5 ms·

I like the idea of building in greater alignment of incentives between all the workers at the company, from the lowest worker to the top. By all means CEOs sho

I like the idea of building in greater alignment of incentives between all the workers at the company, from the lowest worker to the top. By all means CEOs should be highly paid, but if the company is successful and doing well, the workers that are enabling that success should see their fortunes rise as well.

lumost 3y ago
It’s a balance. A 100x pay gap between employee and ceo is close to a 1000x gap in disposable income. How many ceos are truly better than 1000 employees?
- bombcar 3y ago
  In that case we should see companies that have the 10x CEO and 900 more employees doing well.
  - lumost 3y ago
    The best ceos will work at the highest paying firms. This does not mean that this is the most efficient arrangement in aggregate or for an individual company. How often have we seen claims that lowly engineers are overpaid?
    - marketingLizard 3y ago
      Is it though, or is it the best CEOs at marketing themselves work at the best firms? The idea is that you're sort being Skinner boxed since each CEO and company is different and it changes with time too.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Is the number of people who can be good CEOs close to the number of CEOs needed? If not, it should be possible to get more CEOs.
      - lumost 3y ago
        By anecdotal evidence - we have no good mechanism to evaluate a ceo. Nor do we have a good mechanism to discover ceos looking for employment. An inefficient market breeds corruption.
- throwaway202303 3y ago
  Quite a lot I would say. A CEO is making daily decisions, any one of which could be be the start of a company’s death spiral that results in tens of thousands of job losses. The amount of leverage they have over a company dwarfs that of any other individual worker. Besides what should I care what they earn if they pay me well for what I do, relative to the market? This is lazy, greedy socialist thinking where they want money for nothing’s
  - rurp 3y ago
    CEOs have a lot of leverage, yes, but how do I know that a particular CEO is making good decisions? If we look at a random CEO who is making XX,000,000/year, can you make an evidence based case that they are providing millions of dollars worth of value over a replacement level manager? I'm genuinely interested to know if there is a meaningful way to demonstrate this, because I have looked and haven't found one.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - UncleEntity 3y ago
      > …but how do I know that a particular CEO is making good decisions? We used to call that “profit”. As a measurement over time at how well a business is performing this used to be the standard measurement but it seems to have been supplanted by other measures such as wealth inequity and twitter mob ragefests.
      - somsak2 3y ago
        bezos was a shit CEO for two decades and then somehow fell into a bunch of profit out of nowhere!
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Apple had 5 failing CEOs in a row before Steve Jobs. Then look what happened.
- welshwelsh 3y ago
  I think it's better to ask "what percentage of an employee's output is attributable to the ceo's leadership?" A reasonable answer, IMO, would be somewhere between 0.5% and 5%. The average CEO gets maybe 1%, which I think is pretty fair. Often if a CEO makes 1000x an employee, it's because there are tens or hundreds of thousands of employees under them. The executives still get a relatively small portion of employee output. I must say though that being more valuable than 1000 employees seems like a very low bar to me. I'm sure there are many people who are more valuable than even 100,000 employees.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Why should the answer be positive? I have worked places where the CEO's contribution was obviously negative. But that didn't matter, because the CEO's goal wasn't to maximize total societal wealth, or even the company's health, but to maximize the CEO's income. So anything that resulted in a stock price bump that lasted through their tenure was plenty. And given that CEO tenures are much shorter than they used to be, it's easier than ever to juke the numbers.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Steve Jobs turned a company that was 90 days from bankruptcy into the richest company in the world, with the same employees.
    - lumost 3y ago
      That’s one of … 10 million CEOs? The vast majority of CEOs are not capable of this, Steve Jobs undoubtedly had lieutenants and plain engineers who did brilliant work under him. A long winded way to say that you are probably not working with Steve Jobs and regardless you need great employees to make a Steve Jobs successful.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        > regardless you need great employees to make a Steve Jobs successful A great CEO knows who to hire. > Steve Jobs undoubtedly had lieutenants and plain engineers who did brilliant work under him That didn't happen at random. Jobs also set them to work on the right things. When he took over Apple, he went through everything the company was doing and reoriented it all. Jobs saw opportunities that everyone else missed.
- achates 3y ago
  I think that's purely a practical question that should be decided by the owners of the company since it's their money at stake.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
What prevents Canadian companies from just moving to the US?

lumost 3y ago

It’s a balance. A 100x pay gap between employee and ceo is close to a 1000x gap in disposable income. How many ceos are truly better than 1000 employees?

bombcar 3y ago
In that case we should see companies that have the 10x CEO and 900 more employees doing well.
- lumost 3y ago
  The best ceos will work at the highest paying firms. This does not mean that this is the most efficient arrangement in aggregate or for an individual company. How often have we seen claims that lowly engineers are overpaid?
  - marketingLizard 3y ago
    Is it though, or is it the best CEOs at marketing themselves work at the best firms? The idea is that you're sort being Skinner boxed since each CEO and company is different and it changes with time too.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Is the number of people who can be good CEOs close to the number of CEOs needed? If not, it should be possible to get more CEOs.
    - lumost 3y ago
      By anecdotal evidence - we have no good mechanism to evaluate a ceo. Nor do we have a good mechanism to discover ceos looking for employment. An inefficient market breeds corruption.
throwaway202303 3y ago
Quite a lot I would say. A CEO is making daily decisions, any one of which could be be the start of a company’s death spiral that results in tens of thousands of job losses. The amount of leverage they have over a company dwarfs that of any other individual worker. Besides what should I care what they earn if they pay me well for what I do, relative to the market? This is lazy, greedy socialist thinking where they want money for nothing’s
- rurp 3y ago
  CEOs have a lot of leverage, yes, but how do I know that a particular CEO is making good decisions? If we look at a random CEO who is making XX,000,000/year, can you make an evidence based case that they are providing millions of dollars worth of value over a replacement level manager? I'm genuinely interested to know if there is a meaningful way to demonstrate this, because I have looked and haven't found one.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    > …but how do I know that a particular CEO is making good decisions? We used to call that “profit”. As a measurement over time at how well a business is performing this used to be the standard measurement but it seems to have been supplanted by other measures such as wealth inequity and twitter mob ragefests.
    - somsak2 3y ago
      bezos was a shit CEO for two decades and then somehow fell into a bunch of profit out of nowhere!
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Apple had 5 failing CEOs in a row before Steve Jobs. Then look what happened.
welshwelsh 3y ago
I think it's better to ask "what percentage of an employee's output is attributable to the ceo's leadership?" A reasonable answer, IMO, would be somewhere between 0.5% and 5%. The average CEO gets maybe 1%, which I think is pretty fair. Often if a CEO makes 1000x an employee, it's because there are tens or hundreds of thousands of employees under them. The executives still get a relatively small portion of employee output. I must say though that being more valuable than 1000 employees seems like a very low bar to me. I'm sure there are many people who are more valuable than even 100,000 employees.
- wpietri 3y ago
  Why should the answer be positive? I have worked places where the CEO's contribution was obviously negative. But that didn't matter, because the CEO's goal wasn't to maximize total societal wealth, or even the company's health, but to maximize the CEO's income. So anything that resulted in a stock price bump that lasted through their tenure was plenty. And given that CEO tenures are much shorter than they used to be, it's easier than ever to juke the numbers.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Steve Jobs turned a company that was 90 days from bankruptcy into the richest company in the world, with the same employees.
  - lumost 3y ago
    That’s one of … 10 million CEOs? The vast majority of CEOs are not capable of this, Steve Jobs undoubtedly had lieutenants and plain engineers who did brilliant work under him. A long winded way to say that you are probably not working with Steve Jobs and regardless you need great employees to make a Steve Jobs successful.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > regardless you need great employees to make a Steve Jobs successful A great CEO knows who to hire. > Steve Jobs undoubtedly had lieutenants and plain engineers who did brilliant work under him That didn't happen at random. Jobs also set them to work on the right things. When he took over Apple, he went through everything the company was doing and reoriented it all. Jobs saw opportunities that everyone else missed.
achates 3y ago
I think that's purely a practical question that should be decided by the owners of the company since it's their money at stake.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago

What prevents Canadian companies from just moving to the US?