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> 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 pers

> 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.
- refurb 5y ago
  Unless something's changed, I don't believe the president of the US makes business decisions for all economic activity in the US.
Joeri 5y ago
The counter argument is that Tim Cook is not 1447x more responsible for apple’s success than the average apple employee, because there are no doubt many people within apple who contributed greatly to that success. It is also not a given nobody could take over the CEO job, because people were predicting the downfall of apple when Cook took over from Jobs, and he proved them wrong.
- newyankee 5y ago
  This may be true, but can we argue that founder- primary shareholders who own > 10% of companies and worth billions like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg contribute > 10,000X of average employee. This point can be taken in any direction and a question that society should answer with more data and rationality.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    I can agree about Musk being essential to the success of his companies. Zuckerberg strikes me as more of a "right place at the right time" kind of guy and many people in the same place would have done as well or better. Bezos ... I don't know what to think of that guy. Just because someone is a billionaire doesn't mean they owe those billions to their own skill. Untangling the web of who contributed what and where luck came into play is hard. Reasonable people can disagree, and this is why the outrage exists about CEO pay. The people that are outraged see the CEO's as profiting from the hard work of their workforce, and not contributing in proportion to their pay. Again, reasonable people can disagree about that, and it may be impossible to objectively determine what the truth is.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  It’s not about whether anybody at Apple could take over. It’s whether they could do as good a job. Doing 1% better than the next candidate is worth a lot when you’re running a company worth over a trillion.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    Well, what if there is someone waiting in the wings who could do an even better job? Cook did better than Jobs, and nobody expected him to.
newbie789 5y ago
_Nat_ 5y ago
> 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. That's a good question! I'd speculate that, if we could re-run history with different CEO's for Apple, some might do worse than the current-CEO while some might do better. The huge, undeniable advantage a sitting-CEO has over their hypothetical competition is that the sitting-CEO was the one who got the chance to try. Not to deny that a sitting-CEO had to do stuff to get selected. But if their main advantage over those who weren't selected was that they managed to get selected, then presumably we'd have to credit them with having won the selection-process, not with out-performing their hypothetical competition at the job.
- kfarr 5y ago
  Would this be a version of the fundamental attribution error?

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.
refurb 5y ago
Unless something's changed, I don't believe the president of the US makes business decisions for all economic activity in the US.

Joeri 5y ago

The counter argument is that Tim Cook is not 1447x more responsible for apple’s success than the average apple employee, because there are no doubt many people within apple who contributed greatly to that success. It is also not a given nobody could take over the CEO job, because people were predicting the downfall of apple when Cook took over from Jobs, and he proved them wrong.

newyankee 5y ago
This may be true, but can we argue that founder- primary shareholders who own > 10% of companies and worth billions like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg contribute > 10,000X of average employee. This point can be taken in any direction and a question that society should answer with more data and rationality.
- Joeri 5y ago
  I can agree about Musk being essential to the success of his companies. Zuckerberg strikes me as more of a "right place at the right time" kind of guy and many people in the same place would have done as well or better. Bezos ... I don't know what to think of that guy. Just because someone is a billionaire doesn't mean they owe those billions to their own skill. Untangling the web of who contributed what and where luck came into play is hard. Reasonable people can disagree, and this is why the outrage exists about CEO pay. The people that are outraged see the CEO's as profiting from the hard work of their workforce, and not contributing in proportion to their pay. Again, reasonable people can disagree about that, and it may be impossible to objectively determine what the truth is.
barry-cotter 5y ago
It’s not about whether anybody at Apple could take over. It’s whether they could do as good a job. Doing 1% better than the next candidate is worth a lot when you’re running a company worth over a trillion.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Well, what if there is someone waiting in the wings who could do an even better job? Cook did better than Jobs, and nobody expected him to.

newbie789 5y ago

_Nat_ 5y ago

> 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. That's a good question! I'd speculate that, if we could re-run history with different CEO's for Apple, some might do worse than the current-CEO while some might do better. The huge, undeniable advantage a sitting-CEO has over their hypothetical competition is that the sitting-CEO was the one who got the chance to try. Not to deny that a sitting-CEO had to do stuff to get selected. But if their main advantage over those who weren't selected was that they managed to get selected, then presumably we'd have to credit them with having won the selection-process, not with out-performing their hypothetical competition at the job.

kfarr 5y ago
Would this be a version of the fundamental attribution error?