Apple chief executive Tim Cook gets $750m payout • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by avianlyric » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #297

avianlyric wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no guarantee that Tim’s going to use his money for “good” causes, we’re entirely dependent on his good will. He may go down the evangelical Christian path and fund a war of sex, abortions, gays, trans and people’s reproductive rights. That’s not even a hypothetical outcome, there’s plenty of millionaires and billionaires (like David Green) already funding that war.

Tim funding a war on "gays" would be .... very surprising. But also, there's no guarantee that _anyone_ including the government will use money for "good" causes. Bridges to nowhere, military adventurism, wars on drugs, personal enrichment of politicians and government employees, vanity projects of various sorts, the list of things governments mis-spend on is vast. And of course we don't all agree on the relative mer…

True, but at least you can vote a government out of power. Same can’t be said for billionaires.

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

#322

Post by axelroze » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #57

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…

As a comment already says, this was due to meeting targets agreed 10 years ago. Now a lot of that is due to share prices, and my opinion is share prices are not set by the market any more, are massively inflated to make the US government look good, but that doesn't have much to do with Cook, much like Tesla's share price doesn't have much to do with Elon Musk (I'm serious, the guy is good at marketing, but that only…

Speaking of Tesla's share price. It has Price/Earnings (PE) ratio of 1095 while a normal ratio is around 5 to 10, perhaps around 20 for tech companies. Apple's PE is 29.

Share prices have definitely lost all sense in March 2020. One should keep that in mind when analysing the current economy.

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

#323

Post by antimora » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

Isn't this taxes at 40%+ when this is paid?

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

#324

Post by avianlyric » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

MikeLumos wrote: post #240

avianlyric wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The alternative to a billionaire deciding how to spend the money they have earned is a politician deciding to spend the money they didn't earn. I trust a person who has generated billions of dollars worth of value over a buerocrat who won a popularity contest. Besides, I don't think it should matter whether or not these people spend their money optimally. They've made this money, it's theirs. Don't take other people'…

Eh, call me old fashioned, but I like to vote for the people who have significant influence over the society I live in.

Politicians may not be perfect, but they’re much easier to hold to account that high net worth individuals. I personally consider that a killer feature when picking my power brokers.

We already take others people stuff for the public good. It’s called taxes. That money built the roads you use everyday and props up the society you live in by helping to ensure that everyone gets a decent quality of life.

Simple fact of the matter is that no individual has any practical use for wealth measured in billions. It’s wealth that could be better put to use help the poorest in society, and helping us navigate the next hundred years of climate change and associated social unrest.

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

#325

Post by s1artibartfast » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

webinvest wrote: post #140

eliaspro wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not how checking accounts, savings accounts, or shares of stock work. It’s only how physical dollars in your wallet work.

I think this is an important insight, but not without challenges. One could argue that stocks in the secondary market work like a wallet. Funds from additional offerings do go on a company ledger and get spent, but in investor to investor sale, the profits are mostly reinvested in other stock. Money leaves the market when it is diversified into other investment classes, or when investors spend profits outside the market, or gains are taxed.

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

#326

Post by avianlyric » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #269

avianlyric wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is being taken primarily by the employees and the shareholders, but many of the rewards go to the CEO. Boards of directors are scared of getting it wrong, and they memorialize that fear in contracts that throw tremendous amounts of money at their preferred candidate, often making guarantees regardless of performance. But it’s not like boards have a spectacular record on picking CEOs in general. Well-regarded…

I perfectly accept that CEO pay in general is completely out-of-wack with anything anyone would consider reasonable, and agree that being paid $750mil is nuts.

What I take issue with is the idea that companies and boards are making irrational, or economically illiterate, decisions by paying CEO this amount. I just don’t think that argument stacks up.

As you say yourself boards don’t tend to be very good at picking executives, and may of them are probably aware of that. So why rock the boat when you’ve got a CEO who’s performing.

If you want to talk about the social consequences of CEO pay, that’s a different story. I would be quite happy to support the idea of CEO pay caps linked the lowest paid employee (I leave the question of what qualifies as an employee as an exercise for the reader). But I think that’s a very different argument to an economic argument.

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

#327

Post by avianlyric » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #231

avianlyric wrote: post #181

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

It can’t be retrieved in one go. But provided every shareholder doesn’t try to liquidate their position simultaneously, then it’s a reasonable metric to use for determining how much shareholder value was lost when Tim was granted the shares.

Disregarding market cap as not real money would be like disregarding your checking account as not real because the bank operates a fractional reserve.

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

#328

Post by axelroze » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

CodeGlitch wrote: post #304

Perhaps it's takes a certain breed of people, but I'm not sure what I would DO with $750m. Buy a super-yacht I guess? Invest the money and make 10x more of it? But then what? We've seen the new space race, but that domain seems crowded at the moment. Use the money to cure cancer or other global health problems? Wealthy people don't tend to spend their money like that (Bill Gates being an exception). Why is this? Buy…

If I had $750m (or any more sizable wealth really, even 10m would be enough for where I live), would be to improve wealth inequality from the roots via the boring and slow route. Better education for children (equipment, teachers, etc), regular food on the table (big problem for many people), counselings and medicine for abusive parents.

Second best thing IMO would be to start some business which is sustainable and doing some social good. For example making e-readers and cheap e-books for the aforementioned children such that their parents can actually buy them. Side note: e-readers are discounted even today (selling at loss) and most money comes from e-Book sales.

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

#329

Post by therealdrag0 » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #43

danpalmer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can say that about anyone who makes anything based on work from anyone else. While it's important to recognise those others (as those at Apple with stock based compensation have been), I don't think it nullifies the point because they didn't do all the work themselves.

In what possible world could Tim Cook personally have done anything worth $75m, let alone $750m? How can any single human being create value at that scale? I don't understand the apologia for what is, on its face, a massively skewed system of compensation completely unrelated to any possible basis in reality.

It’s amusing that earlier this week HN was arguing that devs don’t get payed for the impact/value they generate (justifying low pentest bounties). And now the argument is the opposite for C-suite.

IIRC many academics have studied ceo comp and found it outsized any evidence based justification of influence (such as compared to if a lower payed ceo was at reigns).

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

#330

Post by axelroze » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

iambateman wrote: post #239

How many of the grumpy “he shouldn’t be paid that much” comments were written on an iPhone?

Bingo. All of Apple's share price and consequently of Tim Cook's income here comes from people paying money to Apple and boosting the earnings. Don't like Tim Cook earning a lot of money => Don't buy any Apple products or services. Simple as that.