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Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

bbc.com

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Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#201

Post by UncleMeat »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #153
diordiderot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where we didn't have to choose exclusively between dictatorial communism and unfettered capitalism. So sad that any other system is completely impossible

Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth. But in case of foxconn workers and Cook, everything is fair. Foxconn workers are not chained to the benches, that simply don't know any other place where they can earn more. And I think Cook doesn't bribe anyone to achieve such payouts. If anything, he's doing a great job developing a business.

> Our world is unfair only when the corruption interferes, that lets you receive more money than you are actually worth.

What is corruption?

A software engineer doing the same work gets paid way more in SF than in London. State policies prevent free movement of labor between London and SF. State policies do not prevent free movement of capital across nations, as clearly seen by the number of megacorporations actually owned by weird subsidiaries in strange locations for tax purposes.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#202

Post by pavlov »

Aeolun wrote: post #149
pavlov wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since these are stock awards, the money really comes from old and new Apple shareholders, not the company itself. When the stock award was granted, existing shareholders agreed to dilute their holdings by allowing the company to issue new shares to Cook. And when Cook sells this newly issued stock for cash, the money comes from new shareholders who want a slice of Apple (or existing shareholders buying more, thus pay…

Yeah? If people have money to spend on Apple stock they clearly don’t need it to survive.

Who said anything about that? I wanted to clarify that the money Cook is receiving isn’t paid out of Apple’s cash reserves.

Although the question you raise is an interesting one in the sense that many buyers of Apple stock are indirectly depending on it to make a living after they’ve stopped working. For a blue chip giant like Apple, many of the buyers are index funds and pensions where the ultimate beneficiaries are retirees. They literally are buying Apple stock to survive, although through intermediaries.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#203

Post by vmurthy »

eliaspro wrote: post #95
vmurthy wrote: post #38

From the article : "In 2015, Mr Cook said he would give away his entire fortune before he dies, and is known to have donated tens of millions of dollars to charity". Success during one's life , paying it back to make the society a better place once gone. Take a bow, Mr Cook. What more can one ask for in a lifetime :)

And during his lifetime, this money is locked away, only accessible by him, taken out of circulation and thereby not adding any worth against ever-growing inequality, supporting economic prosperity or tax-funded investments. This is just once again a case of philanthropic green-washing of what should be actually simply heavily taxed.

> This is just once again a case of philanthropic green-washing of what should be actually simply heavily taxed.

Not being snarky but heavily taxed and then what? Expect the government to make the best decision on how to spend money?

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#204

Post by thehappypm »

thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #191
Ecstatify wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay for talent. How many people in the world have the talent to run a $2.4 trillion company effectively.

Likely hundreds of thousands of people. The burden of proof ought to be on him/his proponents. From the rather scant publicly available material, I've never heard the man say anything profound, original, nor any other sign of exceptional competence. That's not bad in and of itself, not everyone has to be a controversial thinker, especially not a CEO of an established company that's minting gold every day. But we have…

I like to point out here that a lot of companies have been ruined by incompetent leadership. Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft made a ton of boneheaded decisions.. think about how poorly Vista was received, and how he didn’t lead the company towards an iPhone.

Satya Nadella takes over, steers the ship towards services and cloud, literally billions worth of better leadership.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#205

Post by pdpi »

intricatedetail wrote: post #29

This is obscene. He didn't make any iPhone or other device nor worked behind the counter, yet he takes the money that could have been redistributed among the workers. Despicable man.

This "despicable man" is the CEO who blasted a board member for suggesting that he should prioritise profitability over sustainability.

https://fortune.com/2014/03/01/apples-tim-cook-picks-a-fight...

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#206

Post by UncleMeat »

yalogin wrote: post #193
UncleMeat wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has how many employees? Cook was involved, but clearly is not the sole force contributing to that shareholder value.

Wow! Are you saying Musk and a regular employee in Tesla are the same? I am blown away. What do you think Satya Nadella’s role is in Microsoft’s revival after Ballmer?

The same? No. Off by a factor of thousands or millions? Unlikely.

I am not insisting that people should all earn the same amount of money. CEOs can absolutely provide a unique and valuable role and have more direct influence on shareholder value than almost any other laborer.

I am insisting that attributing all of the change in a stock price to a CEO is not an accurate representation of their role or labor.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#207

Post by moduspol »

ahtihn wrote: post #107
rglullis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity? Any factory in China can replace most of their 160k employees overnight if they wanted to. How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around?

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around Probably thousands? Just put a job ad for "Apple CEO" out there, set pay at a generous 10 million/year and I'm pretty sure you won't have issues finding qualified candidates. I really don't think Apple's valuation would change much if Tim Cook is replaced, so I don't see what justifies such a large bonus.

> I really don't think Apple's valuation would change much if Tim Cook is replaced

Apple's current valuation is $2.49 trillion. A trillion is literally a million millions.

So that puts them at 2,490,000 millions. Due to meeting various goals, Tim Cook is getting 750 millions. That's ~0.03% of the company's valuation.

Apple's valuation wouldn't have to change very much before it would have been better to keep Cook in charge, even with higher compensation.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#208

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Aeolun wrote: post #72
rglullis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will we learn to stop making these silly calculations about "productivity" and understand that people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity? Any factory in China can replace most of their 160k employees overnight if they wanted to. How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around?

> by their scarcity By their perceived scarcity Chances are that anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. Still, this is over 10 years, and Apple shares have increased in value by 1900%. If they were still the same value he’d have gotten 40M, for about 4M per year. Which is much more reasonable. I still think it’s high, but in line with what others get.

I don't think anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. If you look at competing tech corps - HP, IBM, Sun, MIPS, SGI, DEC, Nokia, even MS - their run isn't as long, they fail to adapt after a strong start, and the wheels often come off in spectacular ways.

And that's with competent management. (Let's not talk about the multiple management idiocies that happened at HP.)

Apple is now one of the longest lived tech corps. IBM is older but a shadow of its old self. MS is a year or so older, but the rest of FAANG are relatively new.

Cook has kept the plates spinning and turned Apple into a giant revenue machine with a strong R&D back-up. I don't think that's a small achievement, and even if he's helped by the board and senior execs - which of course he is - it's still easy to underestimate the skill that goes into that.

Having said that - he's also turned Apple into a somewhat boring company. The products are nice-looking and usually functional but not particularly thrilling. They feel overpriced. And I suspect some opportunities in home automation, user content creation, and health have been missed.

Cook's Apple is an all-American bureaucratic behemoth - a kind of modern General Electric which keeps churning out high levels of competence, but not much inspiration or excitement, and not a little frustration and irritation over nickel-and-diming of users and developers.

Someone else might not have made Apple as profitable, but personally I wouldn't have minded a friendlier and more inventive and adventurous company.

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#209

Post by martyvis »

avianlyric wrote: post #166
ahtihn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many Tim Cook's do you have lying around Probably thousands? Just put a job ad for "Apple CEO" out there, set pay at a generous 10 million/year and I'm pretty sure you won't have issues finding qualified candidates. I really don't think Apple's valuation would change much if Tim Cook is replaced, so I don't see what justifies such a large bonus.

I think this is ignoring the risks associated with such a change. You might find people qualified on paper, but you really don’t know how that translates into real world performance until you try it. The risk of getting that wrong and accidentally destroying billions of dollars of shareholder value (don’t like the term, but it seems appropriate here) is very high (low likelihood, extremely high severity). As a board…

>The risk of getting that wrong and accidentally destroying billions of dollars of shareholder value

Definitely happened for HP when they took on Leo

Re: Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

#210

Post by avianlyric »

MikeLumos wrote: post #170
DasIch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people spend money on charities they like. They change society the way they want it to change that does not necessarily make society a better place nor is it necessarily what most people want. If he had to pay all of this on taxes, society could decide how to use that money and it would be just as much, if not more "a better place".

Why does everyone think that they know better how to spend other people's money than the people who have earned it? Somehow the people who didn't have the intelligence and discipline to spend decades successfully doing things that make them rich are so sure that they would be able to do better with their (totally hypothetical) wealth than the people who did. Everyone loves to claim some kind of moral superiority over…

I don’t ones a ability to make money is even vaguely correlated with once ability to spend well for the benefit of society.

Hell the whole reason why democracy is thing is because monarchies of yesteryear have proven quite decisively that the ability to raise capital and spend well for society are not even remotely linked.

We need to consider very carefully as a society what the impact of the billionaire class has on how our society develops, and the outsized impacts they can have on democratic processes.

Personally I don’t think having such wealthy individuals is a good idea. Their wealth is so great it’s pretty much impossible for them not to get wealthier, and do it at a rate greater than than the vast majority of people. And their ability to deploy that capital to influence society is scary, effectively taking the role of government to provide social services, and placing it in the hands of a wealth few.

We’ve already seen what more extreme individuals are prepared to do with that power, just a Hobbylobby and David Green’s continued vendetta against abortions and safe contraceptives.

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