16 ms·

When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their

When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity? Any factory in China can replace most of their 160k employees overnight if they wanted to. How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around?

lostinquebec 5y ago
.. and how many Ballmers!
Aeolun 5y ago
> by their scarcity By their perceived scarcity Chances are that anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. Still, this is over 10 years, and Apple shares have increased in value by 1900%. If they were still the same value he’d have gotten 40M, for about 4M per year. Which is much more reasonable. I still think it’s high, but in line with what others get.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Because it should be about productivity. People are highlighting a moral failing of society.
  - ChrisLomont 5y ago
    Is that moral failing related to jealously about how others choose to spend money that isn't theirs?
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Money is not gifted to people by God. It is allocated to people by systems that society chooses. The idea of the specific "rightful" ownership of money we have today is not universal throughout history and can change.
      - ChrisLomont 5y ago
        > It is allocated to people by systems that society chooses Exactly. And history is pretty clear that nearly everyone is worse off when society decides how to spend money instead of letting owners decide how to spend money. It's why every first world economy has a massive dose of capitalism and a tiny dose of socialism in their GDP. And why a significant part of the worst economies of the world don't. >The idea of the specific "rightful" ownership of money we have today is not universal throughout history Yet the poor (and pretty much everybody else too) in most of the world, if not all, today are vastly richer than the poor of the past.... Maybe there's a reason the world has moved away from the economic systems of the past?
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    I'm from former USSR and I can hardly stand this commie foolishness. Go to some socialist country like Cuba, Venezuela that have eliminated the inequality (like the USSR did before), then talk about 'moral failings of the society'.
    - diordiderot 5y ago
      Imagine a world where we didn't have to choose exclusively between dictatorial communism and unfettered capitalism. So sad that any other system is completely impossible
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth. But in case of foxconn workers and Cook, everything is fair. Foxconn workers are not chained to the benches, that simply don't know any other place where they can earn more. And I think Cook doesn't bribe anyone to achieve such payouts. If anything, he's doing a great job developing a business.
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        > Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth. What is corruption? A software engineer doing the same work gets paid way more in SF than in London. State policies prevent free movement of labor between London and SF. State policies do not prevent free movement of capital across nations, as clearly seen by the number of megacorporations actually owned by weird subsidiaries in strange locations for tax purposes.
        Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Corruption is profiteering from occupying position of power, or from having ties with people in power. For example, getting a well paid job without necessary skills, because you are a nephew of a company vice president. As for software engineers, recently so many people here are up in arms against the return to the office... But still want to get paid 3x the guy from Indonesia. I'm looking for them replaced with cheaper developers, and what they'll think then about the remote work.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    If we were to live in a world where we are measured by our productivity, we would ALL be treated like the replaceable cogs from the Chinese factory.
    - tclancy 5y ago
      If that’s frightening to you, I think you’re seeing the point.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        Isn't that frightening to you? What makes you think you would not be living under the whip?
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I think parent's point is: why do we think it is ok to treat some people this way and not others?
        rglullis 5y ago
        - Because the people that already found a way to display the scarcity of their talent or abilities don't need to subject themselves to a system that measures them by their productivity. - Because it is not on "us" to try to change this at an universal scale. I am all for people that believe in communist ideals and go to live on their own with like-minded people. The problem is those that take this to totalitarianism and think something like "communism can only work if it everyone does it" - Because history has witnessed already many people that tried to change this reality without ignoring scale, and ended up causing more problems that solutions, destroyed more wealth and made the world worse than they started off.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Do you feel that your productivity as a trained professional is the same as anybody else's productivity? The trick would be to allow workers to capture all of their productivity rather than have a large amount of it syphoned off by owners.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    This is a poor take. Productivity is meaningless, leverage and impact is everything. Tim Cook working for one day could easily have a larger impact than most people will have in their entire lives because he has extremely high leverage. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but life is not fair. I don't understand what moral obligation society should have to base compensation on productivity. PS: you could argue that Tim Cook is far more productive than everyone else because he produces far more results than everyone else.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      > PS: you could argue that Tim Cook is far more productive than everyone else because he produces far more results than everyone else. Of course. "Pay by productivity" does not mean "pay everybody the same per hour of labor". Cook's output has greater influence on the company than any (or perhaps almost any) other employee at Apple. He should be paid commensurate to that output.
      - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        Oh, how do you think of productivity then? (E.g stock price, revenue growth, etc?) I assumed you meant something along the lines "pay everybody the same per hour of labor" since that seems to be how most people describe productivity.
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        The company produces some amount of economic output in a year. This can be stuff or it can be innovation. That is the total productivity of the company. The sum of all productivity of its employees adds up to that value. Right now, people are paid less than the value of their productivity so there is money leftover for the company to either stick in the bank (profit) or reinvest in other things. Not everybody is equally productive. Somebody who has more skill or knowledge in a profession like software engineering will be considerably more productive than a less skilled engineer. Among leftist circles, I think you'd be very hard pressed to find people who describe productivity as literally just "number of hours worked".
- mombul 5y ago
  So the fact that Apple's share price has increased 1,200% since he took over is just a coincidence?
  - ubercore 5y ago
    Maybe, maybe not, but I think the idea is that it's hard to say with certainty. Apple is large and complex enough that any number of factors could have lead to that share price increase. My personal opinion is that probably yeah he had a good chunk to do with it. But it's hard to say that with certainty, it's certainly worth discussing and not taking for granted.
  - adwww 5y ago
    Were the shares previously nosediving before he took over?
  - uuddlrlr 5y ago
    To be fair Apple was already a giant rolling ball of success, and they have historically had an ingrained culture of caring deeply about their products above all else. Any decisions that would affect their trajectory will get a ton of deliberation from a lot of smart people; i.e. there wouldn't need to be a ton of input or ingenuity from the CEO to see returns like those from Apple, imho. Not to say that Cook isn't great or that it wouldn't be difficult to achieve that success.
    - bohemian99 5y ago
      So many companies have flatlined after a new CEO took over, think Microsoft after Ballmer took over. So I think there is some difficulty involve.
      - uuddlrlr 5y ago
        I guess my point is that the leadership within Apple is a lot more diffuse than typical; I believe most of Apple's value is from delivering a high degree of consistency and polish; owing to its culture of relentlessly developing the UX of their products. Therefore the CEO's primary roles at Apple would be to maintain that culture, steer the ship into new segments, and discern when the public will care about those segments. I think Cook has done a decent job of that. Making it all possible with RnD and supply chain is another story, but also where Cook is known to excel so maybe I'm underselling him. Jobs had Cook so presumably Cook would find a Cook if he weren't Cook. I don't know much about Microsoft but Balmer was definitely taking over a different beast than Cook.
- rglullis 5y ago
  It's been 10 years since Jobs died and I'm yet to see anyone even speculate any other name that would've been better than Cook. Your comment is typical from someone who thinks themselves to be smarter than the whole board. Or the investors that never challenged Tim's management, Or all of Apple's upper management who would love to find a way to take his spot and wouldn't care about exploiting some of Tim's weaknesses to dethrone the king...
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  Yeah, well, boards of directors don't take "chances" like that on 2.5 trillion dollar companies, and when they do, the shareholders start machinating replacements, like Scott Galloway attempted when Jack Dorsey started getting a lot of eye-raising ideas.
- Solstinox 5y ago
  Chances are anyone other than Tim could have done just as well? Did you see what happened to Apple after Steve Jobs got fired? Have you seen what has happened to great civilizations after the roll of monarchical dice or even a democratic election? Have you ever met a bozo? They exist and there's more of them than there are sane people.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Do we have numbers on how often that happens? I think it’s generally just fine unless the incoming new CEO is determined to suddenly do everything different.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  I don't think anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. If you look at competing tech corps - HP, IBM, Sun, MIPS, SGI, DEC, Nokia, even MS - their run isn't as long, they fail to adapt after a strong start, and the wheels often come off in spectacular ways. And that's with competent management. (Let's not talk about the multiple management idiocies that happened at HP.) Apple is now one of the longest lived tech corps. IBM is older but a shadow of its old self. MS is a year or so older, but the rest of FAANG are relatively new. Cook has kept the plates spinning and turned Apple into a giant revenue machine with a strong R&D back-up. I don't think that's a small achievement, and even if he's helped by the board and senior execs - which of course he is - it's still easy to underestimate the skill that goes into that. Having said that - he's also turned Apple into a somewhat boring company. The products are nice-looking and usually functional but not particularly thrilling. They feel overpriced. And I suspect some opportunities in home automation, user content creation, and health have been missed. Cook's Apple is an all-American bureaucratic behemoth - a kind of modern General Electric which keeps churning out high levels of competence, but not much inspiration or excitement, and not a little frustration and irritation over nickel-and-diming of users and developers. Someone else might not have made Apple as profitable, but personally I wouldn't have minded a friendlier and more inventive and adventurous company.
  - bserge 5y ago
    You sure it wasn't Jobs? Looks to me like Cook just kept things going about the same as Jobs would have (at least the last version of him). I do wonder how long it's gonna last.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      I wouldn't have guessed (/remembered) it had been ten years of Cook, but what I do remember is people saying exactly that when he took over. I suppose at some point all companies die/fade into obscurity/are different companies in all but name; maybe in 2080 or whatever we'll be able to say - ah, yep, knew it, Apple was for the dogs as soon as Jobs left, was only a matter of time!
    - snowwrestler 5y ago
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > Chances are that anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. The history of Apple CEOs indicates otherwise.
DasIch 5y ago
> When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity? You do realize that it's possible to disagree with that, right?
- bidirectional 5y ago
  The way it's phrased, I don't see how. You can disagree with the acceptance of it and work to change how things are done.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  Then put forward your counter argument.
ChrisKnott 5y ago
People made the same claim about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and yet their companies greatly increased in value since they left.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  A building is only as strong as its foundations. Companies are the same. I'd say that the foundation Steve Jobs left (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) was pretty damn important to that success, considering they still have essentially the exact same product lineup. Same goes for MS, Windows, Office, Xbox did not all come about after Bill Gates' departure.
  - ChrisKnott 5y ago
    Then why; 1. Wasn't this priced in already? 2. Is it necessary to pay the new CEOs so much? You argument is actually in opposition to the one I replied to, justifying Cook's renumeration.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ahtihn 5y ago
> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around Probably thousands? Just put a job ad for "Apple CEO" out there, set pay at a generous 10 million/year and I'm pretty sure you won't have issues finding qualified candidates. I really don't think Apple's valuation would change much if Tim Cook is replaced, so I don't see what justifies such a large bonus.
- mirthflat83 5y ago
  > Probably thousands? Lmfao. Hacker News, never change.
  - uuddlrlr 5y ago
    Certainly thousands of people could achieve similar or better, finding one of them just happens to be incredibly difficult and risky.
    - moduspol 5y ago
      "Similar" on the scale of a company worth $2.4 trillion isn't negligible. Nor is "difficult" or "risky." There's one person in the world with a proven track record of succeeding leading the world's most valuable company over a decade. This compensation is a drop in the bucket relative to even a single strategic mishap by a less qualified candidate.
      - uuddlrlr 5y ago
        I wouldn't want to be in charge of that headhunt, for sure.
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  Does Tim Cook staying around for another year mean the stock is 0.03% higher than it would be otherwise? If so, this is a wise decision from the Apple board.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  I think this is ignoring the risks associated with such a change. You might find people qualified on paper, but you really don’t know how that translates into real world performance until you try it. The risk of getting that wrong and accidentally destroying billions of dollars of shareholder value (don’t like the term, but it seems appropriate here) is very high (low likelihood, extremely high severity). As a board member, why would you take that risk, when not taking the risk is so cheap? Ultimately I don’t think the risk weighted expected return on finding a cheaper CEO is greater than just paying Tim whatever number he pulls out of his arse. I suspect expected return is actually substantially lower (probably very negative) than what Tim gets paid.
z0ltan 5y ago
Unbelievable. I hope that you don't talk in the same manner in public - it will not end well for you.
cartbeforehorse 5y ago
the scarcity is the role not the person filling it
tandem5000 5y ago
Power centralization is an inevitable outcome of improved techniques. Centralized control imperfectly selects for highly specific skills that only few possess. One can attempt to regulate inequality and inform opinion to some extent, but this will become harder as we go forward due to their improved techniques enabling manipulation.
Thaxll 5y ago
More than one out of 160k. CEO are like president they don't do much, you remove Cook and replace it by another high level exec, probably nothing will change for Apple. All the major tech compagnies have increased their value over the last 10 years, so it's def not because of their incredible CEO.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I think that's also silly calculation. Beyond a certain (admittedly unknowable) point, compensation becomes a meaningless number for the individual. Would Tim Cook "rage-quit" Apple if they could only pay him, say, 75 million instead of 750 million? If yes, then it's pure greed. If no, then it's too much. Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not.
- bohemian99 5y ago
  It's a very interesting topic, but clearly the investors/board got what they wanted so they are giving him the payout. It was tied to a goal and they got that goal. So presumably the people paying are happy to pay him that amount. Would he have reached/pushed for a particularly aggressive goal for less? Could someone else have achieved that goal for less? No doubt there is some element of personal relationships between everyone in the compensation committee and the ceo.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not. If you are already rich enough to retire many times over, why should you keep working on something that doesn't move the scale of your money (and consequently power and ability to do other things, including starting a new business that could disrupt your previous business?) Think of it this way: a lot of the money that is being paid to Tim Cook is to ensure that he doesn't go to work somewhere else.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Because you like your current job? Why would someone like Cook start a new business when he can do it within Apple?
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Can he turn Apple into a computer company that would focus on replaceable, modular electronics? Something like Fairphone, but on a bigger scale and with more resources, or that could have more runway without turning a profit? No, he can't. Apple is known for being a company that wants to integrate everything and needs to control all of its process. And for all the environmental talk, they would never sacrifice their bottom line to ensure their products are really green. Could he turn Apple into an online education platform that leverage open source platforms and open hardware to make it as affordable as possible to everyone? No, he can't. Apple depends on the brand of exclusivity and premium products. Need I go on?
mouzogu 5y ago
It's the brutal reality. But the argument is a moral and ethical one - not the subjective value of an individual's contribution.
tolmasky 5y ago
> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I’d say it would be just about impossible to find anyone else capable giving such a wooden performance and unnatural fake excitement at product announcements. Perhaps a young Point Break-era Keanu? But even then, I’d actually believe when he says “whoa” as a new product is unveiled. So you’re right, irreplaceable.
II2II 5y ago
While it would be difficult to replace someone like Tim Cook, this should not serve as an excuse to treat people as disposable. This attitude of disposability, which is exactly what your comment about replacing 160k employees implies, brings to mind barbaric labour practices of the past.
- rglullis 5y ago
  People are not disposable. The labour they provide is.
varispeed 5y ago
Isn't this a form of tax evasion? By not hiring local people they avoid paying tax on their work. They also avoid any sensible employment regulations by outsourcing it to not so compatible with human rights China. In my opinion this kind of avoidance should be illegal. It does not benefit anybody except Communist Party of China and Apple.
mjlangiii 5y ago
Celebrating maximum exploitation of workers by those with all the leverage & power and calling the decent consideration of another man's well-being silly, that's, well, I'll just say that I believe we can do better, sir.
LandR 5y ago
> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I don't think these people are as special and rare as you think they are. There are plenty of smart people on the planet.
- bidirectional 5y ago
  This reward was defined ten years ago. By definition, Tim Cook is unique in that he has successfully run Apple for ten years. The risk of taking on a new CEO is orders of magnitude greater than 750mn.
Bancakes 5y ago
How many people can make predictable, iteratively improved products? The difficulty is in marketing.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity" When will we learn to stop making these silly arguments about "scarcity" and understand that the only thing that matters is a position of power? Einstein and Steven Hawking were unique and advanced the entire human civilisation, whats their net work? Is anyone except the mentally ill going to suggest we have more Einsteins that Tim Cook's lying around?
- rglullis 5y ago
  Ultimately, yes. But where does that power come from?
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Does Putin's, Joe Biden's and Edison's power come from the same 'source'? Are you implying power come from scarsity? Do we have scarsity of politicians?
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Do you think that politicians are powerful? Power to me implies having the ability to do things beyond their attributions and expectations. I think that if Biden or even Putin decided to color outside of the lines, they would be removed from their positions without prejudice.
PartiallyTyped 5y ago
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of ~~Einstein~~ Cook’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. Original quote by Stephen Jay Gould.
kwanbix 5y ago
I imagine Tim Cook is good, but that good? How much of the success is because he does unique work? I mean, I can understand maybe from someone like Steve who was a visionary, but Tim? It looks to me more of an executor than a visionary. I am not saying he is a bad leader or anything, but 750 million dollars is a LOT of money.
snowwrestler 5y ago
There’s only one Tim Cook in the world. But, there’s also only one me in the world. CEOs don’t get paid so much because they are personally unique. Every human is globally unique; it’s a consequence of how complex humans are. CEOs have artificial scarcity because of the hierarchical structure of companies. By definition, there’s only one CEO of Apple. Does that mean that ONLY Tim Cook, out of billions of humans, could have brought Apple to the success they have today? Try this thought exercise: if Tim had stayed at Compaq in 1997 instead of jumping to Apple, what are the chances that he would be CEO today of a Compaq worth $2 trillion? “How much of Apple’s success is personally attributable to Tim Cook” is a perfectly valid question to ask. Unfortunately, answering it is extremely difficult; you’d need to rerun history for each alternate person. But the weight of a process doesn’t guarantee that it finds an optimum. CEOs benefit from a human tendency to attribute systemic qualities to individual things or people. It’s the same reason we say a jacket “is warm” even though all it is doing is trapping the warmth that we created ourselves. We say a “successful CEO” instead of “the CEO of a successful company.” Tim Cook makes incredibly consequential decisions every day. But the reason they are so consequential is mostly because he is the CEO of a huge company. The negative effect of the current thinking on CEO “scarcity” is visible in the absurdly outsized personal rewards that the CEOs of successful companies get. But it’s even more visible in what happens to the CEOs of companies that are not successful. They still get absurd rewards! Adam Neumann also became a billionaire.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > CEOs don’t get paid so much because they are personally unique. [...] CEOs have artificial scarcity because of the hierarchical structure of companies. They get paid proportional to the impact of their decisions, not in proportion to their scarcity, skill, etc. If Apple must have someone to make decisions every day that could cost the company millions of dollars, what is the correct amount to compensate that person? And if Apple were instead a $50M market cap company, would that amount change? CEO compensation is a combination of "someone has to be in the chair" + "how important are our decisions?" + "how much can we afford to pay." To reach back to the GP's gripe: if 1 (or even 160,000) assembly workers screw up at their job, it has a much lower impact on Apple as a whole.
- 5y ago
wayneftw 5y ago
There are plenty of Tim Cooks around. THE Tim Cook is only in his position because of luck. Lucky to be born white white, in America and lucky in timing and connections.
Applejinx 5y ago
Not exactly. Tim Cook is not paid by either the value of his work, or his scarcity. He is paid by the EXPECTATION of the value of his work… kind of like how stock markets work. His pay is an expression of the expectation of a lot of other people. His pay is opinion, not direct value. And you can't pick some random unproven person who may or may not perform as well, and say they are of equivalent OPINION. You could say there's a chance, even a good chance, that they're of equivalent value, but that's a gamble. This is how weird pay disparities develop. It's not in any way that Tim Cook has personally done things worth that much, or that he's personally pressuring all those in charge of paying him to that extent. Intentionally or not, the question Tim Cook presents to those with the power to keep or dismiss him is this: How much are you willing to bet that if you lose me, things break and everything sucks? They are willing to bet $750 million. That's what happened. How much would you be willing to bet? If it's far less, or if you want to kick Tim out anyway, how many are there of you? Are you heavily outnumbered or are you expressing a common opinion?
- dham 5y ago
  I suppose that's the plot to Trading Places.
howaboutnope 5y ago
> people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity So the less people there are who own the majority of the wealth on the planet, the more that is justified? So their value is what, exactly? Scarcity by itself doesn't mean anything. There are diseases that are extremely rare, that doesn't make it more desirable to have them. The rent seeking, wealth-siphoning people do need the people who build the stuff they live off. That's not true the other way around. You don't have to replace Tim Cook, you just have to get rid of him. (edit: I don't mean Tim Cook personally, it's not intended as criticism of that particular person; but the amount of wealth such people (not to mention the people where the ratio is WAY more off) bind destroys so much productivity in the people that have to struggle as a result, that they would provide more value to the world and the people in it by not existing, than by anything they did or could possibly do)
effingwewt 5y ago
Nothing about any CEO is special other than they haooened to land in the cushiest gig known to man. They effectively just suck all the money out as opposed to the people quite literally making the products. I can't wait until we are over this hump and our future selves are like 'fuck how stupid were we to let one asshole sit at the top and do nothing but PR while we all beat each other ober the scraps.' See the rich have figured out that if you pay people almost enough to live they will spend their lives surviving and won't have time to look up and realize what's happening. Love how you put productivity in quotes as if it's up for debate, and math is now plain silly as it goes against your narrative? Top class.

lostinquebec 5y ago

.. and how many Ballmers!

Aeolun 5y ago

> by their scarcity By their perceived scarcity Chances are that anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. Still, this is over 10 years, and Apple shares have increased in value by 1900%. If they were still the same value he’d have gotten 40M, for about 4M per year. Which is much more reasonable. I still think it’s high, but in line with what others get.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Because it should be about productivity. People are highlighting a moral failing of society.
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  Is that moral failing related to jealously about how others choose to spend money that isn't theirs?
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Money is not gifted to people by God. It is allocated to people by systems that society chooses. The idea of the specific "rightful" ownership of money we have today is not universal throughout history and can change.
    - ChrisLomont 5y ago
      > It is allocated to people by systems that society chooses Exactly. And history is pretty clear that nearly everyone is worse off when society decides how to spend money instead of letting owners decide how to spend money. It's why every first world economy has a massive dose of capitalism and a tiny dose of socialism in their GDP. And why a significant part of the worst economies of the world don't. >The idea of the specific "rightful" ownership of money we have today is not universal throughout history Yet the poor (and pretty much everybody else too) in most of the world, if not all, today are vastly richer than the poor of the past.... Maybe there's a reason the world has moved away from the economic systems of the past?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I'm from former USSR and I can hardly stand this commie foolishness. Go to some socialist country like Cuba, Venezuela that have eliminated the inequality (like the USSR did before), then talk about 'moral failings of the society'.
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    Imagine a world where we didn't have to choose exclusively between dictatorial communism and unfettered capitalism. So sad that any other system is completely impossible
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth. But in case of foxconn workers and Cook, everything is fair. Foxconn workers are not chained to the benches, that simply don't know any other place where they can earn more. And I think Cook doesn't bribe anyone to achieve such payouts. If anything, he's doing a great job developing a business.
      - UncleMeat 5y ago
        > Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth. What is corruption? A software engineer doing the same work gets paid way more in SF than in London. State policies prevent free movement of labor between London and SF. State policies do not prevent free movement of capital across nations, as clearly seen by the number of megacorporations actually owned by weird subsidiaries in strange locations for tax purposes.
        Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Corruption is profiteering from occupying position of power, or from having ties with people in power. For example, getting a well paid job without necessary skills, because you are a nephew of a company vice president. As for software engineers, recently so many people here are up in arms against the return to the office... But still want to get paid 3x the guy from Indonesia. I'm looking for them replaced with cheaper developers, and what they'll think then about the remote work.
- rglullis 5y ago
  If we were to live in a world where we are measured by our productivity, we would ALL be treated like the replaceable cogs from the Chinese factory.
  - tclancy 5y ago
    If that’s frightening to you, I think you’re seeing the point.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Isn't that frightening to you? What makes you think you would not be living under the whip?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I think parent's point is: why do we think it is ok to treat some people this way and not others?
        rglullis 5y ago
        - Because the people that already found a way to display the scarcity of their talent or abilities don't need to subject themselves to a system that measures them by their productivity. - Because it is not on "us" to try to change this at an universal scale. I am all for people that believe in communist ideals and go to live on their own with like-minded people. The problem is those that take this to totalitarianism and think something like "communism can only work if it everyone does it" - Because history has witnessed already many people that tried to change this reality without ignoring scale, and ended up causing more problems that solutions, destroyed more wealth and made the world worse than they started off.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Do you feel that your productivity as a trained professional is the same as anybody else's productivity? The trick would be to allow workers to capture all of their productivity rather than have a large amount of it syphoned off by owners.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  This is a poor take. Productivity is meaningless, leverage and impact is everything. Tim Cook working for one day could easily have a larger impact than most people will have in their entire lives because he has extremely high leverage. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but life is not fair. I don't understand what moral obligation society should have to base compensation on productivity. PS: you could argue that Tim Cook is far more productive than everyone else because he produces far more results than everyone else.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > PS: you could argue that Tim Cook is far more productive than everyone else because he produces far more results than everyone else. Of course. "Pay by productivity" does not mean "pay everybody the same per hour of labor". Cook's output has greater influence on the company than any (or perhaps almost any) other employee at Apple. He should be paid commensurate to that output.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      Oh, how do you think of productivity then? (E.g stock price, revenue growth, etc?) I assumed you meant something along the lines "pay everybody the same per hour of labor" since that seems to be how most people describe productivity.
      - UncleMeat 5y ago
        The company produces some amount of economic output in a year. This can be stuff or it can be innovation. That is the total productivity of the company. The sum of all productivity of its employees adds up to that value. Right now, people are paid less than the value of their productivity so there is money leftover for the company to either stick in the bank (profit) or reinvest in other things. Not everybody is equally productive. Somebody who has more skill or knowledge in a profession like software engineering will be considerably more productive than a less skilled engineer. Among leftist circles, I think you'd be very hard pressed to find people who describe productivity as literally just "number of hours worked".
mombul 5y ago
So the fact that Apple's share price has increased 1,200% since he took over is just a coincidence?
- ubercore 5y ago
  Maybe, maybe not, but I think the idea is that it's hard to say with certainty. Apple is large and complex enough that any number of factors could have lead to that share price increase. My personal opinion is that probably yeah he had a good chunk to do with it. But it's hard to say that with certainty, it's certainly worth discussing and not taking for granted.
- adwww 5y ago
  Were the shares previously nosediving before he took over?
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  To be fair Apple was already a giant rolling ball of success, and they have historically had an ingrained culture of caring deeply about their products above all else. Any decisions that would affect their trajectory will get a ton of deliberation from a lot of smart people; i.e. there wouldn't need to be a ton of input or ingenuity from the CEO to see returns like those from Apple, imho. Not to say that Cook isn't great or that it wouldn't be difficult to achieve that success.
  - bohemian99 5y ago
    So many companies have flatlined after a new CEO took over, think Microsoft after Ballmer took over. So I think there is some difficulty involve.
    - uuddlrlr 5y ago
      I guess my point is that the leadership within Apple is a lot more diffuse than typical; I believe most of Apple's value is from delivering a high degree of consistency and polish; owing to its culture of relentlessly developing the UX of their products. Therefore the CEO's primary roles at Apple would be to maintain that culture, steer the ship into new segments, and discern when the public will care about those segments. I think Cook has done a decent job of that. Making it all possible with RnD and supply chain is another story, but also where Cook is known to excel so maybe I'm underselling him. Jobs had Cook so presumably Cook would find a Cook if he weren't Cook. I don't know much about Microsoft but Balmer was definitely taking over a different beast than Cook.
rglullis 5y ago
It's been 10 years since Jobs died and I'm yet to see anyone even speculate any other name that would've been better than Cook. Your comment is typical from someone who thinks themselves to be smarter than the whole board. Or the investors that never challenged Tim's management, Or all of Apple's upper management who would love to find a way to take his spot and wouldn't care about exploiting some of Tim's weaknesses to dethrone the king...
lr4444lr 5y ago
Yeah, well, boards of directors don't take "chances" like that on 2.5 trillion dollar companies, and when they do, the shareholders start machinating replacements, like Scott Galloway attempted when Jack Dorsey started getting a lot of eye-raising ideas.
Solstinox 5y ago
Chances are anyone other than Tim could have done just as well? Did you see what happened to Apple after Steve Jobs got fired? Have you seen what has happened to great civilizations after the roll of monarchical dice or even a democratic election? Have you ever met a bozo? They exist and there's more of them than there are sane people.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Do we have numbers on how often that happens? I think it’s generally just fine unless the incoming new CEO is determined to suddenly do everything different.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
I don't think anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. If you look at competing tech corps - HP, IBM, Sun, MIPS, SGI, DEC, Nokia, even MS - their run isn't as long, they fail to adapt after a strong start, and the wheels often come off in spectacular ways. And that's with competent management. (Let's not talk about the multiple management idiocies that happened at HP.) Apple is now one of the longest lived tech corps. IBM is older but a shadow of its old self. MS is a year or so older, but the rest of FAANG are relatively new. Cook has kept the plates spinning and turned Apple into a giant revenue machine with a strong R&D back-up. I don't think that's a small achievement, and even if he's helped by the board and senior execs - which of course he is - it's still easy to underestimate the skill that goes into that. Having said that - he's also turned Apple into a somewhat boring company. The products are nice-looking and usually functional but not particularly thrilling. They feel overpriced. And I suspect some opportunities in home automation, user content creation, and health have been missed. Cook's Apple is an all-American bureaucratic behemoth - a kind of modern General Electric which keeps churning out high levels of competence, but not much inspiration or excitement, and not a little frustration and irritation over nickel-and-diming of users and developers. Someone else might not have made Apple as profitable, but personally I wouldn't have minded a friendlier and more inventive and adventurous company.
- bserge 5y ago
  You sure it wasn't Jobs? Looks to me like Cook just kept things going about the same as Jobs would have (at least the last version of him). I do wonder how long it's gonna last.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I wouldn't have guessed (/remembered) it had been ten years of Cook, but what I do remember is people saying exactly that when he took over. I suppose at some point all companies die/fade into obscurity/are different companies in all but name; maybe in 2080 or whatever we'll be able to say - ah, yep, knew it, Apple was for the dogs as soon as Jobs left, was only a matter of time!
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
Turing_Machine 5y ago
> Chances are that anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. The history of Apple CEOs indicates otherwise.

DasIch 5y ago

> When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity? You do realize that it's possible to disagree with that, right?

bidirectional 5y ago
The way it's phrased, I don't see how. You can disagree with the acceptance of it and work to change how things are done.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scoopertrooper 5y ago
Then put forward your counter argument.

ChrisKnott 5y ago

People made the same claim about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and yet their companies greatly increased in value since they left.

breakfastduck 5y ago
A building is only as strong as its foundations. Companies are the same. I'd say that the foundation Steve Jobs left (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) was pretty damn important to that success, considering they still have essentially the exact same product lineup. Same goes for MS, Windows, Office, Xbox did not all come about after Bill Gates' departure.
- ChrisKnott 5y ago
  Then why; 1. Wasn't this priced in already? 2. Is it necessary to pay the new CEOs so much? You argument is actually in opposition to the one I replied to, justifying Cook's renumeration.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ahtihn 5y ago

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around Probably thousands? Just put a job ad for "Apple CEO" out there, set pay at a generous 10 million/year and I'm pretty sure you won't have issues finding qualified candidates. I really don't think Apple's valuation would change much if Tim Cook is replaced, so I don't see what justifies such a large bonus.

mirthflat83 5y ago
> Probably thousands? Lmfao. Hacker News, never change.
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  Certainly thousands of people could achieve similar or better, finding one of them just happens to be incredibly difficult and risky.
  - moduspol 5y ago
    "Similar" on the scale of a company worth $2.4 trillion isn't negligible. Nor is "difficult" or "risky." There's one person in the world with a proven track record of succeeding leading the world's most valuable company over a decade. This compensation is a drop in the bucket relative to even a single strategic mishap by a less qualified candidate.
    - uuddlrlr 5y ago
      I wouldn't want to be in charge of that headhunt, for sure.
sebzim4500 5y ago
Does Tim Cook staying around for another year mean the stock is 0.03% higher than it would be otherwise? If so, this is a wise decision from the Apple board.
avianlyric 5y ago
I think this is ignoring the risks associated with such a change. You might find people qualified on paper, but you really don’t know how that translates into real world performance until you try it. The risk of getting that wrong and accidentally destroying billions of dollars of shareholder value (don’t like the term, but it seems appropriate here) is very high (low likelihood, extremely high severity). As a board member, why would you take that risk, when not taking the risk is so cheap? Ultimately I don’t think the risk weighted expected return on finding a cheaper CEO is greater than just paying Tim whatever number he pulls out of his arse. I suspect expected return is actually substantially lower (probably very negative) than what Tim gets paid.

z0ltan 5y ago

Unbelievable. I hope that you don't talk in the same manner in public - it will not end well for you.

cartbeforehorse 5y ago

the scarcity is the role not the person filling it

tandem5000 5y ago

Power centralization is an inevitable outcome of improved techniques. Centralized control imperfectly selects for highly specific skills that only few possess. One can attempt to regulate inequality and inform opinion to some extent, but this will become harder as we go forward due to their improved techniques enabling manipulation.

Thaxll 5y ago

More than one out of 160k. CEO are like president they don't do much, you remove Cook and replace it by another high level exec, probably nothing will change for Apple. All the major tech compagnies have increased their value over the last 10 years, so it's def not because of their incredible CEO.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I think that's also silly calculation. Beyond a certain (admittedly unknowable) point, compensation becomes a meaningless number for the individual. Would Tim Cook "rage-quit" Apple if they could only pay him, say, 75 million instead of 750 million? If yes, then it's pure greed. If no, then it's too much. Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not.

bohemian99 5y ago
It's a very interesting topic, but clearly the investors/board got what they wanted so they are giving him the payout. It was tied to a goal and they got that goal. So presumably the people paying are happy to pay him that amount. Would he have reached/pushed for a particularly aggressive goal for less? Could someone else have achieved that goal for less? No doubt there is some element of personal relationships between everyone in the compensation committee and the ceo.
rglullis 5y ago
> Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not. If you are already rich enough to retire many times over, why should you keep working on something that doesn't move the scale of your money (and consequently power and ability to do other things, including starting a new business that could disrupt your previous business?) Think of it this way: a lot of the money that is being paid to Tim Cook is to ensure that he doesn't go to work somewhere else.
- bserge 5y ago
  Because you like your current job? Why would someone like Cook start a new business when he can do it within Apple?
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Can he turn Apple into a computer company that would focus on replaceable, modular electronics? Something like Fairphone, but on a bigger scale and with more resources, or that could have more runway without turning a profit? No, he can't. Apple is known for being a company that wants to integrate everything and needs to control all of its process. And for all the environmental talk, they would never sacrifice their bottom line to ensure their products are really green. Could he turn Apple into an online education platform that leverage open source platforms and open hardware to make it as affordable as possible to everyone? No, he can't. Apple depends on the brand of exclusivity and premium products. Need I go on?

mouzogu 5y ago

It's the brutal reality. But the argument is a moral and ethical one - not the subjective value of an individual's contribution.

tolmasky 5y ago

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I’d say it would be just about impossible to find anyone else capable giving such a wooden performance and unnatural fake excitement at product announcements. Perhaps a young Point Break-era Keanu? But even then, I’d actually believe when he says “whoa” as a new product is unveiled. So you’re right, irreplaceable.

II2II 5y ago

While it would be difficult to replace someone like Tim Cook, this should not serve as an excuse to treat people as disposable. This attitude of disposability, which is exactly what your comment about replacing 160k employees implies, brings to mind barbaric labour practices of the past.

rglullis 5y ago
People are not disposable. The labour they provide is.

varispeed 5y ago

Isn't this a form of tax evasion? By not hiring local people they avoid paying tax on their work. They also avoid any sensible employment regulations by outsourcing it to not so compatible with human rights China. In my opinion this kind of avoidance should be illegal. It does not benefit anybody except Communist Party of China and Apple.

mjlangiii 5y ago

Celebrating maximum exploitation of workers by those with all the leverage & power and calling the decent consideration of another man's well-being silly, that's, well, I'll just say that I believe we can do better, sir.

LandR 5y ago

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around? I don't think these people are as special and rare as you think they are. There are plenty of smart people on the planet.

bidirectional 5y ago
This reward was defined ten years ago. By definition, Tim Cook is unique in that he has successfully run Apple for ten years. The risk of taking on a new CEO is orders of magnitude greater than 750mn.

Bancakes 5y ago

How many people can make predictable, iteratively improved products? The difficulty is in marketing.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity" When will we learn to stop making these silly arguments about "scarcity" and understand that the only thing that matters is a position of power? Einstein and Steven Hawking were unique and advanced the entire human civilisation, whats their net work? Is anyone except the mentally ill going to suggest we have more Einsteins that Tim Cook's lying around?

rglullis 5y ago
Ultimately, yes. But where does that power come from?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Does Putin's, Joe Biden's and Edison's power come from the same 'source'? Are you implying power come from scarsity? Do we have scarsity of politicians?
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Do you think that politicians are powerful? Power to me implies having the ability to do things beyond their attributions and expectations. I think that if Biden or even Putin decided to color outside of the lines, they would be removed from their positions without prejudice.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago

> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of ~~Einstein~~ Cook’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. Original quote by Stephen Jay Gould.

kwanbix 5y ago

I imagine Tim Cook is good, but that good? How much of the success is because he does unique work? I mean, I can understand maybe from someone like Steve who was a visionary, but Tim? It looks to me more of an executor than a visionary. I am not saying he is a bad leader or anything, but 750 million dollars is a LOT of money.

snowwrestler 5y ago

There’s only one Tim Cook in the world. But, there’s also only one me in the world. CEOs don’t get paid so much because they are personally unique. Every human is globally unique; it’s a consequence of how complex humans are. CEOs have artificial scarcity because of the hierarchical structure of companies. By definition, there’s only one CEO of Apple. Does that mean that ONLY Tim Cook, out of billions of humans, could have brought Apple to the success they have today? Try this thought exercise: if Tim had stayed at Compaq in 1997 instead of jumping to Apple, what are the chances that he would be CEO today of a Compaq worth $2 trillion? “How much of Apple’s success is personally attributable to Tim Cook” is a perfectly valid question to ask. Unfortunately, answering it is extremely difficult; you’d need to rerun history for each alternate person. But the weight of a process doesn’t guarantee that it finds an optimum. CEOs benefit from a human tendency to attribute systemic qualities to individual things or people. It’s the same reason we say a jacket “is warm” even though all it is doing is trapping the warmth that we created ourselves. We say a “successful CEO” instead of “the CEO of a successful company.” Tim Cook makes incredibly consequential decisions every day. But the reason they are so consequential is mostly because he is the CEO of a huge company. The negative effect of the current thinking on CEO “scarcity” is visible in the absurdly outsized personal rewards that the CEOs of successful companies get. But it’s even more visible in what happens to the CEOs of companies that are not successful. They still get absurd rewards! Adam Neumann also became a billionaire.

ethbr0 5y ago
> CEOs don’t get paid so much because they are personally unique. [...] CEOs have artificial scarcity because of the hierarchical structure of companies. They get paid proportional to the impact of their decisions, not in proportion to their scarcity, skill, etc. If Apple must have someone to make decisions every day that could cost the company millions of dollars, what is the correct amount to compensate that person? And if Apple were instead a $50M market cap company, would that amount change? CEO compensation is a combination of "someone has to be in the chair" + "how important are our decisions?" + "how much can we afford to pay." To reach back to the GP's gripe: if 1 (or even 160,000) assembly workers screw up at their job, it has a much lower impact on Apple as a whole.
5y ago

wayneftw 5y ago

There are plenty of Tim Cooks around. THE Tim Cook is only in his position because of luck. Lucky to be born white white, in America and lucky in timing and connections.

Applejinx 5y ago

Not exactly. Tim Cook is not paid by either the value of his work, or his scarcity. He is paid by the EXPECTATION of the value of his work… kind of like how stock markets work. His pay is an expression of the expectation of a lot of other people. His pay is opinion, not direct value. And you can't pick some random unproven person who may or may not perform as well, and say they are of equivalent OPINION. You could say there's a chance, even a good chance, that they're of equivalent value, but that's a gamble. This is how weird pay disparities develop. It's not in any way that Tim Cook has personally done things worth that much, or that he's personally pressuring all those in charge of paying him to that extent. Intentionally or not, the question Tim Cook presents to those with the power to keep or dismiss him is this: How much are you willing to bet that if you lose me, things break and everything sucks? They are willing to bet $750 million. That's what happened. How much would you be willing to bet? If it's far less, or if you want to kick Tim out anyway, how many are there of you? Are you heavily outnumbered or are you expressing a common opinion?

dham 5y ago
I suppose that's the plot to Trading Places.

howaboutnope 5y ago

> people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity So the less people there are who own the majority of the wealth on the planet, the more that is justified? So their value is what, exactly? Scarcity by itself doesn't mean anything. There are diseases that are extremely rare, that doesn't make it more desirable to have them. The rent seeking, wealth-siphoning people do need the people who build the stuff they live off. That's not true the other way around. You don't have to replace Tim Cook, you just have to get rid of him. (edit: I don't mean Tim Cook personally, it's not intended as criticism of that particular person; but the amount of wealth such people (not to mention the people where the ratio is WAY more off) bind destroys so much productivity in the people that have to struggle as a result, that they would provide more value to the world and the people in it by not existing, than by anything they did or could possibly do)

effingwewt 5y ago

Nothing about any CEO is special other than they haooened to land in the cushiest gig known to man. They effectively just suck all the money out as opposed to the people quite literally making the products. I can't wait until we are over this hump and our future selves are like 'fuck how stupid were we to let one asshole sit at the top and do nothing but PR while we all beat each other ober the scraps.' See the rich have figured out that if you pay people almost enough to live they will spend their lives surviving and won't have time to look up and realize what's happening. Love how you put productivity in quotes as if it's up for debate, and math is now plain silly as it goes against your narrative? Top class.