only move your multiplier from 1 to maybe 1.1. How often do you get a 10% raise and how much utility did Bezos get out of his recent billions stock windfall?
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  It's weird that you know more about what a CEO is worth to a business than the business' owners do.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"I do see why CEO's (and all c-level if they are founders, have board seats, are early investors, have a high amount of %) should be compensated well over employees; they take the risks. Or rather; they should take the risks" What risks do they or should they take to deserve higher salaries? These people typically have golden parachutes from which they'll make out rather well if the company does poorly, and they typically have no problem finding other jobs should they get fired. That's not the case for low-level employees, for whom losing a job can be absolutely catastrophic. Low-level employees are the ones who typically live paycheck to paycheck and risk everything every day they go to work, for should they fail to perform they and their families may go hungry, and may struggle for a long time to find another job, especially in this economy. On the other hand, many CEOs don't need to work another day in their life, so getting fired from their job would actually have absolutely no impact on them whatsoever.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  I can only speak from where I live and have lived, but low-level, well actually all employees outside the people with significant shareholding, when they get fired, get 75% of their last earnings for 2 months and after that 70% from the state. The company has to pay a part of that IF they can.
- ergocoder 6y ago
  You are a CEO of your house. You bought a house for $100k in SF in 2000. You hire a maid to clean it every week. The maid basically upkeep your asset. It's 2020 now. You sold the house for $2m. Should you pay your maid much more since your didn't do much and you earned profit? Should you give equity to your maid?
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Yes. And I would (and do).
pmlnr 6y ago
200x SALARY is never OK. Give them stocks. If they do a good job, they get a lot of money. But not in salary; that's simply mad.

WalterBright 6y ago

> 200x is over the top I guess; I cannot see how you bring that much more value than your employees. Steve Jobs took over Apple when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and turned it into the most valuable company in the world. Apple had a series of CEOs before Jobs that didn't. Essentially, the CEO decides which hill to climb. The right hill, the company makes $$$. The wrong hill, the company languishes. That's worth a heckuva lot of money. Nobody else in the company has that kind of influence over its fortunes.

fsh 6y ago
That's just cherry-picking one particular case with a positive outcome. The last few Boeing CEOs were also paid tens of millions per year and ended up running the company (and two planes) into the ground.
- fastball 6y ago
  Yes, but this is in response to "nobody should make 200x their employees". But it's really not that simple. Some CEOs are that valuable. Some are not. You need to figure out if they're a Boeing CEO or a Steve Jobs and compensate them accordingly.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Yes, some are probably. Steve Jobs, Nadella probably but it's maybe 10 in the world? The rest really are not.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    How do you figure that out? If someone is genius looking 20 years into the future like a time machine, they may look like an idiot today.
    - fastball 6y ago
      I have no idea. But that’s not the point. The point is that Apple and Apples shareholders (and probably Apple customers) would probably trade 1000 existing Apple employees if they could just get Jobs back. Some leaders are worth it. This is why blanket statements like “no CEO should make 200x another employee” or (in the same vein) “nobody should have $1B” are silly. Constructive conversations don’t start with highly subjective absolutes.
      - quickthrower2 6y ago
        Yeah I agree and with Jobs, Bezos etc. I mean they have all the power right? Is someone going to cap their pay at their height. It’s like not feeding the golden goose. I’m not sure how this fairs for the “average” ceo though.

RivieraKid 6y ago

What risks are they taking? If your general argument is that the job has downsides, it's bullshit. Even if CEOs had the same salary as fast food workers, people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs because of social status, meaning, power to improve and change things, freedom and perhaps most importantly, you don't have to actually physically work, you basically just talk to people, think and make decisions.

tluyben2 6y ago
> people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs Really? How many people with a steady job you know who want to be CEO? Of a company with more than 10 people that is and that's even a bit pretentious to call that a CEO, but let's say; 10+ company. How many people do you personally know that would say; 'hell yeah, that sounds great'. I know 0 who are not CEO's already; the rest do not want the responsibility, the insecurity, the vagueness, the long hours, the decision making. They like to make 100k/year following whatever their manager says 9-5. Maybe you move in different circles, but I find that very unlikely. Most people definitely do not want to lead.
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  The preceding part of the quote is important: > Even if CEOs had the same salary as fast food workers, people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs Yes, I think most people would prefer to be CEOs if all things except salary were unchanged. Being a fast food worker is not something people enjoy to do 5 day in a week and it's a boring, low status, manual job.

pravus 6y ago

You work 8 hours a day for your survival. They work 8 hours a day for their survival. Somehow we justify giving them 200 times the share of the output regardless of individual effort because they had some good ideas. I'm not saying these ideas aren't worth anything. Are these ideas really worth a continual system where someone else is always getting 200 times the extracted benefit than you? The problem is that at that rate of pay they can rapidly accumulate a financial engine that moves that multiplier externally from say 200-1000 while you can only move your multiplier from 1 to maybe 1.1. How often do you get a 10% raise and how much utility did Bezos get out of his recent billions stock windfall?

robertlagrant 6y ago
It's weird that you know more about what a CEO is worth to a business than the business' owners do.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"I do see why CEO's (and all c-level if they are founders, have board seats, are early investors, have a high amount of %) should be compensated well over employees; they take the risks. Or rather; they should take the risks" What risks do they or should they take to deserve higher salaries? These people typically have golden parachutes from which they'll make out rather well if the company does poorly, and they typically have no problem finding other jobs should they get fired. That's not the case for low-level employees, for whom losing a job can be absolutely catastrophic. Low-level employees are the ones who typically live paycheck to paycheck and risk everything every day they go to work, for should they fail to perform they and their families may go hungry, and may struggle for a long time to find another job, especially in this economy. On the other hand, many CEOs don't need to work another day in their life, so getting fired from their job would actually have absolutely no impact on them whatsoever.

tluyben2 6y ago
I can only speak from where I live and have lived, but low-level, well actually all employees outside the people with significant shareholding, when they get fired, get 75% of their last earnings for 2 months and after that 70% from the state. The company has to pay a part of that IF they can.
ergocoder 6y ago
You are a CEO of your house. You bought a house for $100k in SF in 2000. You hire a maid to clean it every week. The maid basically upkeep your asset. It's 2020 now. You sold the house for $2m. Should you pay your maid much more since your didn't do much and you earned profit? Should you give equity to your maid?
- tluyben2 6y ago
  Yes. And I would (and do).

pmlnr 6y ago

200x SALARY is never OK. Give them stocks. If they do a good job, they get a lot of money. But not in salary; that's simply mad.