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Overpaid CEOs 2019

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Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#91

Post by rayvy »

thrwwyoverpaid wrote: post #60
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 _real…

Any more details (that you're willing to share) on this? You mentioned they're only the "Head of HR", but you say you were a core product dev (senior by the timeline you give). Did you accept underpay because you were early? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around an 8-month "Head of HR" making out significantly better than a (first 20?) Sr Product dev (not questioning your story though).

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#92

Post by spydum »

munk-a wrote: post #53
B-Con wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cov…

The whole 10x, 100x engineer thing is a bust. If a company hires a bunch of squabs who don’t know jack, a reasonably talented engineer comes on board and might legit be 10x, or more. The problem is we have no legit baseline to build factors on, and we already know most company’s hiring practices are awful.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#93

Post by BookmarkSaver »

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…

I think any connection to "royalty" or anointed status is secondary and completely tied to individual executives and their performance (or at least reputation).

What is true is the myth of individual efficacy. That a good CEO will have a successful company, and that a successful company is a sign of a great CEO. The reality is obviously that there are countless factors that affect company performance.

It's not that people think they are special, it's that we are very bad at correctly apportioning responsibility, especially when there is also a power imbalance that extends to determining that apportionment itself. We don't instinctively seek royalty (as in we assume leaders are special as a rule, though obviously in some contexts/positions we do), we seek simplicity (and pinning everything on a single leader is about as simple as it gets).

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#94

Post by zemo »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #31
bit_logic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood is not an example supporting your point (SAG - Screen Actors Guild).

There's certainly a union there, yes. Though, what are the working conditions in the entertainment industry, exactly?

"please jump through these assorted hoops while I move the goalpost and ignore your points"

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#95

Post by mixmastamyk »

rayvy wrote: post #91
thrwwyoverpaid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 _real…

Any more details (that you're willing to share) on this? You mentioned they're only the "Head of HR", but you say you were a core product dev (senior by the timeline you give). Did you accept underpay because you were early? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around an 8-month "Head of HR" making out significantly better than a (first 20?) Sr Product dev (not questioning your story though).

Yes, what about vesting?

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#96

Post by munk-a »

rhizome wrote: post #87
zdragnar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I know, I was making less than that when I started my career. My point was I'd be willing to be that for most people, a single raise isn't the straw that breaks the camels back when it comes to whether or not they'd stay at Activision Blizzard. From what I've heard from people who worked there (specifically the Activision side) is that it isn't a place I would want to work myself, and $3k wouldn't be enough to con…

A single raise? Doesn't the CEO make $28MM every year?

His math is correct, shifting the annual salary of $28M to lower employees would be a one time raise, if the CEO is getting a raise of $28M every year then it'd equal an annual salary increase of $3k

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#97

Post by mmmmmmmmm »

This is their description of their methodology:

> HIP Investor regression we’ve used every year that computes excess CEO pay assuming such pay is related to total shareholder return (TSR). The second ranking identified the companies where the most shares were voted against the CEO pay package. These two rankings were weighted 2:1, with the regression analysis being the majority. We then excluded those CEOs whose total disclosed compensation (TDC) was in the lowest third of all the S&P 500 CEO pay packages. The full list of the 100 most overpaid CEOs using this methodology is found in Appendix A. The regression analysis of predicted and excess pay performed by HIP Investor is found in Appendix C, and its methodology is more fully explained there.

This doesn't make any sense. Hell, the first sentence isn't even a sentence. I suspect the reason this doesn't make any sense is because they don't actually have a coherent methodology. They just want to complain about CEOs making too much money, so they'll create any arbitrary measure to attach numbers to their complaint. Notice how they never once mention who the most underpaid CEOs are. They surely have that data and it would be just as interesting as the most overpaid. They don't release it because they care more about their agenda than about giving you unbiased information.

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#98

Post by brandonmenc »

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.

> Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry.

And it will end there.

Video games are more like movies than they are like other kinds of software, and the labor to produce them should resemble the movie business - not the software business.

That means a bunch of union members get hired for the production itself, for the duration of the production - not "indefinitely" for the distributor like they are now - and when the game is done, the production company for that individual game and all its labor is disbanded, and then everyone finds another production - possibly from a completely different distributor - to work on.

Except they'll all know this upfront and they'll be unionized, which mitigates the downside (ex: they'll get their health insurance from the union, not from Sony or EA or whoever.)

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#99

Post by gradys »

roenxi wrote: post #55
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 act…

Isn't CEO compensation generally determined by the compensation committee of the board?

Re: Overpaid CEOs 2019

#100

Post by MAGZine »

brandonmenc wrote: post #98
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.

> Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. And it will end there. Video games are more like movies than they are like other kinds of software, and the labor to produce them should resemble the movie business - not the software business. That means a bunch of union members get hired for the production itself, for the duration of the production - not "indefinitely" for the distrib…

Except that's not how software works anymore. Everything is moving to long-term SaaS and subscription. Production never ends until the lights turn off.
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