Since there is confusion in the sibling comments, I want to explain how y = - kln(x) + m fits in with the exponential function. I am going to be a little sloppy

Since there is confusion in the sibling comments, I want to explain how y = - kln(x) + m fits in with the exponential function. I am going to be a little sloppy with closed and open intervals and round a little. x is the rank of the employee. Let N be number of employees. We can generate a new observation from the model by generating an x' uniformly between 1 and N, and inserting in the formula for y. Then p'=x'/N is a number between 1/N and 1, or if we round, between 0 and 1. The generated observation will be distributed according to (convince yourself by looking at the submission's graph) P(y' > y) = p, where y=-kln(Np) + m or solving for p, where p = exp(m-y) / N. So P(y' < y) = 1 - exp(m-y) / N This is the exponential distribution.