I tend to agree with the cynics who think that this a nice way of packaging a $300 bonus. It's not a bad thing to be doing, but I'm unimpressed. Non-Lenovo-spe

I tend to agree with the cynics who think that this a nice way of packaging a $300 bonus. It's not a bad thing to be doing, but I'm unimpressed. Non-Lenovo-specific rant: I know there's a lot of negative attention being given to "bonus" compensation for executives and high-ranking bankers, and I agree. I don't like the bonus model (for non-executives) either because it includes an implicit penalty for leaving a job except at a known time. It's why, if you're in a New York startup, you can't hire anyone from finance in October through December (or from Google in February-March). That said, the real fuck-up in executive bonuses and compensation isn't that good executives get huge bonuses. They should. I would rather have a good CEO getting a ridiculous package than a bad one. $20 million is chump change in comparison to the difference between a large company having a good CEO vs. a bad one. It can be worth 100 times that to have a good leader. The vomit-inducing criminality is that all big-company executives (even the incompetents and assholes) get million-dollar payouts, not for achieving anything necessarily but just for winning the social-climbing contest necessary to get those jobs. CEOs who actually build and maintain great companies, or who turn failing companies into great ones (as I hope Marissa Mayer does with Yahoo) deserve to get filthy rich. Shitty CEOs (most of them, since getting that job in most companies is mostly about social favor-peddling rather than competence) deserve jack shit. The real problem with executive compensation is not a moral issue (if they're excellent, they deserve it, because they're capturing less than 1% of the value they add) but that it seems to have a negative effect on performance: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/pay-more-get-less/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/pay-more-get-... .