5 ms·

So that's a million dollars every week. I have a really difficult time imagining that this person was overall profitable to the company.

by Drakim 13y ago

colechristensen 13y ago
No human being has ever been or will ever be worth a million dollars a week. The collective dilution that this is anything but criminal is the source of a significant set of problems our society faces.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Nonsense. I don't know about this COO at Yahoo, but when you take decisions at the top of a multiple billion dollar company that will significantly impact the topline or bottomline of your company, of course your job is worth millions of dollars, because your level of impact is way higher than the janitor cleaning the floor in your offices.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    You are making an assumption that those decisions generally do something nice for the company. There is an army of people whose only known accomplishment is getting in the right place at the right purely out of luck and riding a luck wave. They themselves would have contributed nothing to the that wave. Once they do that, its often assumed that all their success was their own work. To expect such people to build anything of real value is a expectations gone too wrong. While they are at the top, they socialize with their equivalent highly paid buddies. Most of them are in the same league as their's. Its basically a mutual-protection club, in which you need to take care of each other. >>level of impact is way higher than the janitor cleaning the floor in your offices. In case of people like these, if exec was swapped with janitor, it would make 0 difference. The Janitor would probably even perform better than the exec.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Thats the company and shareholders problem and certainly not for you and me to decide who is at the right place or not.
      - kamaal 13y ago
        Its certainly not for us to discuss this very thread given that argument. But that's not the point. Its almost like saying, if some one finds a clever way to cheat in an exam and manages to never get caught it must be perfectly acceptable.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Thats the company and shareholders problem and certainly not for you and me to decide who is at the right place or not.
    - auctiontheory 13y ago
      The Janitor would probably even perform better than the exec. You might enjoy the classic Twilight Zone episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville." It's available on TV.com.
- rrtwo 13y ago
  I can't say anything about the 'per week' or similar time interval units, but hasn't Steve Jobs created huge amounts of wealth for society through jobs creation/economic trades? and for that has been worth his salary? (that is only one example...)
  - colechristensen 13y ago
    Steve Jobs owned billions of dollars in Apple and Disney and after 2003 earned no salary or other compensation from either (aside from the cost of operating his aircraft which was a few hundred thousand dollars a year). He is a bad example as I was talking about salary.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Stock is generally viewed as part of compensation, no-one's talking purely about salary here and the higher you go on the corporate ladder, the less important salary becomes.
      - colechristensen 13y ago
        I'm well aware. He wasn't compensated with stock, options, or any other sort of payment. After 2003 Apple gave him nothing besides travel expenses.
        grey-area 13y ago
        Thanks, I wasn't aware of that, however he did receive $74.75 million in stock in 2003, which was worth a lot of money, and the travel expenses included a $90 million jet! So he received a lot of compensation in kind (and was probably worth it to Apple).
- grey-area 13y ago
  Well this depends on how you define 'worth' I suppose. Certainly individuals can make or lose more than a million in a week for a company - for example the CEO of Ratners, Soros, the London Whale or other traders who make millions in one trade (or lose it). Likewise a salesperson might manage to seal a deal worth 100s of millions in future revenue over a couple of meetings. As someone on the creative side, this galls me somewhat, but it is nonetheless true - some positions do potentially bring in far more money for a company than others. You may question whether they should be or need to be paid that much, particularly if other workers in the same company are paid very little, but I think it's indisputable that individuals can influence profits to that degree in some positions.
  - colechristensen 13y ago
    By 'worth' I mean 'ought to be compensated'.
    - bsilvereagle 13y ago
      If someone makes a multi-million deal, why shouldn't they get the same sales commission as someone making a $100,000 sale?
      - colechristensen 13y ago
        The guy who sold me a MacBook didn't earn 200x as much as the guy who sold me nice cheese. They both spent (roughly) equal time with me, had equal amounts of domain-specific knowledge, and were as I estimate, equally helpful. Does your insistence that pay scales work in both directions? I doubt it. As an engineer, a manager, and a customer, I want to see skill and effort rewarded fairly and equitably. Absurd sales commissions and top executives earning a million dollars a week are nothing but theft from customers, stockholders, and the people doing the labor to create the product.
  - kabouseng 13y ago
    Only problem is that the salesperson closing the multimillion dollar deal, isn't actually by himself bringing in all that money. He still needs the engineers (or whatever) to actually deliver on the contract... So is it really a case of the salesman bringing in all that money, or the combined effort of the entire team?
- staunch 13y ago
  Plenty of doctors literally and directly save more than one human life per week. No one would argue a human life is worth less than a million dollars. So, there :-)
elnate 13y ago
According to the Yahoo wikipedia page, their yearly revenue is 4.98 billion or about 96 million per week. So to make himself worth 1 million per week he just has to increase revenue by a hair over 1%. Doesn't seem outrageous put like that, or have I completely misunderstood?

So that's a million dollars every week. I have a really difficult time imagining that this person was overall profitable to the company.

by Drakim 13y ago

So that's a million dollars every week. I have a really difficult time imagining that this person was overall profitable to the company.

colechristensen 13y ago

No human being has ever been or will ever be worth a million dollars a week. The collective dilution that this is anything but criminal is the source of a significant set of problems our society faces.

ekianjo 13y ago
Nonsense. I don't know about this COO at Yahoo, but when you take decisions at the top of a multiple billion dollar company that will significantly impact the topline or bottomline of your company, of course your job is worth millions of dollars, because your level of impact is way higher than the janitor cleaning the floor in your offices.
- kamaal 13y ago
  You are making an assumption that those decisions generally do something nice for the company. There is an army of people whose only known accomplishment is getting in the right place at the right purely out of luck and riding a luck wave. They themselves would have contributed nothing to the that wave. Once they do that, its often assumed that all their success was their own work. To expect such people to build anything of real value is a expectations gone too wrong. While they are at the top, they socialize with their equivalent highly paid buddies. Most of them are in the same league as their's. Its basically a mutual-protection club, in which you need to take care of each other. >>level of impact is way higher than the janitor cleaning the floor in your offices. In case of people like these, if exec was swapped with janitor, it would make 0 difference. The Janitor would probably even perform better than the exec.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Thats the company and shareholders problem and certainly not for you and me to decide who is at the right place or not.
    - kamaal 13y ago
      Its certainly not for us to discuss this very thread given that argument. But that's not the point. Its almost like saying, if some one finds a clever way to cheat in an exam and manages to never get caught it must be perfectly acceptable.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Thats the company and shareholders problem and certainly not for you and me to decide who is at the right place or not.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    The Janitor would probably even perform better than the exec. You might enjoy the classic Twilight Zone episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville." It's available on TV.com.
rrtwo 13y ago
I can't say anything about the 'per week' or similar time interval units, but hasn't Steve Jobs created huge amounts of wealth for society through jobs creation/economic trades? and for that has been worth his salary? (that is only one example...)
- colechristensen 13y ago
  Steve Jobs owned billions of dollars in Apple and Disney and after 2003 earned no salary or other compensation from either (aside from the cost of operating his aircraft which was a few hundred thousand dollars a year). He is a bad example as I was talking about salary.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Stock is generally viewed as part of compensation, no-one's talking purely about salary here and the higher you go on the corporate ladder, the less important salary becomes.
    - colechristensen 13y ago
      I'm well aware. He wasn't compensated with stock, options, or any other sort of payment. After 2003 Apple gave him nothing besides travel expenses.
      - grey-area 13y ago
        Thanks, I wasn't aware of that, however he did receive $74.75 million in stock in 2003, which was worth a lot of money, and the travel expenses included a $90 million jet! So he received a lot of compensation in kind (and was probably worth it to Apple).
grey-area 13y ago
Well this depends on how you define 'worth' I suppose. Certainly individuals can make or lose more than a million in a week for a company - for example the CEO of Ratners, Soros, the London Whale or other traders who make millions in one trade (or lose it). Likewise a salesperson might manage to seal a deal worth 100s of millions in future revenue over a couple of meetings. As someone on the creative side, this galls me somewhat, but it is nonetheless true - some positions do potentially bring in far more money for a company than others. You may question whether they should be or need to be paid that much, particularly if other workers in the same company are paid very little, but I think it's indisputable that individuals can influence profits to that degree in some positions.
- colechristensen 13y ago
  By 'worth' I mean 'ought to be compensated'.
  - bsilvereagle 13y ago
    If someone makes a multi-million deal, why shouldn't they get the same sales commission as someone making a $100,000 sale?
    - colechristensen 13y ago
      The guy who sold me a MacBook didn't earn 200x as much as the guy who sold me nice cheese. They both spent (roughly) equal time with me, had equal amounts of domain-specific knowledge, and were as I estimate, equally helpful. Does your insistence that pay scales work in both directions? I doubt it. As an engineer, a manager, and a customer, I want to see skill and effort rewarded fairly and equitably. Absurd sales commissions and top executives earning a million dollars a week are nothing but theft from customers, stockholders, and the people doing the labor to create the product.
- kabouseng 13y ago
  Only problem is that the salesperson closing the multimillion dollar deal, isn't actually by himself bringing in all that money. He still needs the engineers (or whatever) to actually deliver on the contract... So is it really a case of the salesman bringing in all that money, or the combined effort of the entire team?
staunch 13y ago
Plenty of doctors literally and directly save more than one human life per week. No one would argue a human life is worth less than a million dollars. So, there :-)

elnate 13y ago

According to the Yahoo wikipedia page, their yearly revenue is 4.98 billion or about 96 million per week. So to make himself worth 1 million per week he just has to increase revenue by a hair over 1%. Doesn't seem outrageous put like that, or have I completely misunderstood?