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That $212 million was starkly contrasted by the next point in the article, that Warehouse workers typically make $15/hr. It would take about 7,000 years working

That $212 million was starkly contrasted by the next point in the article, that Warehouse workers typically make $15/hr. It would take about 7,000 years working that wage (full-time) to make the same $212,000,000. It's still a _huge_ gulf, whether the CEO's compensation is in one year or one decade.

Auracle 4y ago
Right, but if you were to take all $212 million and divvy it up to the nearly 1 million US Amazon employees it wouldn’t go very far.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
  I see this theme a lot when this topic comes up, and I feel it misses the point. Does the CEO provide 700x the value (based on $21.2M / 2000 hrs = $10600 "hourly rate") of a warehouse worker earning $15/hr? They absolutely provide critical input and decisions at the helm of a large ship, but if you break down their input versus the input of everyone under them...is it actually such a huge disparity of mental and physical effort to warrant a 700x difference in pay? Secondly, if the company wasn't spending that much on CEO compensation, the money could go plenty of places beyond sprinkling pennies at warehouse workers. Infrastructure investment, product development, or other ways to grow the business. Employee wellness programs, crisis/hardship assistance, etc to support the workforce. Looking at it as only CEO salary divided by employee count is a very limiting perspective that ignores a lot of potential ways that pile of money can be used besides making a very rich person a bit richer.
  - egberts1 4y ago
    For a penny an hour by a CEO who performs 400x that of an average Amazon employee, that’s a bargain.
    - gtvwill 4y ago
      Your dreaming or delusional if you think a CEOs output is 400x someone else's. Dangerously delusional.
      - over_bridge 4y ago
        CEOs simply control more powerful tools so their output is multiplied. Someone driving a tractor might produce 400x the output of someone with hand tools, but its not because of the person, its the tool. Swap the two people and there will still be a 400x difference in output. It doesn't mean the tractor driver, or business leader is some sort of outlier genius.
        reasonabl_human 4y ago
        Finally someone sane. It’s not about stacking 400x boxes- it’s about force multiplication and impact
        archagon 4y ago
        By that metric, world leaders ought to have billion dollar salaries.
        egberts1 4y ago
        CEO is about driving a PERSON (of which a corporate entity is also a US person) and can literally direct the corporate into any direction. A political leader is constrained by numerous laws. No, they do not deserve billions of dollars.
        Auracle 4y ago
        Right. Just like the CEO, a fair amount of people could theoretically drive the tractor, but few have the experience. If you let the wrong person drive the tractor, they might just drive it right in to a river.
        gtvwill 4y ago
        Eh your only focused on output from CEO end for estimates and your not doing it well. As mentioned by someone earlier I think the numbers were what 7000 years before a worker on 15 an hour doing 10 hours a day can equate to the 212 million pay packet mentioned? CEO wage is way out of proportion. The CEO doesn't provide 7000 years worth of min wage labor output over his 10 year pay package. Your cooked if you think it's even close. CEOs can be replaced by algorithms largely. And society will be all the better once they are. Their job literally is just decision making based on input and output of information.
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    I would be willing to bet the CEOs of these ultra-large, ultra-powerful tech firms provide far more than 700x the value of their average worker.
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > I would be willing to bet the CEOs of these ultra-large, ultra-powerful tech firms provide far more than 700x the value of their average worker. This assertion is amusing given this ultra-powerful tech firm has been systematically wasting resources to ensure their employees are both worked to death and not paid even a living wage.
    - gtvwill 4y ago
      Eh I'd bet you could train just about any worker to do the role of CEO because it's barely work at all. Source shovelling sand all day is 1000x more difficult than sitting in an air conditioned space hypothesizing about bs and making a bunch of decisions. Have done both. Running a company is in no way as difficult as being on the tools. Come do a days labour for me concreting and tell me your CEO works harder. Come do 13 hour shifts of a drill rig lifting 16 ton of steel by hand and tell me your job as a CEO is harder. Lol you'll die from exhaustion in one job and maybe get slightly disgruntled in the other.
    - tacocataco 4y ago
      Do you believe modern corporations are 35+ times more complicated than the corporations in the 1950s when CEO to worker pay was 20-1? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_ratio
  - Auracle 4y ago
    I bet there are far more than 700 people that can do the warehouse worker's job for every 1 that both can and is qualified to do the CEO's job. The point of that theme is primary to point out that the worker's wages aren't low because of the C-level pay. The worker's wages are low because almost anyone can do their job.
avalys 4y ago
Amazon has 950,000 of those warehouse workers. If you completely zeroed out Jassey’s stock $212 million stock award and instead distributed it among those workers, their hourly rate would change from $15 / hour to $15.01 per hour.
- bumby 4y ago
  You're off by an order of magnitude, but the point still stands. Assuming 2k hours a year, the pay would raise by about $0.11/hr per warehouse employee or about $223 per year per employee.
  - avalys 4y ago
    The $212 million is over 10 years, so there is your order of magnitude.
    - bumby 4y ago
      Ah, good point. Thanks for correcting
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    $223 is significant for a minimum wage worker. Whereas these millions are a bucket in the ocean for the CEO. I see it as nothing less than narcissistic supply for the CEO.
    - bumby 4y ago
      My calculation was wrong because it's spread out over 10 years. So it's really only about $0.50 extra per week. Plus, they are making 2x minimum wage. I'm not claiming that is either adequate or not, but they shouldn't be characterized as all "minimum wage workers." (locality dependent, for sure).
cbozeman 4y ago
I often hear this and let me just pose this question... Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R from The Teaching Company Plus' (now Wondrium)'s "Learning Statistics: Concepts and Applications in R". 24 lectures. 12 hours of content. Resources available for download. It was the springboard that allowed me to seek out deeper resources and expand my knowledge. Total price, $10.81 for a one month subscription. You can probably find a lot of equally good free courses at other websites. My point being this. The information is out there for people willing to seek it out. I came up poor. Really poor. Like, we're having mayonnaise sandwiches tonight for dinner poor. And if you're wondering what's in a mayonnaise sandwich, it's in the name. Mayonnaise. Bread. Period. Now maybe we need to cultivate a sense of curiosity in our students, so even the ones who end up as warehouse workers at an Amazon can one day aspire to something greater, but at some point, people have to take some responsibility for how their own lives are turning out. It's really easy to point the finger to society, to the government, to the person next door to you, but at the end of the day, most people have the tools (smartphones, cheap laptops), and they absolutely have the time. But the drive is something that no government program or no private initiative can give them - that you have to pull out of your gut yourself. And if you can't do that, you're doomed to a life of mediocrity. Choose your hard.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R (...) Enough with this pseudo-moralistic perpetuation of abuse, specially the tone-deaf ones based on survivorship bias. Just because someone is not able to win the lottery that does not mean they have no right to earn a living wage that allows them a honest living. Aren't we supposed to live in a civilized society? Why are you unwittingly normalizing exploitation and the widespread abuse that bars the majority of families from having a decent life? If not for the parents who can't be self-taught engineers, why not for their children? Are those also expected to endure hardship? Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard?
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    > Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard? Yes. Because we have no idea how to define 'fair'. I hear 'fair wage' over and over but no one can ever explain to me what makes the wage 'fair' other than, "I have a job and I should be able to live on that single job!" Okay... why? Where is it written that you should be able to live on a single job? As soon as you can come up with an argument that's not emotive, and is instead quantitative, I'll listen. Right now, all I hear from people parroting this is that, "It's not right!"

Auracle 4y ago

Right, but if you were to take all $212 million and divvy it up to the nearly 1 million US Amazon employees it wouldn’t go very far.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
I see this theme a lot when this topic comes up, and I feel it misses the point. Does the CEO provide 700x the value (based on $21.2M / 2000 hrs = $10600 "hourly rate") of a warehouse worker earning $15/hr? They absolutely provide critical input and decisions at the helm of a large ship, but if you break down their input versus the input of everyone under them...is it actually such a huge disparity of mental and physical effort to warrant a 700x difference in pay? Secondly, if the company wasn't spending that much on CEO compensation, the money could go plenty of places beyond sprinkling pennies at warehouse workers. Infrastructure investment, product development, or other ways to grow the business. Employee wellness programs, crisis/hardship assistance, etc to support the workforce. Looking at it as only CEO salary divided by employee count is a very limiting perspective that ignores a lot of potential ways that pile of money can be used besides making a very rich person a bit richer.
- egberts1 4y ago
  For a penny an hour by a CEO who performs 400x that of an average Amazon employee, that’s a bargain.
  - gtvwill 4y ago
    Your dreaming or delusional if you think a CEOs output is 400x someone else's. Dangerously delusional.
    - over_bridge 4y ago
      CEOs simply control more powerful tools so their output is multiplied. Someone driving a tractor might produce 400x the output of someone with hand tools, but its not because of the person, its the tool. Swap the two people and there will still be a 400x difference in output. It doesn't mean the tractor driver, or business leader is some sort of outlier genius.
      - reasonabl_human 4y ago
        Finally someone sane. It’s not about stacking 400x boxes- it’s about force multiplication and impact
        archagon 4y ago
        By that metric, world leaders ought to have billion dollar salaries.
        egberts1 4y ago
        CEO is about driving a PERSON (of which a corporate entity is also a US person) and can literally direct the corporate into any direction. A political leader is constrained by numerous laws. No, they do not deserve billions of dollars.
      - Auracle 4y ago
        Right. Just like the CEO, a fair amount of people could theoretically drive the tractor, but few have the experience. If you let the wrong person drive the tractor, they might just drive it right in to a river.
      - gtvwill 4y ago
        Eh your only focused on output from CEO end for estimates and your not doing it well. As mentioned by someone earlier I think the numbers were what 7000 years before a worker on 15 an hour doing 10 hours a day can equate to the 212 million pay packet mentioned? CEO wage is way out of proportion. The CEO doesn't provide 7000 years worth of min wage labor output over his 10 year pay package. Your cooked if you think it's even close. CEOs can be replaced by algorithms largely. And society will be all the better once they are. Their job literally is just decision making based on input and output of information.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  I would be willing to bet the CEOs of these ultra-large, ultra-powerful tech firms provide far more than 700x the value of their average worker.
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > I would be willing to bet the CEOs of these ultra-large, ultra-powerful tech firms provide far more than 700x the value of their average worker. This assertion is amusing given this ultra-powerful tech firm has been systematically wasting resources to ensure their employees are both worked to death and not paid even a living wage.
  - gtvwill 4y ago
    Eh I'd bet you could train just about any worker to do the role of CEO because it's barely work at all. Source shovelling sand all day is 1000x more difficult than sitting in an air conditioned space hypothesizing about bs and making a bunch of decisions. Have done both. Running a company is in no way as difficult as being on the tools. Come do a days labour for me concreting and tell me your CEO works harder. Come do 13 hour shifts of a drill rig lifting 16 ton of steel by hand and tell me your job as a CEO is harder. Lol you'll die from exhaustion in one job and maybe get slightly disgruntled in the other.
  - tacocataco 4y ago
    Do you believe modern corporations are 35+ times more complicated than the corporations in the 1950s when CEO to worker pay was 20-1? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_ratio
- Auracle 4y ago
  I bet there are far more than 700 people that can do the warehouse worker's job for every 1 that both can and is qualified to do the CEO's job. The point of that theme is primary to point out that the worker's wages aren't low because of the C-level pay. The worker's wages are low because almost anyone can do their job.

avalys 4y ago

Amazon has 950,000 of those warehouse workers. If you completely zeroed out Jassey’s stock $212 million stock award and instead distributed it among those workers, their hourly rate would change from $15 / hour to $15.01 per hour.

bumby 4y ago
You're off by an order of magnitude, but the point still stands. Assuming 2k hours a year, the pay would raise by about $0.11/hr per warehouse employee or about $223 per year per employee.
- avalys 4y ago
  The $212 million is over 10 years, so there is your order of magnitude.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Ah, good point. Thanks for correcting
- Fnoord 4y ago
  $223 is significant for a minimum wage worker. Whereas these millions are a bucket in the ocean for the CEO. I see it as nothing less than narcissistic supply for the CEO.
  - bumby 4y ago
    My calculation was wrong because it's spread out over 10 years. So it's really only about $0.50 extra per week. Plus, they are making 2x minimum wage. I'm not claiming that is either adequate or not, but they shouldn't be characterized as all "minimum wage workers." (locality dependent, for sure).

cbozeman 4y ago

I often hear this and let me just pose this question... Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R from The Teaching Company Plus' (now Wondrium)'s "Learning Statistics: Concepts and Applications in R". 24 lectures. 12 hours of content. Resources available for download. It was the springboard that allowed me to seek out deeper resources and expand my knowledge. Total price, $10.81 for a one month subscription. You can probably find a lot of equally good free courses at other websites. My point being this. The information is out there for people willing to seek it out. I came up poor. Really poor. Like, we're having mayonnaise sandwiches tonight for dinner poor. And if you're wondering what's in a mayonnaise sandwich, it's in the name. Mayonnaise. Bread. Period. Now maybe we need to cultivate a sense of curiosity in our students, so even the ones who end up as warehouse workers at an Amazon can one day aspire to something greater, but at some point, people have to take some responsibility for how their own lives are turning out. It's really easy to point the finger to society, to the government, to the person next door to you, but at the end of the day, most people have the tools (smartphones, cheap laptops), and they absolutely have the time. But the drive is something that no government program or no private initiative can give them - that you have to pull out of your gut yourself. And if you can't do that, you're doomed to a life of mediocrity. Choose your hard.

arinlen 4y ago
> Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R (...) Enough with this pseudo-moralistic perpetuation of abuse, specially the tone-deaf ones based on survivorship bias. Just because someone is not able to win the lottery that does not mean they have no right to earn a living wage that allows them a honest living. Aren't we supposed to live in a civilized society? Why are you unwittingly normalizing exploitation and the widespread abuse that bars the majority of families from having a decent life? If not for the parents who can't be self-taught engineers, why not for their children? Are those also expected to endure hardship? Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard?
- cbozeman 4y ago
  > Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard? Yes. Because we have no idea how to define 'fair'. I hear 'fair wage' over and over but no one can ever explain to me what makes the wage 'fair' other than, "I have a job and I should be able to live on that single job!" Okay... why? Where is it written that you should be able to live on a single job? As soon as you can come up with an argument that's not emotive, and is instead quantitative, I'll listen. Right now, all I hear from people parroting this is that, "It's not right!"