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He wasn’t paid $20M. He was paid a salary plus options which had a good chance of being worth nothing at all, a good chance of being worth a nice european vaca
by stephencanon 13y ago
He wasn’t paid $20M. He was paid a salary plus options which had a good chance of being worth nothing at all, a good chance of being worth a nice european vacation, and a small chance of hitting the jackpot.
You don’t get to renegotiate the terms afterwards once you know where on the payout scale your company happened to fall (maybe you can legally, but then you’re an asshole).
“The guy who fixes the bug” isn’t worth $20M either. There are plenty of extremely competent engineers who you could hire for $300K that could also “fix the bug”. But you’re not paying him $20M; you’re paying him a smaller salary, plus a small percentage chance of the jackpot.
- humanrebar 13y agoAgain, the actual valuation of the compensation (whatever the form and whenever it is realized) is an empirical question. I actually agree with all of your points here, including the one about retroactively altering compensation. I'm just saying it's fair to take value-over-replacement into consideration when negotiating compensation. And that I can see giving different compensation based on that measure of market rates for labor. Maybe the compensation was fair. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's important to clarify what counts as being paid. All of those things are really beside my point.