Live data from Hacker News

Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout

bbc.com

311–320 of 360 posts

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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, how do you think of productivity then? (E.g stock price, revenue growth, etc?) I assumed you meant something along the lines "pay everybody the same per hour of labor" since that seems to be how most people describe productivity.

The company produces some amount of economic output in a year. This can be stuff or it can be innovation. That is the total productivity of the company. The sum of all productivity of its employees adds up to that value. Right now, people are paid less than the value of their productivity so there is money leftover for the company to either stick in the bank (profit) or reinvest in other things. Not everybody is equa…

What about companies that produce negative value (say, an oil company that caused an environmental disaster)? Are the workers going to return part of their salaries back?

How many software companies got off the ground, hired people, PAID SALARIES, yet never got to see themselves become profitable?

How many companies would not even have existed if there was no risk investment done?

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipe to have a nonsensical argument: 1. Take a Normal distribution 2. Take 2 pieces of data that are 3 standard deviation from mean, in opposite directions 3. Compare and contrast 4. Keep a straight face while making the argument, use plenty of Logical fallacies to defend your position against logic and reasoning. 5. Alternate between attacking and being the victim. 6. Lather, rinse, repeat

Emotional arguments are more effective than logical ones, even if you are talking to smart people.

And that is the most logical statement.

Thank you for the reminder.

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

#313

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…

Supply and demand.

How many people can assemble widgets? Billions of people.

How many people can make the correct decisions as a CEO of a large company? Really not many, since you need someone with an IQ over 140, someone with industry expertise, with the right personality, etc. So the supply is low. Also the demand is high, since that person's decision making has multi-billion dollar consequences. Low supply and high demand equal $$$.

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

#314

I just simply cannot agree with anyone who believes that 10 years of work is worth $750 million. Even if the thinking is that doing the correct decitions is worth much more to the company, I will still just simply refuse to accept that this level of compensation is right on the larger context of human society.

Why not. Efficient companies create value out of nothing, certainly it is better for society than the counterfactual of them not creating value.

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

#315
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.

[deleted]

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s mostly long term capital gains, he’s in the 20% LTCG tax bracket.

23.8%, because he would surely have to pay NIIT as well, right? But also, that's just federal taxes. California adds 13.3% on top of that (for any income over $1 million, which is most of the income here). But also, this is a stock grant, which generally get taxed as ordinary income, so I would expect 37% federal, 2.35% medicare, 13.3% California tax, adding up to 52.65% in taxes.

I think medicare is capped after your first 140K of income, so it is a rounding error. Tax is still a huge cut.

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

#317

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…

Supply and demand. How many people can assemble widgets? Billions of people. How many people can make the correct decisions as a CEO of a large company? Really not many, since you need someone with an IQ over 140, someone with industry expertise, with the right personality, etc. So the supply is low. Also the demand is high, since that person's decision making has multi-billion dollar consequences. Low supply and hig…

That's the biggest problem with the current monopoly capitalism. Centralization of power into single people making decisions with momentous impacts (be they 140+ IQ or total idiots as some other CEOs are). A good economy is made from small and medium enterprises in which some of them failing do not make much of a difference. That is also the basis of a good investment strategy, diversification.

If the single person in power does good then everything is good (more for the top people but good for everyone nonetheless). But if they do bad then thousands to hundreds of thousands of people suffer. (Reminds you of monarchy?) And the current way of looking at this is just to hope that the person in power will be happy to do good due to more shares. What would be, in my opinion, better would be to split FAANGS and encourage SMEs (small and medium enterprises)

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s shares and Apple’s market cap is 2.44 Trillion. Effectively shareholders paid 0.03cents on the dollar for Tim Cook. In exchange they get a steady ship that slowly and surely increases in value. Why quibble about such a small amount? You’ve paid 0.03% of your current Apple holdings for a decade of growth creating value many orders of magnitude greater.

Market cap is not a real sum of money that actually exists and coupd be retrieved. You, the sharegolder, oan the company, and pay Tim Cook out of revenue. From that perspective salaries of upper management are not so trivial

Apple's 2020 revenue was 274 bn $, and on track to substantially increase in 2021. Tim Cook's compensation is about Then again, I'm not sure it makes more sense to compare stock-based compensation with revenue than with market cap.

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

#319

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…

>What makes Apple treat Chinese workers so differently? You're asking the wrong question. It should be: Why is there no disincentive to take unfair advantage of cheap foreign labor?

Why there should be?

We live in a global free trade era. Every entity buys cheapest and sells dearest as they can to the best of the information they have.

Labour is just one more thing available for buying.

Not saying this is the best possible humans can do but in the current world economic system it makes no sense for anyone to dis incentivise employing cheaper foreign labour.

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

#320
post #23

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.

No doubt he's done a good job, but he also inherited a great company which was obviously already full of great people. He has done surprisingly well during his time there, but Apple has shifted more into a monopolistic, protectionist company with declining software/hardware quality compared to when Steve Jobs was running it. From an investor standpoint, he's done quite well. And since his reward is based on stock val…

>But I wouldn't say he's 100X or more talented than an average experienced business leader

That's not the relevant metric. An extra 0.0003X growth pays back the 750 million for a 2.4 trillion dollar company.(750mil bonus/2.4 T market cap)

If he is 1.0003 X better at growing value than the average CEO, it was worth it from the financial perspective.

The argument that Tim cook a 1.0003X CEO is a lot easier to make.

Post reply on HN