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Overpaid CEOs 2019

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Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#71

Post by adrianhel »

zdragnar wrote: post #16
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…

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.

Or it could be spent on the top 10% and make a huge difference in talent retention.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#72

Post by reb »

zdragnar wrote: post #16
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…

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.

The extra $3k might not mean a lot, but knowing your CEO gave $28m back to the workers at his or her own expense? I'd argue that kind of thing is great for retention.

The challenge, obviously, is that CEO pay is a market and the current, insane pay scale has emerged from it. The only way for it to change would be a) regulation (good luck to the enforcers), b) a global moral awakening among CEOs that causes a sufficient majority of them to abandon their salaries willingly (ha), or c) labor unions, where extortion over pay becomes bidirectional (rather than the traditional CEO->Worker shit flow).

In any case, people tend not to care much about CEO pay until the company stops paying workers' bills and keeps padding leadership's massive fortunes. People will accept insane wealth inequality so long as it doesn't come at the cost of their personal livelihood. Easiest way for CEOs to keep making idiot money without political costs: lead well enough to keep your workforce employed and reasonably paid. Literally the bare minimum expected of the title.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#73

Post by Swizec »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #14
ahelwer wrote: post #5

Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. Attitudes within our field are changing! Used to be you couldn't mention the U-word without a dozen engineers jumping down your throat bellowing about "efficiency" (for whom and what?) but engineers are smart and you can only fool them with the same old anti-union propaganda for so long.

I think that if unions actually do make inroads into the software development world, the gaming industry will likely be the last to unionize. The reason that the gaming industry is worse off for developers is not because the game development shops are inherently greedy. They have horrible conditions for those workers because they can. So many people want to develop games rather than do any other kind of software deve…

isn’t all of hollywood unionized tho? They’re freelancers and they all belong to a guild/union that sets the wages from what I’ve heard

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#74

Post by _delirium »

zemo wrote: post #35
will_pseudonym wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if unions actually do make inroads into the software development world, the gaming industry will likely be the last to unionize. The reason that the gaming industry is worse off for developers is not because the game development shops are inherently greedy. They have horrible conditions for those workers because they can. So many people want to develop games rather than do any other kind of software deve…

except there's VO and mocap talent that are already unionized, so games engineers have wider exposure to unionized peers. For example, I would assume that Norman Reedus is in SAG-AFTRA since Scott Wilson (his costar on Walking Dead) was on the board of SAG-AFTRA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9317_video_game_voi... <-- there's no equivalent in the startup/web industry.

Besides working conditions and pay, one symbolic issue that's come up from game devs being exposed to these unionized parts of the industry (especially voice talent) is that the unionized people seem to have fairer rules around credits. For example, if you do a voiceover for a game that ends up in the shipped game, you're going to end up in the credits, full stop. For programmers, by contrast, companies have done shady things like leaving people out of credits as some kind of "punishment". For example, if you leave before the game ships, you sometimes get retroactively taken out of the credits even if you objectively contributed large amounts to the final shipped product, because there are no binding rules around credits, except for the actors.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#75

Post by goldcd »

goldcd wrote: post #57

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.

EA seems to be doing better - there's a few new things in there once you strip out Battlefield, Sims and the Sports stuff - but still.. ..For some reason I'd still thought the big publishers were some massive force of nature, crushing all in their path. We could stand on the side-lines booing their latest monetization strategy, but I'd still considered them to be invincible monsters. I'd imagined I'd see a list of a load of games I'd never heard of. Games they'd taken a punt on that hadn't paid off - as that's what I imagined you did as a corporate monster. 80% would vanish breaking even if lucky, and 20% would make 80% of your income. That's how you stay big. Instead their entire output appears to be just rubber-stamping iterations of past glories. I genuinely feel a bit sad now I've looked into it. They're still monsters, but of the dinosaur variety.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#76

Post by Negitivefrags »

goldcd wrote: post #57

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.

They also supported a large number of ongoing games-as-a-service games. I suspect they have more employees working on released games than working on non-released ones.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#77

Post by heydonovan »

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…

You share the company's wealth by offering stock as part of compensation. This works well for the high earning tech employees, who can pay their bills with their first 100k and save the rest or invest it. It doesn't work as well for middle/lower class employees who need immediate cash instead of stocks that they can't always hold until it's worth more. Imagine working for Amazon back in the day for $30k, and come time for a raise, you're offered an extra $2k bonus or 10 shares. I'd wager most lower income folks would take the money, since that's food on the table.

I've always wondered what it would look like if were were paid in multipliers instead of salaries. The lowest would get 1x, middle folks 5x, and CEO maybe 20x. The usual "a rising tide lifts all boats" mindset.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#78

Post by [deleted] »

jjoonathan wrote: post #39
jlawson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to point out a mathematical error in your post. You said, "nobody is 100x more efficient than anyone else". This is a reasonable (though not strictly true) statement by itself. But the implication is wrong - nobody needs to be 100x more efficient/effective to justify a 100x pay differential. Consider an example: * Company earns 1 billion per year. * Normal-Person will increase profits 5%. * Super-Exec wil…

That should only affect Super-Exec's base pay if they can prove up front that choosing them can be expected to increase profits by 10%. Otherwise the "10% of profits" expected value figure needs to be diminished according to uncertainty -- which will send it straight back down out of the stratosphere. Yet that doesn't happen. Which suggests a different game is being played.

[deleted]

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#79

Post by forrestthewoods »

egypturnash wrote: post #40
will_pseudonym wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that if unions actually do make inroads into the software development world, the gaming industry will likely be the last to unionize. The reason that the gaming industry is worse off for developers is not because the game development shops are inherently greedy. They have horrible conditions for those workers because they can. So many people want to develop games rather than do any other kind of software deve…

Uh, you are aware that game developers are actively talking about unionizing, while most software developers aren’t? The shitty conditions are what’s making them decide to start talking about banding together to demand a bigger piece of the profits. Every discussion of game unions I see here tends to have a lot of people talking about how they are quite happy with their financial compensation at their non-game job, a…

> you are aware that game developers are actively talking about unionizing

Not as much as you’d think. PolyTaku and r/games want the games industry to unionize. People actually in the industry not so much.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#80

Post by josephwegner »

zdragnar wrote: post #16
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…

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.

The $3k doesn't have to be spent on salaries. In fact, unless Blizzard is having a retention problem (they may be... but I'd guess it's not due to salaries), there's better places to spend that money.

Some estimates say their failed game, Titan, cost about $50mil to develop. If their CEO dropped his salary to a modest $1mil/yr, he could essentially fund a new game every 2 years.

This is of course an over-simplification of the value of money... dollars don't magically turn into hit video games. But they do help.

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