Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 360 posts

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

#251

Post by UncleMeat »

rglullis wrote: post #237
UncleMeat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel that your productivity as a trained professional is the same as anybody else's productivity? The trick would be to allow workers to capture all of their productivity rather than have a large amount of it syphoned off by owners.

> Do you feel that your productivity as a trained professional is the same as anybody else's productivity? How would you even compare that? How would you even measure your productivity? Lines of code? Tickets closed? We can't even compare "productivity" in our own "profession", much less between different ones. Fuck, even to think in terms of "professions" today seems so anachronistic... some of the best people I wor…

> How would you even compare that? How would you even measure your productivity? Lines of code? Tickets closed?

How would you measure your scarcity? It is similarly difficult. "Workers are paid according to their productivity" does not mean "there is a fixed mechanical pay formula based on lines of code or something".

> More likely, entrepreneurs would simply automate the shit of out of their work and outsource what is not automatable to other service providers. And all of the "workers" who can not think for themselves will be left jobless and crying for someone to help them.

If entrepreneurs can already do this, why the fuck are they paying so much money for engineers in the bay area? Wouldn't "can be replaced by machines" be the literal minimum possible scarcity?

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

#252

Post by snowwrestler »

rglullis wrote: post #59
beckman466 wrote: post #46

So according to this 2018 article by The Verge [1], Foxconn workers producing iGadgets in China earn on average $390.16 per month. Times that by twelve and we find that workers earn $4,681.92 per year on average. If we divide Tim's $750,000,000 bonus/payout this year by that $4,681.92 yearly Foxconn salary, we get 160,190 My question is: how is Tim so productive that he does roughly 160,000 people’s work, or 1/8th of…

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?

There’s only one Tim Cook in the world. But, there’s also only one me in the world.

CEOs don’t get paid so much because they are personally unique. Every human is globally unique; it’s a consequence of how complex humans are.

CEOs have artificial scarcity because of the hierarchical structure of companies. By definition, there’s only one CEO of Apple.

Does that mean that ONLY Tim Cook, out of billions of humans, could have brought Apple to the success they have today? Try this thought exercise: if Tim had stayed at Compaq in 1997 instead of jumping to Apple, what are the chances that he would be CEO today of a Compaq worth $2 trillion?

“How much of Apple’s success is personally attributable to Tim Cook” is a perfectly valid question to ask. Unfortunately, answering it is extremely difficult; you’d need to rerun history for each alternate person. But the weight of a process doesn’t guarantee that it finds an optimum.

CEOs benefit from a human tendency to attribute systemic qualities to individual things or people. It’s the same reason we say a jacket “is warm” even though all it is doing is trapping the warmth that we created ourselves. We say a “successful CEO” instead of “the CEO of a successful company.”

Tim Cook makes incredibly consequential decisions every day. But the reason they are so consequential is mostly because he is the CEO of a huge company.

The negative effect of the current thinking on CEO “scarcity” is visible in the absurdly outsized personal rewards that the CEOs of successful companies get. But it’s even more visible in what happens to the CEOs of companies that are not successful. They still get absurd rewards! Adam Neumann also became a billionaire.

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

#253

Post by nvilcins »

robin_reala wrote: post #163
nvilcins wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding two _trillion_ dollars of net worth sounds pretty productive to me.

Out of interest, how much of that two trillion dollars do you think is directly attributable to the role of CEO?

No less than 5%, or 100 billion.

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

#254

Post by swiley »

beaunative wrote: post #137

So many sour comments. When Tim Cook took the place of the legendary you know who, every reviewers is worried about Apple's future, and Tim's not doing a so bad job after all. Most of his investments paid off, and Apple's performance has remained stable and has grown. Tim deserves credit for running such an successful operation. Do you really think those running-up phone makers aren't looking for someone like Tim? Th…

IMO: he’s doing an awful job. His mismanagement of iOS will result in regulation that forces them to give up the abuses which made it (and by extension Apple) so profitable.

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

#255

Post by Ensorceled »

k__ wrote: post #48
whack wrote: post #35

> 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. I'm normally a proponent of reducing income inequality. But this has got me thinking. Is the world actively better off when billionaires like Cook/Gates/Buffett make a ton of money. Consider the alternative: someone in the 75th percentile of USA income gets a fat raise. Mo…

"If every person used their resources for the best of society, the world would be a better place!" Sure thing. The problem is, many of those people also burn money for yachts and spaceships. Plus, to me all this charity stuff seems like a buyout. Gates basically made the world a worse place, before he started to make it better.

And then Gates fought against dropping COVID vaccine patent protection for months. Old habits die hard, I guess.

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

#257

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rglullis wrote: post #243
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"people are paid not by the value of their work, but by their scarcity" When will we learn to stop making these silly arguments about "scarcity" and understand that the only thing that matters is a position of power? Einstein and Steven Hawking were unique and advanced the entire human civilisation, whats their net work? Is anyone except the mentally ill going to suggest we have more Einsteins that Tim Cook's lying a…

Ultimately, yes. But where does that power come from?

Does Putin's, Joe Biden's and Edison's power come from the same 'source'? Are you implying power come from scarsity? Do we have scarsity of politicians?

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

#258

Post by rglullis »

bserge wrote: post #213
rglullis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not. If you are already rich enough to retire many times over, why should you keep working on something that doesn't move the scale of your money (and consequently power and ability to do other things, including starting a new business that could disrupt you…

Because you like your current job? Why would someone like Cook start a new business when he can do it within Apple?

Can he turn Apple into a computer company that would focus on replaceable, modular electronics? Something like Fairphone, but on a bigger scale and with more resources, or that could have more runway without turning a profit? No, he can't. Apple is known for being a company that wants to integrate everything and needs to control all of its process. And for all the environmental talk, they would never sacrifice their bottom line to ensure their products are really green.

Could he turn Apple into an online education platform that leverage open source platforms and open hardware to make it as affordable as possible to everyone? No, he can't. Apple depends on the brand of exclusivity and premium products.

Need I go on?

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

#259

Post by snowwrestler »

bserge wrote: post #221
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You sure it wasn't Jobs? Looks to me like Cook just kept things going about the same as Jobs would have (at least the last version of him). I do wonder how long it's gonna last.

Cook came to Apple only a year after Jobs did. Apple bought NeXT in 1997 and Cook joined Apple in 1998 (Jobs recruited him). So it’s hard to untangle their impacts. Apple became so successful in this century because of both great products and great operations.

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

#260

Post by wayneftw »

rglullis wrote: post #59
beckman466 wrote: post #46

So according to this 2018 article by The Verge [1], Foxconn workers producing iGadgets in China earn on average $390.16 per month. Times that by twelve and we find that workers earn $4,681.92 per year on average. If we divide Tim's $750,000,000 bonus/payout this year by that $4,681.92 yearly Foxconn salary, we get 160,190 My question is: how is Tim so productive that he does roughly 160,000 people’s work, or 1/8th of…

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?

There are plenty of Tim Cooks around. THE Tim Cook is only in his position because of luck. Lucky to be born white white, in America and lucky in timing and connections.
Post reply on HN