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Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

theregister.com

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Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#31

Post by giantg2 »

jaywalk wrote: post #25

Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

Like most things in corporate America, you assemble of team and give them the goal of overseeing the due diligence. They won't look too hard so they won't find anything. They're write up how some low friction "solution" that already exists addresses the issue.

Basically, corporate politics as usual - they call the shots, everyone else tows the line, they dress up the results as a win.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#32

Post by anonporridge »

jaywalk wrote: post #25

Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

I agree.

It's really starting down a bad path when we start asking megacorps to do the government's job. Corporations are fundamentally not subject to the will of the people, and it is almost impossible for the people to countervail the control authority of the extremely small set of owners who own the majority of voting shares.

Let the justice system crack down on people or organizations "violating human rights" and give companies like Amazon orders to cease service if necessary. Or pass laws to require them to filter some extremely specific use cases, such as the dissemination of child pornography.

Mega corporations shouldn't be the ones deciding what is and is not a socially acceptable activity.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#33

Post by colechristensen »

devman0 wrote: post #28
mjw1007 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And does he still get the 2021 package if he doesn't continue working in that role for the following nine years?

Generally that isn't how RSU vesting schedules works. You only keep what has already vested if you leave.

For a CEO with a $200M package, everything is negotiable and would depend highly on the mode of departure.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#34

Post by LanceH »

zht wrote: post #23
wincy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Jeff Bezos creating a company that employs people and grows the economy in a non zero sum way through efficiency gains shouldn’t be rewarded billions for the trouble? Why are people so concerned with the salary of the ultra rich? It doesn’t make your life objectively worse, if anything our lives are substantially better because of it, even if you don’t directly shop at Amazon.

because the rich use their wealth to buy instruments that sway public opinion at the expense of everyone else?

Except for you. It's just the rest of the public which is dumb, of course.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#35

Post by joecot »

jaywalk wrote: post #25

Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

This is most certainly targeted towards AWS being used by ICE. And not just in a generic way of them hosting ICE servers, but with ICE using Amazon Rekognition to identify undocumented immigrants (and allegedly AWS had meetings with ICE to convince them to use the service). The human rights violations come up when you talk about kids being separated from their families and then straight up lost, and the various other immoral things ICE does.

This isn't something Amazon isn't aware of, I went to the AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and every few minutes the Keynote got interrupted by another protester yelling "Cut ties with ICE" and getting dragged out of the room. I don't think I was the only one quickly googling on their phones to figure out what they were talking about. I couldn't move my previous company off of AWS, but I moved all my personal servers and I steered my new company away from them.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#36

Post by ssklash »

chrisseaton wrote: post #16
RONROC wrote: post #12

[flagged]

> should ... truly fair ... should be ... acceptable How do you determine these absolutes? Why is your 'should' and 'fair' set at whatever value you're using, and not whatever value someone else determined? The only 'fair' is what someone is willing to pay. If you aren't willing to pay someone 200m... then don't. Why do you care if someone else is willing and does?

Fair in the sense OP is using it is in the moral sense, not the economic sense. Paying someone tens of millions of dollars when the lowest paid workers in that company make ten bucks an hour may be "fair" in the economic sense, in that it's what the market will bear, but I don't think it is any way fair in a moral sense.

I think too often people let the "morals" of the market replace actual human morals, and assume that because the market is "free" or essentially some uncontrollable algorithm, anything it does is moral by human standards. It's easy to throw your hands up and say "oh, well that's just what the market will bear" and assume all moral responsibility has been accounted for. But I disagree.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#37

Post by VikingCoder »

Man, I can't even imagine how much better Amazon will perform, than if they'd hired a CEO who was willing to work for just $211m.

EDIT: If someone has a more recent, or somehow better, graph than this one [1], then I'm all ears.

[1] : https://slate.com/business/2014/07/ceo-pay-for-performance-t...

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#38

Post by drewrv »

dvt wrote: post #17
RONROC wrote: post #12

[flagged]

> We need hard limits on executive pay because if you adjust every other employees salary at a truly fair rate, Jassy should be lucky to make 10 million a year. Fair, by definition, is when the market reaches equilibrium. The shareholders think this is a fair salary. Why is your opinion more valid than theirs? Sure, the salary is high, but it seems commensurate with the value that Amazon generates. Literally 30% of t…

> Fair, by definition, is when the market reaches equilibrium.

This is absurd. "The market" is amoral: it's just a collection of human behaviors that are shaped by laws, culture, and customs. All of those can change, the law can change quite easily.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#39

Post by paulryanrogers »

dvt wrote: post #17
RONROC wrote: post #12

[flagged]

> We need hard limits on executive pay because if you adjust every other employees salary at a truly fair rate, Jassy should be lucky to make 10 million a year. Fair, by definition, is when the market reaches equilibrium. The shareholders think this is a fair salary. Why is your opinion more valid than theirs? Sure, the salary is high, but it seems commensurate with the value that Amazon generates. Literally 30% of t…

Comparing wild outliers seems seems like expectation grooming.

How about lowest pay at company compared to highest? It can cope with variations in industries and even among companies.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#40

Post by jimbokun »

falcolas wrote: post #24
GreenPlastic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a company isn't to employ people. It's to take raw inputs, including employee labor, and turn that into outputs that people want. Employee relief comes in the form of voting with their feet or if they're critical inputs into what the black box produces

Amusing. The purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in. I mean, this is still the exact reason politicians cite when providing incentives to companies - bringing jobs to their cities/states. I'm pretty sure I don't like this new definition; it feels like it's based on greed, not value.

When was this time?
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