37 ms·

Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

149 points by vfclists 4y ago

vfclists 4y ago
When executive pay is based on stock value which depends on keeping costs down, what relief can there be for employees and subcontractors?
- atoav 4y ago
  Laws.
  - mhoad 4y ago
    And improved negation power by continuing to unionize.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Stock value depends on growth rate and overall profitability much more than on simply "keeping costs down". Shareholders invest in Amazon for growth and (now) for profit. Compensating the CEO based on how effectively they deliver that seems like a pretty dang obvious strategy for shareholders to support.
- GreenPlastic 4y ago
  The purpose of a company isn't to employ people. It's to take raw inputs, including employee labor, and turn that into outputs that people want. Employee relief comes in the form of voting with their feet or if they're critical inputs into what the black box produces
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    This is why whenever a company claims to be "creating jobs" they're talking about a byproduct they're often trying to reduce/stop not a goal of their business. IMHO "job creation" rhetoric can be dismissed out of hand when discussing taxation and regulation.
    - triceratops 4y ago
      Pretty much this. "We created jobs" is just code for "We were forced to spend some money to make even more money".
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Amusing. The purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in. I mean, this is still the exact reason politicians cite when providing incentives to companies - bringing jobs to their cities/states. I'm pretty sure I don't like this new definition; it feels like it's based on greed, not value.
    - jimbokun 4y ago
      When was this time?
    - yowlingcat 4y ago
      That's not historically accurate. Historically, the purpose of a company was to be a vehicle that a passive partner could invest capital into an enterprise providing a return on investment, such that an active partner (who did not) could manage it [1]. I do not see historical support for your claim that the purpose of a company was "to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in" even if that would be an ideal social outcome (and one which I'd personally prefer to see everywhere). [1] https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/11/18/a-brief-history-of-the-corporate-form-and-why-it-matters/ https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/11/18/a-brief-history...
      - bigfudge 4y ago
        The reason companies are given legal standing and privilege is because they serve a useful social function, in addition to being a legal nicety for investment. If companies don’t serve useful social purposes we can change the law to withdraw those privileges.
        yowlingcat 4y ago
        That's incorrect. They are given legal standing and privilege because they serve a useful /economic/ function (tax base). The social function is downstream from this, and it's also what creates friction to actually /change the law/ to withdraw those privileges -- you do it at the risk of hemorrhaging that tax base which funds the governing apparatus.
  - bo1024 4y ago
    Says who? I think the idea of "purpose" of a company is very nebulous and interacts opaquely with: the "incentives" of a company, the societal purpose for having companies, the mission statement of a particular company, etc. I would say the purpose of a company is mostly to make money for the owners of the company, which is not the exact same as what you said.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    The question is: Is that the way it has to be? Can't we build a society which is better? Can't we build a society where "sane" employment is a valid and wanted output and not only maximising shareholder value?
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Theoretically or in practice? Practically, we haven't yet developed anti-fragile socio-ideological technologies which can out compete shareholder-maximization ideologies(SMIs). Instead SMIs are adept at castrating anti-SMIs and rendering them inert before they can establish a foothold. The world we enter into today is the product of this anti-SMI castration. You can even see echos of the great SMI war play out whenever SMI granades are casually lobbed in the bushwar of this discussion.
      - bigfudge 4y ago
        Not in the US, but Germany and Scandinavian countries show this very much is a possibility. Medium sized firms in Germany just don’t behave the same way they do in the US and large enterprises are subject to far more state intervention. And it still works fine.
        kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Yes. My comment was very US-centric. You're right; the outcomes are demonstrably true. Board-level representation is a good example of this. Maybe asking rhetorically in a different way - what is the series of chess moves where that goal is achieved?
  - triceratops 4y ago
    It's to take raw inputs and turn it into money. No one really wants telemarketing calls, or patent lawsuits but companies "produce" those things regardless to make money.
- diob 4y ago
  This is why we need more employee ownership of companies.
  - hegemon8 4y ago
    committees cannot run conglomerates.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Boards of Directors exist. I bet a lot of companies already have more non-employee shareholders than they have employees. It doesn't seem to be a problem.
ctvo 4y ago
> Jassy's executive compensation package, which is tied to Amazon stock price and mostly delivered as stock awards over a multi-year period, was $212 million in 2021. They used "multi-year" here over the actual timeline: 10 years. It sounds a lot less outrageous that his pay is heavily based on the stock price and comes out to be ~21 million a year as the head of one of the largest tech companies in the world. Here are the details: > Virtually all of Jassy’s 2021 comp — $211.9 million — was in restricted stock that vests over the next 10 years, according to Amazon’s proxy statement filed Friday. His base salary was $175,000, unchanged from the two prior years; in addition, Amazon paid $589,149 in security expenses for the CEO. From Variety https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/amazon-andy-jassy-2021-compensation-stock-1235220961/ https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/amazon-andy-jassy-2021... Edit: > The Amazon board’s compensation committee said in the filing that it intends for Jassy’s stock award, which vests through 2031, “to serve as a long-term incentive for Mr. Jassy, and, accordingly, believes it should be viewed as compensation over the 10-year term and not solely as compensation for 2021.” Doesn't sound like he'll get too many more RSUs yearly.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  But does he get another 200M package that vests over ten years next year?
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    Assuming that Amazon's executive compensation continues to function as it has for the last decade-plus, no.
  - mjw1007 4y ago
    And does he still get the 2021 package if he doesn't continue working in that role for the following nine years?
    - devman0 4y ago
      Generally that isn't how RSU vesting schedules works. You only keep what has already vested if you leave.
RONROC 4y ago
[flagged]
- la6472 4y ago
  Over 10 years
- bitshiftfaced 4y ago
  Why not?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > should ... truly fair ... should be ... acceptable How do you determine these absolutes? Why is your 'should' and 'fair' set at whatever value you're using, and not whatever value someone else determined? The only 'fair' is what someone is willing to pay. If you aren't willing to pay someone 200m... then don't. Why do you care if someone else is willing and does?
  - ssklash 4y ago
    Fair in the sense OP is using it is in the moral sense, not the economic sense. Paying someone tens of millions of dollars when the lowest paid workers in that company make ten bucks an hour may be "fair" in the economic sense, in that it's what the market will bear, but I don't think it is any way fair in a moral sense. I think too often people let the "morals" of the market replace actual human morals, and assume that because the market is "free" or essentially some uncontrollable algorithm, anything it does is moral by human standards. It's easy to throw your hands up and say "oh, well that's just what the market will bear" and assume all moral responsibility has been accounted for. But I disagree.
    - conductr 4y ago
      If you think it’s fair in an “economic” sense, consider that Amazon employs 1.1 million people. That’s a decent sized city and a very complex economy. Austin Texas for example is about 10% smaller and home of both Elon Musk and a large number of people who could be making more money at amazon’s lowest paying job.
karaterobot 4y ago
[in small text] ignoring that it's almost all stock, vested over 10 years, and pretending we can predict the price of the stock 10 years from now [in large text] Amazon is paying its CEO a salary of $212 MILLION DOLLARS!!!
- mdoms 4y ago
jaywalk 4y ago
Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?
- giantg2 4y ago
  Like most things in corporate America, you assemble of team and give them the goal of overseeing the due diligence. They won't look too hard so they won't find anything. They're write up how some low friction "solution" that already exists addresses the issue. Basically, corporate politics as usual - they call the shots, everyone else tows the line, they dress up the results as a win.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Hah, auditors get paid by their clients. There's a real conflict of interest there. Fines are usually a fraction of what the audit fees over years are as well. Good luck finding fraud with that kind of system.
- joecot 4y ago
  This is most certainly targeted towards AWS being used by ICE. And not just in a generic way of them hosting ICE servers, but with ICE using Amazon Rekognition to identify undocumented immigrants (and allegedly AWS had meetings with ICE to convince them to use the service). The human rights violations come up when you talk about kids being separated from their families and then straight up lost, and the various other immoral things ICE does. This isn't something Amazon isn't aware of, I went to the AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and every few minutes the Keynote got interrupted by another protester yelling "Cut ties with ICE" and getting dragged out of the room. I don't think I was the only one quickly googling on their phones to figure out what they were talking about. I couldn't move my previous company off of AWS, but I moved all my personal servers and I steered my new company away from them.
VikingCoder 4y ago
Man, I can't even imagine how much better Amazon will perform, than if they'd hired a CEO who was willing to work for just $211m. EDIT: If someone has a more recent, or somehow better, graph than this one [1], then I'm all ears. [1] : https://slate.com/business/2014/07/ceo-pay-for-performance-this-graph-shows-why-it-s-a-sham.html https://slate.com/business/2014/07/ceo-pay-for-performance-t...
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  How much better will you perform when they boost your pay 0.005%?
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    You mean how much better would I perform for an extra million dollars? How much better could I perform with a team of assistants each making six figures? Why on earth should one accept a percent-based framing of these ludicrous numbers?
  - VikingCoder 4y ago
    What's $1,000,000 / $212,000,000 again? Is it 0.47%? If you're going to mock me over math, then at least don't be off by a factor of a hundred. :)
- MisterPea 4y ago
  ?? There's a handful of people in the world with the level of insight into amazon's internals as Jassy has. And compared to most in the article, Jassy's comp is very shareholder friendly. He's paid 99% in RSUs - his income already dropped about a third from when the comp was agreed.
skeeter2020 4y ago
Joining the 250 Club* is a big deal. Jassy just... missed out. *250K total comp
gepardi 4y ago
Investors could destroy this company overnight if they sold stock; time to put money where their mouths are?
- scoofy 4y ago
  That's... not how secondary markets work at all
- missedthecue 4y ago
  If everyone clicked "sell amazon" in their brokerage account right now, Amazon would still have millions of people log on to their site and buy stuff tomorrow.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
re 4y ago
Anyone know if there's an easy way to find the answers to either of these questions? 1) Has the Amazon board ever recommended voting yes on any shareholder proposals? 2) Have any Amazon shareholder proposals ever been approved by investors?
weezin 4y ago
21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged.
- bluetidepro 4y ago
  > 21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged. Or imagine this... they (athletes and CEOs) are ALL grossly overpaid. WOAH!! How out of touch with reality are you, if you think that's acceptable for any human to make that kind of money when majority of the world can hardly afford food.
  - sushisource 4y ago
    But, it's a good point that you rarely hear much in the public discourse about how much NFL players make, where tech CEOs are a constant target of this sort of anger. Mind you, I agree with you on the general point, but turns out people don't act terribly rationally about who they get angry at for making too much money.
    - beeboop 4y ago
      This is actually a very interesting point. I think what this points out is that society thinks an athlete who is good at throwing a ball earns their money more than a tech executive, and honestly I'm not sure I disagree. One gets to where they are with extreme practice, talent, dedication, and typically a generous portion of privilege while growing up. The other (tech execs) often get where they are by lying, cheating, manipulating, and with nepotism.
      - reasonabl_human 4y ago
        I seriously cannot tell if this is satire
black_13 4y ago
xmonkee 4y ago
- jrndndjnd 4y ago
  [flagged]
MichaelZuo 4y ago
Clickbait title, 'nuke ethics overhaul' really means shareholders turn down activist proposal. And this thread turned into mostly envious ranting pretty fast. A lot of folks aren't even trying to have actual discussions, just mindless ranting past one another, behaving like crabs in a bucket, etc... It even makes me doubt if it's all organic or if their are paid trolls from competitors as well in the mix. Considering that Amazon, and Jeff Bezos, are not known to give out lavish comp. packages willy-nilly, it seems like more could be learned investigating why this guy is worth $21 million a year.
gtvwill 4y ago
Lol this should be illegal. Modern day dragons hoarding wealth. Backed by delusional dreamers who think it's acceptable.
spoonjim 4y ago
What I find telling about all of the critiques of CEO pay, billionaire taxation, etc. is that there is almost no discussion of how to get maximum impact for the monies taxed. People don't want to tax Jeff Bezos because they have really great ideas on how to spend public money to achieve great ends -- if they did, they'd be more interested in how to better spend the entire government budget rather than increasing it by fractions of a percentage point.

149 points by vfclists 4y ago

When executive pay is based on stock value which depends on keeping costs down, what relief can there be for employees and subcontractors?

atoav 4y ago
Laws.
- mhoad 4y ago
  And improved negation power by continuing to unionize.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 4y ago
Stock value depends on growth rate and overall profitability much more than on simply "keeping costs down". Shareholders invest in Amazon for growth and (now) for profit. Compensating the CEO based on how effectively they deliver that seems like a pretty dang obvious strategy for shareholders to support.
GreenPlastic 4y ago
The purpose of a company isn't to employ people. It's to take raw inputs, including employee labor, and turn that into outputs that people want. Employee relief comes in the form of voting with their feet or if they're critical inputs into what the black box produces
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  This is why whenever a company claims to be "creating jobs" they're talking about a byproduct they're often trying to reduce/stop not a goal of their business. IMHO "job creation" rhetoric can be dismissed out of hand when discussing taxation and regulation.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    Pretty much this. "We created jobs" is just code for "We were forced to spend some money to make even more money".
- falcolas 4y ago
  Amusing. The purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in. I mean, this is still the exact reason politicians cite when providing incentives to companies - bringing jobs to their cities/states. I'm pretty sure I don't like this new definition; it feels like it's based on greed, not value.
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    When was this time?
  - yowlingcat 4y ago
    That's not historically accurate. Historically, the purpose of a company was to be a vehicle that a passive partner could invest capital into an enterprise providing a return on investment, such that an active partner (who did not) could manage it [1]. I do not see historical support for your claim that the purpose of a company was "to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in" even if that would be an ideal social outcome (and one which I'd personally prefer to see everywhere). [1] https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/11/18/a-brief-history-of-the-corporate-form-and-why-it-matters/ https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/11/18/a-brief-history...
    - bigfudge 4y ago
      The reason companies are given legal standing and privilege is because they serve a useful social function, in addition to being a legal nicety for investment. If companies don’t serve useful social purposes we can change the law to withdraw those privileges.
      - yowlingcat 4y ago
        That's incorrect. They are given legal standing and privilege because they serve a useful /economic/ function (tax base). The social function is downstream from this, and it's also what creates friction to actually /change the law/ to withdraw those privileges -- you do it at the risk of hemorrhaging that tax base which funds the governing apparatus.
- bo1024 4y ago
  Says who? I think the idea of "purpose" of a company is very nebulous and interacts opaquely with: the "incentives" of a company, the societal purpose for having companies, the mission statement of a particular company, etc. I would say the purpose of a company is mostly to make money for the owners of the company, which is not the exact same as what you said.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  The question is: Is that the way it has to be? Can't we build a society which is better? Can't we build a society where "sane" employment is a valid and wanted output and not only maximising shareholder value?
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Theoretically or in practice? Practically, we haven't yet developed anti-fragile socio-ideological technologies which can out compete shareholder-maximization ideologies(SMIs). Instead SMIs are adept at castrating anti-SMIs and rendering them inert before they can establish a foothold. The world we enter into today is the product of this anti-SMI castration. You can even see echos of the great SMI war play out whenever SMI granades are casually lobbed in the bushwar of this discussion.
    - bigfudge 4y ago
      Not in the US, but Germany and Scandinavian countries show this very much is a possibility. Medium sized firms in Germany just don’t behave the same way they do in the US and large enterprises are subject to far more state intervention. And it still works fine.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Yes. My comment was very US-centric. You're right; the outcomes are demonstrably true. Board-level representation is a good example of this. Maybe asking rhetorically in a different way - what is the series of chess moves where that goal is achieved?
- triceratops 4y ago
  It's to take raw inputs and turn it into money. No one really wants telemarketing calls, or patent lawsuits but companies "produce" those things regardless to make money.
diob 4y ago
This is why we need more employee ownership of companies.
- hegemon8 4y ago
  committees cannot run conglomerates.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Boards of Directors exist. I bet a lot of companies already have more non-employee shareholders than they have employees. It doesn't seem to be a problem.

ctvo 4y ago

> Jassy's executive compensation package, which is tied to Amazon stock price and mostly delivered as stock awards over a multi-year period, was $212 million in 2021. They used "multi-year" here over the actual timeline: 10 years. It sounds a lot less outrageous that his pay is heavily based on the stock price and comes out to be ~21 million a year as the head of one of the largest tech companies in the world. Here are the details: > Virtually all of Jassy’s 2021 comp — $211.9 million — was in restricted stock that vests over the next 10 years, according to Amazon’s proxy statement filed Friday. His base salary was $175,000, unchanged from the two prior years; in addition, Amazon paid $589,149 in security expenses for the CEO. From Variety https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/amazon-andy-jassy-2021-compensation-stock-1235220961/ https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/amazon-andy-jassy-2021... Edit: > The Amazon board’s compensation committee said in the filing that it intends for Jassy’s stock award, which vests through 2031, “to serve as a long-term incentive for Mr. Jassy, and, accordingly, believes it should be viewed as compensation over the 10-year term and not solely as compensation for 2021.” Doesn't sound like he'll get too many more RSUs yearly.

colechristensen 4y ago
But does he get another 200M package that vests over ten years next year?
- __derek__ 4y ago
  Assuming that Amazon's executive compensation continues to function as it has for the last decade-plus, no.
- mjw1007 4y ago
  And does he still get the 2021 package if he doesn't continue working in that role for the following nine years?
  - devman0 4y ago
    Generally that isn't how RSU vesting schedules works. You only keep what has already vested if you leave.

RONROC 4y ago

[flagged]

la6472 4y ago
Over 10 years
bitshiftfaced 4y ago
Why not?
chrisseaton 4y ago
> should ... truly fair ... should be ... acceptable How do you determine these absolutes? Why is your 'should' and 'fair' set at whatever value you're using, and not whatever value someone else determined? The only 'fair' is what someone is willing to pay. If you aren't willing to pay someone 200m... then don't. Why do you care if someone else is willing and does?
- ssklash 4y ago
  Fair in the sense OP is using it is in the moral sense, not the economic sense. Paying someone tens of millions of dollars when the lowest paid workers in that company make ten bucks an hour may be "fair" in the economic sense, in that it's what the market will bear, but I don't think it is any way fair in a moral sense. I think too often people let the "morals" of the market replace actual human morals, and assume that because the market is "free" or essentially some uncontrollable algorithm, anything it does is moral by human standards. It's easy to throw your hands up and say "oh, well that's just what the market will bear" and assume all moral responsibility has been accounted for. But I disagree.
  - conductr 4y ago
    If you think it’s fair in an “economic” sense, consider that Amazon employs 1.1 million people. That’s a decent sized city and a very complex economy. Austin Texas for example is about 10% smaller and home of both Elon Musk and a large number of people who could be making more money at amazon’s lowest paying job.

karaterobot 4y ago

[in small text] ignoring that it's almost all stock, vested over 10 years, and pretending we can predict the price of the stock 10 years from now [in large text] Amazon is paying its CEO a salary of $212 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

mdoms 4y ago

jaywalk 4y ago

Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

giantg2 4y ago
Like most things in corporate America, you assemble of team and give them the goal of overseeing the due diligence. They won't look too hard so they won't find anything. They're write up how some low friction "solution" that already exists addresses the issue. Basically, corporate politics as usual - they call the shots, everyone else tows the line, they dress up the results as a win.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Hah, auditors get paid by their clients. There's a real conflict of interest there. Fines are usually a fraction of what the audit fees over years are as well. Good luck finding fraud with that kind of system.
joecot 4y ago
This is most certainly targeted towards AWS being used by ICE. And not just in a generic way of them hosting ICE servers, but with ICE using Amazon Rekognition to identify undocumented immigrants (and allegedly AWS had meetings with ICE to convince them to use the service). The human rights violations come up when you talk about kids being separated from their families and then straight up lost, and the various other immoral things ICE does. This isn't something Amazon isn't aware of, I went to the AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and every few minutes the Keynote got interrupted by another protester yelling "Cut ties with ICE" and getting dragged out of the room. I don't think I was the only one quickly googling on their phones to figure out what they were talking about. I couldn't move my previous company off of AWS, but I moved all my personal servers and I steered my new company away from them.

VikingCoder 4y ago

Man, I can't even imagine how much better Amazon will perform, than if they'd hired a CEO who was willing to work for just $211m. EDIT: If someone has a more recent, or somehow better, graph than this one [1], then I'm all ears. [1] : https://slate.com/business/2014/07/ceo-pay-for-performance-this-graph-shows-why-it-s-a-sham.html https://slate.com/business/2014/07/ceo-pay-for-performance-t...

celeritascelery 4y ago
How much better will you perform when they boost your pay 0.005%?
- kixiQu 4y ago
  You mean how much better would I perform for an extra million dollars? How much better could I perform with a team of assistants each making six figures? Why on earth should one accept a percent-based framing of these ludicrous numbers?
- VikingCoder 4y ago
  What's $1,000,000 / $212,000,000 again? Is it 0.47%? If you're going to mock me over math, then at least don't be off by a factor of a hundred. :)
MisterPea 4y ago
?? There's a handful of people in the world with the level of insight into amazon's internals as Jassy has. And compared to most in the article, Jassy's comp is very shareholder friendly. He's paid 99% in RSUs - his income already dropped about a third from when the comp was agreed.

skeeter2020 4y ago

Joining the 250 Club* is a big deal. Jassy just... missed out. *250K total comp

gepardi 4y ago

Investors could destroy this company overnight if they sold stock; time to put money where their mouths are?

scoofy 4y ago
That's... not how secondary markets work at all
missedthecue 4y ago
If everyone clicked "sell amazon" in their brokerage account right now, Amazon would still have millions of people log on to their site and buy stuff tomorrow.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

re 4y ago

Anyone know if there's an easy way to find the answers to either of these questions? 1) Has the Amazon board ever recommended voting yes on any shareholder proposals? 2) Have any Amazon shareholder proposals ever been approved by investors?

weezin 4y ago

21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged.

bluetidepro 4y ago
> 21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged. Or imagine this... they (athletes and CEOs) are ALL grossly overpaid. WOAH!! How out of touch with reality are you, if you think that's acceptable for any human to make that kind of money when majority of the world can hardly afford food.
- sushisource 4y ago
  But, it's a good point that you rarely hear much in the public discourse about how much NFL players make, where tech CEOs are a constant target of this sort of anger. Mind you, I agree with you on the general point, but turns out people don't act terribly rationally about who they get angry at for making too much money.
  - beeboop 4y ago
    This is actually a very interesting point. I think what this points out is that society thinks an athlete who is good at throwing a ball earns their money more than a tech executive, and honestly I'm not sure I disagree. One gets to where they are with extreme practice, talent, dedication, and typically a generous portion of privilege while growing up. The other (tech execs) often get where they are by lying, cheating, manipulating, and with nepotism.
    - reasonabl_human 4y ago
      I seriously cannot tell if this is satire

black_13 4y ago

xmonkee 4y ago

jrndndjnd 4y ago
[flagged]

MichaelZuo 4y ago

Clickbait title, 'nuke ethics overhaul' really means shareholders turn down activist proposal. And this thread turned into mostly envious ranting pretty fast. A lot of folks aren't even trying to have actual discussions, just mindless ranting past one another, behaving like crabs in a bucket, etc... It even makes me doubt if it's all organic or if their are paid trolls from competitors as well in the mix. Considering that Amazon, and Jeff Bezos, are not known to give out lavish comp. packages willy-nilly, it seems like more could be learned investigating why this guy is worth $21 million a year.

gtvwill 4y ago

Lol this should be illegal. Modern day dragons hoarding wealth. Backed by delusional dreamers who think it's acceptable.

spoonjim 4y ago

What I find telling about all of the critiques of CEO pay, billionaire taxation, etc. is that there is almost no discussion of how to get maximum impact for the monies taxed. People don't want to tax Jeff Bezos because they have really great ideas on how to spend public money to achieve great ends -- if they did, they'd be more interested in how to better spend the entire government budget rather than increasing it by fractions of a percentage point.