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> His total remuneration package was worth $98.7m in 2021, compared with $14.8m a year earlier. Cook’s pay was 1,447 times that of the average Apple employee, a

by bArray 5y ago

> His total remuneration package was worth $98.7m in 2021, compared with $14.8m a year earlier. Cook’s pay was 1,447 times that of the average Apple employee, according to a filing disclosed in January. So what's the argument here, that he should be paid less, or that the average employee should be paid more? One would expect the CEO _always_ get paid more than the average employee, a large difference does not mean inequity. For example, if you are the CEO of a supermarket, where employees are paid just above minimum wage on average, the CEO would likely be getting _much_ more. > In January, it briefly became the first company to be valued at $3tn, it became the first $1tn company in 2018. > Last year, Cook took home $3m in salary, and received $82.3m in stock awards, $12m for hitting targets, and another $1.4m for air travel, retirement plan contributions, insurance premiums and other contributions. Sounds like excellent value for money. The stock awards mean the better the job he does, the better his payout. They also come with strings attached (as Elon Musk learned when trying to cash-out). They also have other strings, for example with John Schnatter, who I believe was forced to sell off a majority share in the company he built [1]: > In addition to preventing him from accessing information, the corporation also implemented a "poison pill" strategy in order to limit Schnatter's chances of buying back a majority stake in the company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schnatter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schnatter

jimbob45 5y ago
It’s just that, when you’re the guy that decides everyone’s salary that also has a heavy role in determining your own salary, it looks like you’re flagrantly abusing your power. Ideally, CEOs would be paid entirely in stock options to align their incentives with the company’s. It seems that Cook was paid in stock awards, which is better than straight cash at least.
MuffinFlavored 5y ago
> Cook’s pay was 1,447 times that of the average Apple employee, according to a filing disclosed in January. Numbers like that are so silly to me. Only 1 person can be CEO, let alone CEO of a multi-trillion dollar company. How many other employees at Apple (the ones we're comparing how minuscule their pay compared to the CEO) can run the company as well as he has? Vision, implementation, everything. If they can't do the job, don't talk about how unfair it is that he gets paid 1,447x more than them. Obviously I'm being hyperbolic to set somebody up for some kind of "you're missing the point" rage response. I do genuinely look forward to learning what I'm missing here. I'm worth nothing compared to Jeff Bezos... because I didn't invent and execute Amazon... Cool stat?
- foepys 5y ago
  Let's extend this further and apply it to the president of the US. Would you agree that the president should be paid dozens of million or even a billion USD each year because they kept the trillion USD economy going? The US president has a lot more responsibility than a CEO, including the prevention of eradication of life on Earth.
  - mihaic 5y ago
    I wouldn't have any issue with giving the president a salary of 10 million/year. We as a society really need to do a better job to put our most qualified individuals in running society instead of having them optimize ad revenue.
    - jalk 5y ago
      If only there was a clear indication that higher pay == better qualified candidates
      - mihaic 5y ago
        Sorry if sarcasm doesn't travel over the internet, but are you saying that the correlation between high pay and competence is weak at best? Either way, given how both US parties spend on the presidential election more than Amazon on Lord of the Rings, I do think the winner should get a big fat paycheck. I can only see this reducing conflicts of interest, or at least making them more public.
  - yardstick 5y ago
    Given the US has to fund its operations via debt, I wouldn’t expect them to pay their President much. If they were making tens/hundreds of billions in profits a year then sure, give them a big fat check for eliminating the national deficit.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    You can choose not to invest in Apple. You don't have a choice in paying for the President's salary.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
It's good value for money if you can demonstrate that he's creating a hefty portion of the company's value. That may well be, but I see no good reason to assume that just because he is the CEO he is actually demonstrably responsible for creating 10x the value of an average Apple employee, never mind 100x or 1000x+. What evidence exists to show that he has made the company any money at all?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  One way to find out is to have all the underpaid employees quit and form an Apple competitor, Pear, and see how well that does. (This is not an unreasonable suggestion. People quit and start their own companies all the time. Some prove they were underpaid, some prove they were overpaid.)
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    Hehehe. But how do you know who is underpaid! The same question I was asking about Cook applies to every employee. ...But it feels reasonable to impose at least a somewhat higher burden of proof when someone is about to get paid such a large multiple of the average
madeofpalk 5y ago
> For example, if you are the CEO of a supermarket, where employees are paid just above minimum wage on average, the CEO would likely be getting _much_ more. "Ideally" - if the company can only afford to pay employees minimum wage, the CEO would also be paid lower.
- bArray 5y ago
  In 2021 Tescos employs 367,321 people [1] with a revenue of $75.022B (~£55B) [2]. Assuming employees are paid £8.91 an hour [3] for about 30 hours a week, for 52 weeks, is ~£5.1 in wages alone. ~10% of their revenue (at least) is spent on wages alone. A significant proportion of the remaining ~90% revenue will be spent on produce, transport, stores and other operational costs. In 2020, Tesco chief executive Davis Lewis was paid £6.42m [4], which the article points out "is 355 times that of the lowest-paid average employee". If we take £3m away from him and 'share the wealth', the other 367,320 employees get a bonus of £8.17 per year, or an extra half-penny per hour. So, you have £3m to spend to increase company turnover - do you give each of the low invested interest employees a half-penny for their efforts, or do you give the chief executive manager £3m and motivate him to increase profits? It sucks, but it really seems obvious where the money has to be spent. I imagine the situation with Apple to not be much more different. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/number... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/revenu... [3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rates-for-2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rate... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/13/tesco-chief-executive-handed-642m-pay-package-dave-lewis https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/13/tesco-chief...

by bArray 5y ago

jimbob45 5y ago

It’s just that, when you’re the guy that decides everyone’s salary that also has a heavy role in determining your own salary, it looks like you’re flagrantly abusing your power. Ideally, CEOs would be paid entirely in stock options to align their incentives with the company’s. It seems that Cook was paid in stock awards, which is better than straight cash at least.

MuffinFlavored 5y ago

> Cook’s pay was 1,447 times that of the average Apple employee, according to a filing disclosed in January. Numbers like that are so silly to me. Only 1 person can be CEO, let alone CEO of a multi-trillion dollar company. How many other employees at Apple (the ones we're comparing how minuscule their pay compared to the CEO) can run the company as well as he has? Vision, implementation, everything. If they can't do the job, don't talk about how unfair it is that he gets paid 1,447x more than them. Obviously I'm being hyperbolic to set somebody up for some kind of "you're missing the point" rage response. I do genuinely look forward to learning what I'm missing here. I'm worth nothing compared to Jeff Bezos... because I didn't invent and execute Amazon... Cool stat?

foepys 5y ago
Let's extend this further and apply it to the president of the US. Would you agree that the president should be paid dozens of million or even a billion USD each year because they kept the trillion USD economy going? The US president has a lot more responsibility than a CEO, including the prevention of eradication of life on Earth.
- mihaic 5y ago
  I wouldn't have any issue with giving the president a salary of 10 million/year. We as a society really need to do a better job to put our most qualified individuals in running society instead of having them optimize ad revenue.
  - jalk 5y ago
    If only there was a clear indication that higher pay == better qualified candidates
    - mihaic 5y ago
      Sorry if sarcasm doesn't travel over the internet, but are you saying that the correlation between high pay and competence is weak at best? Either way, given how both US parties spend on the presidential election more than Amazon on Lord of the Rings, I do think the winner should get a big fat paycheck. I can only see this reducing conflicts of interest, or at least making them more public.
- yardstick 5y ago
  Given the US has to fund its operations via debt, I wouldn’t expect them to pay their President much. If they were making tens/hundreds of billions in profits a year then sure, give them a big fat check for eliminating the national deficit.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  You can choose not to invest in Apple. You don't have a choice in paying for the President's salary.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

It's good value for money if you can demonstrate that he's creating a hefty portion of the company's value. That may well be, but I see no good reason to assume that just because he is the CEO he is actually demonstrably responsible for creating 10x the value of an average Apple employee, never mind 100x or 1000x+. What evidence exists to show that he has made the company any money at all?

WalterBright 5y ago
One way to find out is to have all the underpaid employees quit and form an Apple competitor, Pear, and see how well that does. (This is not an unreasonable suggestion. People quit and start their own companies all the time. Some prove they were underpaid, some prove they were overpaid.)
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Hehehe. But how do you know who is underpaid! The same question I was asking about Cook applies to every employee. ...But it feels reasonable to impose at least a somewhat higher burden of proof when someone is about to get paid such a large multiple of the average

madeofpalk 5y ago

> For example, if you are the CEO of a supermarket, where employees are paid just above minimum wage on average, the CEO would likely be getting _much_ more. "Ideally" - if the company can only afford to pay employees minimum wage, the CEO would also be paid lower.

bArray 5y ago
In 2021 Tescos employs 367,321 people [1] with a revenue of $75.022B (~£55B) [2]. Assuming employees are paid £8.91 an hour [3] for about 30 hours a week, for 52 weeks, is ~£5.1 in wages alone. ~10% of their revenue (at least) is spent on wages alone. A significant proportion of the remaining ~90% revenue will be spent on produce, transport, stores and other operational costs. In 2020, Tesco chief executive Davis Lewis was paid £6.42m [4], which the article points out "is 355 times that of the lowest-paid average employee". If we take £3m away from him and 'share the wealth', the other 367,320 employees get a bonus of £8.17 per year, or an extra half-penny per hour. So, you have £3m to spend to increase company turnover - do you give each of the low invested interest employees a half-penny for their efforts, or do you give the chief executive manager £3m and motivate him to increase profits? It sucks, but it really seems obvious where the money has to be spent. I imagine the situation with Apple to not be much more different. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/number-of-employees https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/number... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSCDY/tesco/revenu... [3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rates-for-2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rate... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/13/tesco-chief-executive-handed-642m-pay-package-dave-lewis https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/13/tesco-chief...