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Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

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Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so fascinating. The janitors don't?

They certainly dont add $100 million of value. Probably add at least as much as they're paid but that's not saying much

How do you come to that conclusion?

The cleanliness of an office space is a gigantic force multiplier for productivity. I wouldn't be surprised if janitors had a bigger impact.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#592
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously wrong. NBA teams are a good counter-example. Nobody talks about the team's president/CEO/etc when prognosticating which team will be the best.

Do NBA CEOs get paid less than the highest paid players? I would expect them to get paid more.

After unionizing, players get half of profits while owners get the other half.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly dont add $100 million of value. Probably add at least as much as they're paid but that's not saying much

How do you come to that conclusion? The cleanliness of an office space is a gigantic force multiplier for productivity. I wouldn't be surprised if janitors had a bigger impact.

value is about opportunity cost. If anyone off the street could replace you your value is the lowest amount a competent person would demand on the market.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#594
post #410

I remember getting downvoted then flagged for making a reasonable argument against a bunch of employees from Tesla unionising. While its not exactly a vindication, I feel super vindicated right now and I'm not gonna be reasonable this time. These companies have no way out, they are going to die! All these people will lose their livelihood and worse their options to monetise their skillset/experience will be next to z…

Some executives are as you say. In general, those companies which are lead by executives like that are leaders and produce high quality and innovative products that people love. But many execs are not. They work just as obsessively as the first type, but only to increase their own power inside of the organization, at the expense of the organization's cohesion, trust, productivity, and quality. They live in a bubble,…

I tend to agree with you. I was generalising quite a bit for the sake of conciseness (& being a little cheeky)

Its not uncommon to see people in these roles because of nepotism, they write the checks or they are good at short term games (machiavellian, gift of the gab, office politics).

That said, such exceptions tend to not last long because of the unstable nature of these situations.

In other words, those who match the description I made earlier tend to eat these peoples lunch given enough time.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#595
post #243
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these companies are unable to replace their C-Suite with anyone costing less They can replace their C-suite with me. The fact they don’t want to because I’m not some rich, well-connected, historical CEO does not mean they don’t have the option. I’d do the job for just the basic pay package.

Have you considered that you are perhaps not a very good big-org leader, and perhaps that is why they have not hired you? Simply stating they can hire you and they don't because you're not already well-connected clearly demonstrates you haven't an idea what these people actually do.

And you are qualified to judge right?

My point is that there are a lot of people that would make perfectly fine CEO’s skipped over because they’re not already a CEO/born into connections.

The strongest signal people use for determining whether they would be any good is whether they’re already one. Which is how people that torpedo a company get re-hired anyway.

Unlike for example, engineers, where we assume they can’t program their way out of a pack of butter even when they come in as a principal.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#596

I remember getting downvoted then flagged for making a reasonable argument against a bunch of employees from Tesla unionising. While its not exactly a vindication, I feel super vindicated right now and I'm not gonna be reasonable this time. These companies have no way out, they are going to die! All these people will lose their livelihood and worse their options to monetise their skillset/experience will be next to z…

Yes the CEO should make more, but where do you get off that a single individual can possibly do 300-400x more work than another individual. It is sheer absurdity of an opinion to hold. In a civilized society I would say maxing out the top paid employee of a company to 20-30x of the average of the salaries of the bottom half of all salaries in the company is what should be done. Anything more than that creates a syste…

I tried to address this in the latter part of my post.

I'll start by saying there is a lot of nuance here with cases where I might even agree with you but I'm going set aside nuance in service of getting to the core of my point.

The guy who pushes around a trolley, unpacks a box of goods and puts it in the shelfs of a local branch of a nation wide grocery chain is not just worth 30x less than the CEO of that multi billion dollar grocery chain.

The key distinction here is that the difference isn't just linear, its non linear with a steep gradient. You can replace that guy with a 12 year old disabled girl and it would make almost no different to outcome for the multi billion dollar grocery chain.

Whereas if you hired a slightly less competent/experienced CEO and I mean like 0.5% less, the difference is tens or even hundreds of millions.

The non linear nature to this is not just something to do with humans, its a natural phenomenon. Its the Pareto principle & distribution.

Maybe things can be in the realm of 20-30x when we are talking about CEO vs the rest of the C-suite.

P.S. Just to directly address your civilised society claim: There is nothing civilised about the proletariat or their puppeteers dictating by fiat how far high a person can fly before their wings get chopped off. Btw in such a society, those who chose are an order of magnitude more powerful than the most richest and powerful in our current society. You just replaced one set of elites who "atleast" "somewhat" earned their station with another set of elites whos only skill is in being a good orator.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the CEO should make more, but where do you get off that a single individual can possibly do 300-400x more work than another individual. It is sheer absurdity of an opinion to hold. In a civilized society I would say maxing out the top paid employee of a company to 20-30x of the average of the salaries of the bottom half of all salaries in the company is what should be done. Anything more than that creates a syste…

Also Akida Toyoda made $6.9m last year, and Toyota is larger than any of the US companies by a wide margin in every metric, while bringing in more net income. How do these US CEO's calculate their worth as 5x as much for smaller less profitable companies? It's avarice clear as day.

Dear sir, Akida Toyada very very surprisingly unbeknownst nobody just so happens to be the grandson of this random guy Kiichiro Toyoda who shockingly was the founder of Toyota Motors.

Just do you know I'm using all the restraint I have in me to not question your mental capacity using slurs (pls don't ban-ish me señor Dang, grant me this sentence).

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price is based on how difficult it is to find someone that won’t drive a massive company awry, not based on them becoming better.

Like Carly Fiorina? The pay for CEOs is set by the board, and the board of most large companies is made up of CEO's from other large companies. It's the private equivalent of plutocracy.

The board is not made of other CEOs

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was replaced with one of the greatest minds in Operations that history has ever known, and much of Apple's success under Steve was thanks to Tim. So Apple is not the best example if you're trying to show "CEOs don't matter."

> So Apple is not the best example if you're trying to show "CEOs don't matter." I wasn't try to show that they don't matter, but that they are replaceable. And few companies need to have "the greatest mind in Operations that history has ever known" to function well. Does Eli Lilly, Unitedheath, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Home Depot, Pepsico, Walmart, Coca Cola, Accenture, Intuit, Caterpillar, Lowes, Nike?…

Your definition of “replaceable” is so loose to be meaningless. Yes, any person can be appointed to the CEO position when another leaves. No, it is not easy to appoint one that will steer the company to greater success than the previous one.

Re: Striking auto workers want a 40% pay increase–the same rate their CEOs’ pay grew

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's GDP allocated per congressperson is like $50 billion each. Salaries wont fix bribes for someone with that much to command and even the already rich can make a lot of money getting into politics. Their salary means nothing to them.

You need to pay congressmen enough money so they can have upper middle class lifestyle - without that pressure to take bribes is dramatically higher. You have nice 5bdrm house in good school district and enough money for nice vacation + savings? Refusing bribes is easy - you are comfortable. Kids are taken care of. Wife does not have to work. This lifestyle requires 300-600k in DC. You live in shitty 2bdrm apartment…

What happens when they want more? That upper middle class salary won’t be enough anymore and they’ll seek bribes.
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