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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

#241

Post by blindmute »

yunohn wrote: post #236
blindmute wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The working class has never had it better than they have it right now, except for a brief period of a few years in the mid 20th century. You wouldn't know it though, from all the complaining. Sure, society "should" keep improving, but in the meantime there's plenty of ways for someone to improve their situation, and none of those ways involve complaining about rich people.

Do you mean they get to enjoy the fruits of modern life, and hence shouldn’t complain? Again, that’s not a valid argument. Let’s use some data, for example wealth distribution (1) - the lower classes have stayed lower income, and the middle class is rapidly transferring wealth to the upper classes. How is this sustainable? (1) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

It's not an issue of data. Wealth inequality by itself doesn't do anything bad, if the bottom can still afford what they need. It's a matter of having a realistic mindset and sense of self determination. A poor person today in the west has it drastically better than any poor person ever in history; they have a better quality of life as a poor person, and they have mind-bogglingly high levels of income mobility, in a historical sense. No other time in history could someone so easily go from poor to middle class.

So when people spend so much mental energy complaining about how things aren't "fair", okay, sure, but you could instead just improve your situation. There will always be poor people, but an individual will not always be poor. We are not yet anywhere close to a situation where the highest expected value of an individual's time is to complain (instigating revolt).

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

#242

Post by Krasnol »

justapassenger wrote: post #239
Krasnol wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I did. I'm Bill Gates. Did you? I worked for small and huge companies though and I could see that it requires far less work to manage a huge one than to manage a small one. I wouldn't even call it "work" if managing the small one is work. It's more like pointing your finger.

I’ve also stood next to the brain surgeon once and I could see that his work was easy.

Oh so we're comparing paper pushers to brain surgeons now? Guess I've found one eh?

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

#243

Post by lazide »

Krasnol wrote: post #237
lazide wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those folks are elected by the shareholders though. So the people who are paying, are (indirectly) paying out of their own pockets. If someone can't pay out of their own pockets the amount they think someone is worth for them to work for them (or appoint someone to do it for them), then... what's the alternative?

By the biggest shareholders which are in turn the same kind of people. And they surely not pay it out of THEIR OWN pockets...they pay it out of pockets of their customers and so on goes the responsibility train... Also what's the "choice" there? Seriously, even calling that "choice" is ridiculous. The alternative is to force those bloodsuckers to pay wages people can life from. They can keep the rest. Nobody would gi…

It sounds like you're really angry. Does this directly impact you?

They can pay those wages because workers who can do the work to a level they consider acceptable will accept them.

One way to solve this problem is to convince those workers to work together as a bloc, not accept those wages, and demand higher ones.

Some folks won't like that of course, but the willingness to tell them to fuck off is important. If someone can't say no to a bad deal, after all, they can't actually negotiate.

I don't have a horse in that race however, and have more than enough of my own stuff I need to focus on.

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

#244

Post by justapassenger »

Krasnol wrote: post #242
justapassenger wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also stood next to the brain surgeon once and I could see that his work was easy.

Oh so we're comparing paper pushers to brain surgeons now? Guess I've found one eh?

You legitimately think you don’t need comparable level of education, work and skill between brain surgeon and leader of big, successful organization?

I assume you never actually lead anyy bigger team for significant amount of time. I’m not a manager, but I’ve lead teams of around 50 people as an IC. It’s tough job that requires very specific skill set to be successful.

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

#245

Post by egberts1 »

archagon wrote: post #228
reasonabl_human wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally someone sane. It’s not about stacking 400x boxes- it’s about force multiplication and impact

By that metric, world leaders ought to have billion dollar salaries.

CEO is about driving a PERSON (of which a corporate entity is also a US person) and can literally direct the corporate into any direction.

A political leader is constrained by numerous laws. No, they do not deserve billions of dollars.

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

#246

Post by drewrv »

dvt wrote: post #65
drewrv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> "The market" is amoral Yeah, exactly. Fairness in the marketplace is purely a math problem, no morality involved.

I feel like you’re using the word “fair” in an econ 101 sense, not in the way most people use it.

“The market reached equilibrium” with child labor and indentured servitude. Most people consider child labor unfair, so law/culture/customs changed how the market operates.

Even within the narrow definition of “fairness” in economics you still have externalities. This can become really tricky and require ethical considerations beyond a “pure math” problem.

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

#247

Post by krainboltgreene »

weezin wrote: post #222
krainboltgreene wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The decision to make AWS created 100s of billions of dollars of value I can make decisions to create something all day, none of it makes any money unless effort is put into it's creation. Product and engineering and design made AWS which allowed the company to make billions. The marketing team after that.

And who was leading that effort? When executing, hard decisions get propagated to the top and leaders like Jassy have to make the toughest decisions that result in moving the trajectory of the company/project. This can create or destroy a lot of value.

At best the project managers and team leads.

No decision is worth this much money when it comes at the expense of paying the people for their labour.

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

#248

Post by Krasnol »

lazide wrote: post #243
Krasnol wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the biggest shareholders which are in turn the same kind of people. And they surely not pay it out of THEIR OWN pockets...they pay it out of pockets of their customers and so on goes the responsibility train... Also what's the "choice" there? Seriously, even calling that "choice" is ridiculous. The alternative is to force those bloodsuckers to pay wages people can life from. They can keep the rest. Nobody would gi…

It sounds like you're really angry. Does this directly impact you? They can pay those wages because workers who can do the work to a level they consider acceptable will accept them. One way to solve this problem is to convince those workers to work together as a bloc, not accept those wages, and demand higher ones. Some folks won't like that of course, but the willingness to tell them to fuck off is important. If som…

> It sounds like you're really angry. Does this directly impact you?

Sure it does. I'm a human being with a healthy moral compass. Why doesn't it impact you?

> They can pay those wages because workers who can do the work to a level they consider acceptable will accept them.

Wow...do you think people would do it if they had a choice or a saying in this matter? Seriously?

> One way to solve this problem is to convince those workers to work together as a bloc, not accept those wages, and demand higher ones.

But they are not a bloc and the rest of society has done a great job to divide them along artificial lines (race, politics, gender, religion, etc.) and the same basic construct the ones above adhere to: selfishness as the winning factor within the system. The system does also everything it can to hinder unions of any kind. You could see how much of a WONDER it was when some people managed to form one at Amazon. It's been on the news worldwide!

So you making it something they could "just do" is kinda disgusting.

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

#249

Post by Krasnol »

justapassenger wrote: post #244
Krasnol wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh so we're comparing paper pushers to brain surgeons now? Guess I've found one eh?

You legitimately think you don’t need comparable level of education, work and skill between brain surgeon and leader of big, successful organization? I assume you never actually lead anyy bigger team for significant amount of time. I’m not a manager, but I’ve lead teams of around 50 people as an IC. It’s tough job that requires very specific skill set to be successful.

Yes I legitimately think that you don't need that at the top of a huge company and I talk from my first hand experience I got from an international F500 company with hundreds of thousand paper pushers and now working in the health sector. The CEO of the former company was a senile wreck. He "managed" the company for quite a few years when I was there. His replacement does almost no work at all. Still on it. I would love to get into detail there but I might doxx myself.

As I wrote above: some mid-management person would probably be much better suited for the position. They are theoretically still in the pool but not realistically so the "scarcity" theory is faked since it's a fake group of people who are being considered. They're most of the times not even considered for their skill set. They've been just sucking up to their predecessor while stabbing everybody else in their way in the back. How this is considered a valuable skill for managing any company (besides in the mafia probably) is beyond me. Maybe you could explain it to me.

On the other hand, you can't replace a brain surgeon with a night nurse. You can't even take a random doctor to do the job and the brain surgeons reputation is directly connected to the actual work he/she does with their own hands. When he gets older, his eyes weaker, his hands shaky, he won't be able to do the job anymore.

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

#250

Post by yunohn »

blindmute wrote: post #241
yunohn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean they get to enjoy the fruits of modern life, and hence shouldn’t complain? Again, that’s not a valid argument. Let’s use some data, for example wealth distribution (1) - the lower classes have stayed lower income, and the middle class is rapidly transferring wealth to the upper classes. How is this sustainable? (1) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

It's not an issue of data. Wealth inequality by itself doesn't do anything bad, if the bottom can still afford what they need. It's a matter of having a realistic mindset and sense of self determination. A poor person today in the west has it drastically better than any poor person ever in history; they have a better quality of life as a poor person, and they have mind-bogglingly high levels of income mobility, in a…

Look, this is really a pathetic line of argument. If you’re selling self-help books, sure go ahead.

This discussion is about minimum wage, wealth gaps, and relative compensation of CEOs. You do realise that? If you think everything is perfect, feel free to ignore such threads. The status quo exists and doesn’t need your support.

Saying that working class people can just work harder and get higher paying jobs, doesn’t solve anyone’s problem. In fact, it only furthers the problem that only some jobs get a living wage, and even fewer jobs get a good wage.

I have no idea why you think it’s okay to tell poor people to “just improve their situation”, and contribute both their/our tax money towards enriching the wealthy.

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