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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

#101

Post by triceratops »

GreenPlastic wrote: post #11
vfclists wrote: post #2

When executive pay is based on stock value which depends on keeping costs down, what relief can there be for employees and subcontractors?

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

It's to take raw inputs and turn it into money. No one really wants telemarketing calls, or patent lawsuits but companies "produce" those things regardless to make money.

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

#102

Post by chrisseaton »

ssklash wrote: post #36
chrisseaton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

What's the morals of stopping two consenting parties paying each other whatever they want for something entirely legal?

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

#103

Post by triceratops »

AlexandrB wrote: post #13
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

This is why whenever a company claims to be "creating jobs" they're talking about a byproduct they're often trying to reduce/stop not a goal of their business. IMHO "job creation" rhetoric can be dismissed out of hand when discussing taxation and regulation.

Pretty much this. "We created jobs" is just code for "We were forced to spend some money to make even more money".

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

#104

Post by dvt »

bigfudge wrote: post #72
dvt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But fairness without morality is just a nonsense. It’s an equilibrium. fairness requires some moral perspective.

> fairness requires some moral perspective

It does not; you might be thinking of "justice." Even animals have a primal sense of fairness without the moral baggage (e.g. every dog gets one treat, etc.).

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

#105

Post by Kerrick »

ctvo wrote: post #4

> Jassy's executive compensation package, which is tied to Amazon stock price and mostly delivered as stock awards over a multi-year period, was $212 million in 2021. They used "multi-year" here over the actual timeline: 10 years. It sounds a lot less outrageous that his pay is heavily based on the stock price and comes out to be ~21 million a year as the head of one of the largest tech companies in the world. Here a…

That $212 million was starkly contrasted by the next point in the article, that Warehouse workers typically make $15/hr. It would take about 7,000 years working that wage (full-time) to make the same $212,000,000. It's still a _huge_ gulf, whether the CEO's compensation is in one year or one decade.

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

#106

Post by VikingCoder »

celeritascelery wrote: post #42
VikingCoder wrote: post #37

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...

How much better will you perform when they boost your pay 0.005%?

What's $1,000,000 / $212,000,000 again?

Is it 0.47%?

If you're going to mock me over math, then at least don't be off by a factor of a hundred. :)

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

#107

Post by dvt »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #83
dvt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The often-cited notion that a warehouse worker has even remotely the same responsibility as a company CEO is just straight-up fiction. Ergo, their jobs are incomparable.

I'm not so sure. Stakes may be higher but feels like CEO performance doesn't correlate strongly to education, past experience, class, or anything really. So perhaps a random lottery--with some IQ floor--and lower pay would be a win-win for companies and workers.

> So perhaps a random lottery--with some IQ floor--and lower pay would be a win-win for companies and workers.

Do you think any shareholders would vote for such a strategy?

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

#108

Post by sushisource »

bluetidepro wrote: post #100
weezin wrote: post #97

21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged.

> 21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged. Or imagine this... they (athletes and CEOs) are ALL grossly overpaid. WOAH!! How out of touch with reality are you, if you think th…

But, it's a good point that you rarely hear much in the public discourse about how much NFL players make, where tech CEOs are a constant target of this sort of anger.

Mind you, I agree with you on the general point, but turns out people don't act terribly rationally about who they get angry at for making too much money.

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

#109

Post by vhgyu75e6u »

bluetidepro wrote: post #100
weezin wrote: post #97

21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged.

> 21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged. Or imagine this... they (athletes and CEOs) are ALL grossly overpaid. WOAH!! How out of touch with reality are you, if you think th…

How much money has Tom Brady or Jassy made for the patriots/Amazon due to their leadership? If they brought 500M then 25M seems fair.

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

#110

Post by ciabattabread »

evandale wrote: post #90
anonporridge wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It's really starting down a bad path when we start asking megacorps to do the government's job. IMO it's even worse than that. Not only do we expect corporations to do the government's job, we're also giving corporations more power than we give governments. Just look at the "it's a private company they can censor whoever they want!" crowd. They actually believe companies who control over half the content we're expos…

What aspect of “private company” do you not understand? No shit they have the power to censor on the platforms they control.
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