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Overpaid CEOs 2019

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Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#51

Post by vvanders »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #38
vvanders wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For actors/staffers of the entertainment industry, that's the largest and nearly only outlet for those workers to have gainful employment. For people working in the games industry, they have other options and choose to go in those positions despite known horrible conditions. On the topic of unions in the entertainment industry, is there a union for computer graphics engineers in the entertainment industry? I couldn't…

If you work in code, sure.

If you're on the Art side you have the movie/animation space(even more of a meatgrider).

If you're on the design side, the options are pretty slim.

If you're on QA, it isn't the straightest path to other QA domains(with much of gamedev being manual testing).

Having gamedev on the resume usually isn't seen as a large plus, aside from shops that are already filled with ex-gamedev people.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#52

Post by ryandrake »

jjoonathan wrote: post #20
slap_shot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it really is asymmetrical to value they bring. I've worked in companies where the market and the stage of the company put the pool of possible CEO candidates at a number that could be counted on one hand. I don't know anything about the video game industry or these CEOs, but I can't immediately assume they are overpaid. There are a lot of questions I'd need answered.

A good CEO can create massive value, but the present value of any particular choice of CEO -- which should be an upper bound to the performance-independent pay they are able to negotiate -- needs to be diminished according to the uncertainty in the evaluation. That's where the leverage excuse falls apart: uncertainty is through the roof. Everybody's throwing darts at a dart board and everybody knows it, so if the sto…

I’ve always wondered: if CEO pay was truly tied to their “creating value” then shouldn’t they lose money if they destroy value? If the answer is yes, then why aren’t bad CEOs losing money? If the answer is no, then why do we pretend they are paid in proportion to the value they create?

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#53

Post by munk-a »

B-Con wrote: post #32
stickfigure wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't like the word "efficient" in contexts like this, I prefer "effective". Yes, some people are simply 100x more effective than others.

In three days you can accomplish what someone else (assuming they had training on par with what you received) would take a year to do?

Assuming you step in and out of the office four times a day, do you think it's reasonable to hire someone solely to open and hand you an umbrella when you leave the office and take it from you when you return as a fair trade to the minute you might spend fiddling with the umbrella cover?

I would say that people that seem _much_ more efficient than other people are about 2.5x more efficient than them. Being able to do in a day or two what would take someone else a week, and most of this efficiency comes from experience not innate skills. The CEO market is limited in such a way that not everyone who acquires the skill and training to be a CEO can acquire a job that pays out 50 million.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#54

Post by [deleted] »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #29
zdragnar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#55

Post by roenxi »

Traster wrote: post #2

I feel like CEO pay is one of these emergent problems with our current system. We have this group of people whose salaries are just astronomical compared to the average person in the company, and whilst it's true their job could technically make more of a difference these payouts are totally asymmetrical and completely independent of how effective a CEO is.

It is highly suggestive that CEOs are the ones who determine the pay of CEOs, in practice. If the shareholders actually had to negotiate the remuneration packages I bet the CEOs wouldn't be able to command the salaries that they do. There isn't enough evidence that paying more for a CEO increases profits.

The upper middle management strata is stuffed with exceptional people and the skillset to be a good CEO isn't actually that rare; it probably isn't a supply issue.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#56

Post by ryandrake »

davesque wrote: post #17
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…

Part of OP's point though is that CEO pay is apparently not tied to performance because CEOs still get astronomical pay really regardless of whether or not their company/division performs well. So CEOs just get paid more period. And there's this funny set of myths as to why that is the case. In reality, I think it just boils down to the fact that humans sort of instinctively (or maybe culturally?) like the idea of ro…

You’re exactly right. Senior leadership (including CEOs) have the best of both worlds: they get the upside when the company succeeds, but none of the downside when the company fails. The worst that happens is they get fired and go make more millions as CEO of some other company. In fact, they often get upside when the company fails (what was Marissa Mayer’s exit package?)

It’s a helluva deal they got going.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#57

Post by goldcd »

Activision Blizzard googles 4k employees and.. Last year managed to re-make Crash Bandicoot & Spyro - and a CoD. That's it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Activision_video_games

That boggles my mind.. That CEO salary seems rather on the high side. I could have told them to "do another CoD" and rummage in the vault.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#59

Post by zdragnar »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #29
zdragnar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is, in fact, why blizzard just laid off 800 people- they were from underperforming sections of the business or, iirc, business they wanted to get out of.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#60

Post by thrwwyoverpaid »

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…

Upper management pay, oof. I am at a company that went public. I was a very early employee working on the core product as a developer for the better part of a decade. I got a very nice payout (a bit over 1 million before taxes). The head of HR joined several months prior to our IPO and made over 8x what I did in equity. Like, wtf.... I can't complain as I won some start up lotto money, but, man, this head of HR _really_ lucked the f*ck out.
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