This list appears to be missing the CEOs of banks. People like Jamie Dimon who profited from the financial crisis should probably be on this list for life.
Overpaid CEOs 2019
171–180 of 203 posts
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#172The CEO (and upper management in general) pay scale is total BS when viewed through normal compensation lenses, unlike normal people who are paid for their time, upper management is usually compensated on performance -but- they are compensated on the performance of their company (or division) and they get all the pie. Since nobody else's pay is scaling with performance (outside of bonuses which in my experience usual…
And yet, if you took Blizzard CEO's total pay (from the article, I think around $28 mil) and spread that over the nearly 10k employees, everyone gets an extra $3k, which wouldn't do diddly squat for retention. Also, losing 40% of growth would be pretty awful for anyone who has company stock (employees, 401ks, investors) especially if that's year over year.
That's not Blizzard's CEO, that's Activision-Blizzard's CEO. Blizzard's CEO is J. Allen Brack. Activision-Blizzard just fired 800 of those 10k employees, including employees who were long-time employee. Why? Because Activision-Blizzard didn't reach its full potential even though they made a record profit, and the CEO stays. Something about captains leaving the sinking ship last. Very bad for morale, except it seems to be regarded as "normal" these days (it is not).
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. They get paid what they do because they set their own compensation. Performance has nothing to do with it, unless things get so bad they are removed.
CEO's dont set their own comp unless it's a small private company, and those are unlikely to be paying millions.
True, but also a myopic understanding of what actually goes on. Who do you think actually serve on the boards? The answer is other executives. And so there's the all too common situation where pay raises and golden parachutes are essentially quid pro quos.
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#174I believe CEOs are compensated what they are in order to get them thinking like “owners” which many “professional” CEOs are not ultimately. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, Gates, Jobs don’t/didn’t need large salaries because their identities were tied to their companies. Owners eat sleep and breath their company in a way the average salaried employee plucked at random from +10,000 employee company will not. To the po…
You really should not be a CEO if you’re mostly in it for the money. That’s not leadership.
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Upper management pay, oof. I am at a company that went public. I was a very early employee working on the core product as a developer for the better part of a decade. I got a very nice payout (a bit over 1 million before taxes). The head of HR joined several months prior to our IPO and made over 8x what I did in equity. Like, wtf.... I can't complain as I won some start up lotto money, but, man, this head of HR _real…
Any more details (that you're willing to share) on this? You mentioned they're only the "Head of HR", but you say you were a core product dev (senior by the timeline you give). Did you accept underpay because you were early? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around an 8-month "Head of HR" making out significantly better than a (first 20?) Sr Product dev (not questioning your story though).
I'm thinking the number of options just weren't there.
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not private. They're public companies and we care because we're shareholders.
Public doesn't mean they don't own the company.
Sure, but it often also means we (the shareholders) get a voice and so "Why would anyone care about how much CEOs make?" Is "because we are partly the owners and we care about what we own"
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better question, and one that gets to the heart of why Blizzard's CEO is overpaid, is why do they need 10k people to make, distribute, and support a few video games? There are far, far more effecient video game studios/publishers out there. Nintendo manufactures and ships millions of hardware units in addition to producing/publishing games and they have fewer employees.
That is, in fact, why blizzard just laid off 800 people- they were from underperforming sections of the business or, iirc, business they wanted to get out of.
"Underperforming sections"? Customer Support rep which gave it his all got fired. Due to such people getting fired there's going to be a gap between community and company. How can that possibly be an "underperforming section"?
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, if you took Blizzard CEO's total pay (from the article, I think around $28 mil) and spread that over the nearly 10k employees, everyone gets an extra $3k, which wouldn't do diddly squat for retention. Also, losing 40% of growth would be pretty awful for anyone who has company stock (employees, 401ks, investors) especially if that's year over year.
The $3k doesn't have to be spent on salaries. In fact, unless Blizzard is having a retention problem (they may be... but I'd guess it's not due to salaries), there's better places to spend that money. Some estimates say their failed game, Titan, cost about $50mil to develop. If their CEO dropped his salary to a modest $1mil/yr, he could essentially fund a new game every 2 years. This is of course an over-simplificati…
Put in perspective, a CEO pay check can eg. be that of 100 engineers (Volvo Cars CEO).
Lets say the CEO instead got compensated 10x engineers. That would leave 90 extra engineers for different projects. Given how resource constraned everything usually is, that would have a huge impact.
I would say the most important thing with the CEO is that he is not extremely bad. The extra value provided for the 10x to 100x is probably not worth it for the owners compared to risk with less engineers.
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#179The CEO (and upper management in general) pay scale is total BS when viewed through normal compensation lenses, unlike normal people who are paid for their time, upper management is usually compensated on performance -but- they are compensated on the performance of their company (or division) and they get all the pie. Since nobody else's pay is scaling with performance (outside of bonuses which in my experience usual…
Part of OP's point though is that CEO pay is apparently not tied to performance because CEOs still get astronomical pay really regardless of whether or not their company/division performs well. So CEOs just get paid more period. And there's this funny set of myths as to why that is the case. In reality, I think it just boils down to the fact that humans sort of instinctively (or maybe culturally?) like the idea of ro…
> I think it just boils down to the fact that humans sort of instinctively (or maybe culturally?) like the idea of royalty.
Until they don't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CEO is paying higher taxes than the corporation. (You limited it to salary.) So in your example no, more taxes actually.
Wouldn't that depend on the actual compensation? If it's mostly stock there are all kinds of capital gain games that can be played, no?
Yes, long term capital gains tax is lower than corporate tax. But you limited it to salary not compensation.
When we talk about compensation we need to start talking about things like golden handcuffs or parachute. Things linked to performance etc.
But corporate taxes also need to be kept in context. If I'm not "allowed" to pay my CEO a lot (which means he/she may leave) then I'll spend the money otherwise to reinvest etc. (A la Amazon). Is that "wrong" as well?