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Overpaid CEOs 2019

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Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#21

Post by vvanders »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #14
ahelwer wrote: post #5

Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. Attitudes within our field are changing! Used to be you couldn't mention the U-word without a dozen engineers jumping down your throat bellowing about "efficiency" (for whom and what?) but engineers are smart and you can only fool them with the same old anti-union propaganda for so long.

I think that if unions actually do make inroads into the software development world, the gaming industry will likely be the last to unionize. The reason that the gaming industry is worse off for developers is not because the game development shops are inherently greedy. They have horrible conditions for those workers because they can. So many people want to develop games rather than do any other kind of software deve…

Eh, I would disagree based on what you see within the various entertainment unions/guilds in movies and TV. I think there's a path there.

I know back when I was in the industry I would have killed for a organization like what was available in film.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#22

Post by stale2002 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9
ahelwer wrote: post #5

Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. Attitudes within our field are changing! Used to be you couldn't mention the U-word without a dozen engineers jumping down your throat bellowing about "efficiency" (for whom and what?) but engineers are smart and you can only fool them with the same old anti-union propaganda for so long.

Yes, though I think the key word that was keeping people from realizing software developers needed unions was "meritocracy". Developers were sold on the idea that people wanting union protection were replaceable, and that they, being the fantastic coders they were, were not.

No, the bigger reason why unions are never going to happen in the tech industry (thankfully), is that many unions and guilds intentionally create huge barriers to entry, in order to keep out people from non-traditional backgrounds, in order to reduce competition.

IE, to keep out immigrants, newbies, and people without degrees.

But over the last 10 years or so, there has been a huge influx of new people into the tech industry, and we are starting to outnumber those from traditional backgrounds who would have tried to prevent us from getting a job in the industry.

A bootcamper isn't going to join a union that would have outlawed their ability to get a job. An immigrant isn't going to join a union that would have them deported.

Instead, we will defect and sabotage those efforts, every step of the way. And there really are quite a lot of us in the tech industry, from non-traditional backgrounds these days. And we are smart enough to fight efforts that would have us fired, or that would pull up the ladder behind us.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#23

Post by lefstathiou »

I 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 points made by other comments, the CEO is entrusted to make decisions that can ripple through thousands instantly. The amount of value they can create or destroy in an instant is probably roughly in line with the multiple they are paid over the average employee. Thus their negotiating leverage is high and equity holders are happy to pay the price.

Said differently, if you owned all the equity of Google, how much would you be willing to pay to ensure that equity is protected? I think that number is more than 10x the salary of the average Google developer.

This is subject to the laws of supply and demand like any other system and it is pretty rational.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#24

Post by stickfigure »

munk-a wrote: post #4

The 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…

nobody is 100x more efficient than anyone else

The stockholders of Kodak, Blockbuster, Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Payless, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, DeLorean, TWA, Pan Am, and Arthur Anderson might beg to differ.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#25

Post by cronix »

simplecomplex wrote: post #13

Everyone is free to be a CEO. If salaries are really too high it should be easy to get a CEO position by undercutting everyone else. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and complain other people are making too much money. Remember that CEOs making less wont result in employees making more. Maybe it’s just me, but HN lately seems dominated by whiny/complaining articles that don’t really contribute any knowledge or enhan…

People are also free to vote for people like Ocasio-Cortez, who are more than willing to take it from the top as it continues to spiral out of whack. You can only displace the bottom for so long, until they get fed up enough and vote for radical change, or worse. That's probably not what most want, myself included, but here we are going from 20:1 in the 70's to 300:1. How far do you think that can reasonably keep tilting until people force a correction? There is a tipping point, and it's not infinite.

It's not a knee jerk reaction to people making a lot of money. It's an honest reaction to watching the people at the top continue to grow and grow and grow over the last 40 years while the rest are basically paid the same (adjusted for inflation) as they were making 20 years ago.

It's not me you need to convince. It's the tens of millions of people who are barely making it, watching others get tax breaks while they truly struggle with the basics of life. We're not at a reasonable balance any longer, and haven't been. We can continue the status quo, and change will eventually be forced. Something reasonable needs to give here, and the answer isn't everybody becoming a CEO.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#26

Post by bit_logic »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9
ahelwer wrote: post #5

Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. Attitudes within our field are changing! Used to be you couldn't mention the U-word without a dozen engineers jumping down your throat bellowing about "efficiency" (for whom and what?) but engineers are smart and you can only fool them with the same old anti-union propaganda for so long.

Yes, though I think the key word that was keeping people from realizing software developers needed unions was "meritocracy". Developers were sold on the idea that people wanting union protection were replaceable, and that they, being the fantastic coders they were, were not.

Developers are finally realizing the following have nothing to do with "meritocracy":

- Non-compete agreements

- Forced arbitration

- Wage fixing (such as Google, Apple, etc. used to do)

- IP ownership agreements (even when not using company equipment or time)

- H1B visa abuse

- And many more

Maybe it's also a marketing problem, don't call it a union, call it a guild or association.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#28

Post by Jare »

simplecomplex wrote: post #13

Everyone is free to be a CEO. If salaries are really too high it should be easy to get a CEO position by undercutting everyone else. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and complain other people are making too much money. Remember that CEOs making less wont result in employees making more. Maybe it’s just me, but HN lately seems dominated by whiny/complaining articles that don’t really contribute any knowledge or enhan…

> Remember that CEOs making less wont result in employees making more

As long as employees making less (and being made to mean less) mean CEOs making more, you are right. But it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't, but it requires realigning incentives among many other things.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#29

Post by CoolGuySteve »

zdragnar wrote: post #16
munk-a wrote: post #4

The 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.

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.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#30

Post by microcolonel »

stickfigure wrote: post #24
munk-a wrote: post #4

The 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…

nobody is 100x more efficient than anyone else The stockholders of Kodak, Blockbuster, Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Payless, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, DeLorean, TWA, Pan Am, and Arthur Anderson might beg to differ.

As a matter of fact, it is established that the larger your organization becomes, the greater the gap in true productivity will tend to become.
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