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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

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?
- grey-area 13y ago
  I'm not saying it applies to every salesman, but say a company with an existing product makes a new sale - the money from that is mostly down to the salesperson who closes the deal. I'm sure it depends on the situation. Anyway, the point was more that it is possible for one person to be worth say 10 million USD to a company at a particular time, even if it is quite uncommon. This is just an expression in the difference in scale between a single person's resources and those of a corporation - if any individual has access to the leverage and resources of a large corporation, they could easily make/lose a lot of money for that company very quickly, sometimes down to dumb luck, sometimes down to skill at their particular niche. Of course the society which allows the limited liability company to exist might want to redistribute some of that wealth more evenly, because capitalism is pretty unfair and brutal in its raw form, but an individual can certainly be worth lots to a company in monetary terms, because they can make a lot.

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?

grey-area 13y ago
I'm not saying it applies to every salesman, but say a company with an existing product makes a new sale - the money from that is mostly down to the salesperson who closes the deal. I'm sure it depends on the situation. Anyway, the point was more that it is possible for one person to be worth say 10 million USD to a company at a particular time, even if it is quite uncommon. This is just an expression in the difference in scale between a single person's resources and those of a corporation - if any individual has access to the leverage and resources of a large corporation, they could easily make/lose a lot of money for that company very quickly, sometimes down to dumb luck, sometimes down to skill at their particular niche. Of course the society which allows the limited liability company to exist might want to redistribute some of that wealth more evenly, because capitalism is pretty unfair and brutal in its raw form, but an individual can certainly be worth lots to a company in monetary terms, because they can make a lot.