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But is anyone going to argue that there's a serious quality of life difference between 20 and 100 million? You're only looking at it from the executive's POV,

But is anyone going to argue that there's a serious quality of life difference between 20 and 100 million? You're only looking at it from the executive's POV, not the company's. They are looking for the best they can find. It may be worth it to them to pay, $X million more for somebody who scores a 99 on a hypothetical CEO test, compared to somebody who scores only 98. The company wants to get somebody better, and to get that higher quality, they've got to fork over additional compensation. Of course, companies are frequently wrong in the way that they score their candidates. But that doesn't change the fact that they've bidding on the highest perceived quality.

jbooth 15y ago
I am in fact looking at it from the company's point of view. Anybody who doesn't want the job enough to do it for 10 million but would do it for 100 million is going to SUCK at the job. Period.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  Anybody who doesn't want the job enough to do it for 10 million but would do it for 100 million is going to SUCK at the job I think you're assuming to much in this statement. It's not clear that they would not be willing to do the job for $10 million. But there are 100 different companies who would be willing to pay them that much, and they've got to make a decision somehow. Other things being equal, they'll go with the one that offers the most. This is exactly what pricing does in a market. It allows the participants to signal the importance of a product to them. That $100million bidder is signalling that it's more important to him to get mister AAA CEO. Is there some reason that we should ignore that bidder's signal?
  - jbooth 15y ago
    You're arguing that the highest paid people in the world operate at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Was Steve Jobs a $1/year CEO? How about Sergey Brin? Good leaders typically have different motivations than "I could afford to upgrade my yacht from 10 million to 25 million". I understand that that complicates your economic model, but guess what, it's people we're talking about here.
- rhizome 15y ago
  And the job isn't so hard that they couldn't find a passel of candidates at $10MM.

jbooth 15y ago

I am in fact looking at it from the company's point of view. Anybody who doesn't want the job enough to do it for 10 million but would do it for 100 million is going to SUCK at the job. Period.

CWuestefeld 15y ago
Anybody who doesn't want the job enough to do it for 10 million but would do it for 100 million is going to SUCK at the job I think you're assuming to much in this statement. It's not clear that they would not be willing to do the job for $10 million. But there are 100 different companies who would be willing to pay them that much, and they've got to make a decision somehow. Other things being equal, they'll go with the one that offers the most. This is exactly what pricing does in a market. It allows the participants to signal the importance of a product to them. That $100million bidder is signalling that it's more important to him to get mister AAA CEO. Is there some reason that we should ignore that bidder's signal?
- jbooth 15y ago
  You're arguing that the highest paid people in the world operate at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Was Steve Jobs a $1/year CEO? How about Sergey Brin? Good leaders typically have different motivations than "I could afford to upgrade my yacht from 10 million to 25 million". I understand that that complicates your economic model, but guess what, it's people we're talking about here.
rhizome 15y ago
And the job isn't so hard that they couldn't find a passel of candidates at $10MM.