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Comment by theGimp | Hacker News Reader

Some individuals, yes.

CEOs are often paid hundreds of millions of dollars, and some VP-level executives at big companies are also worth that kind of money.

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What really? I thought CEOs are paid millions, not hundreds-of-millions.

I mean, if they stay at the company for decades, sure it can add up to hundreds-of-millions. But upfront? Sounds like a lot!

Not saying it happened in the case of Quip, but last year Google effectively paid $380M for Diane Greene:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/19/google-buys-bebop-and-name...

Oh interesting. Nice info.

It is a little different because the bulk of their compensation is often in shares or options to buy shares. These are often structured in a way such that they are "free" money. If you have a company with a hundred million shares outstanding, you can make 500,000 new shares and only dilute the total value of the company a little but still add to an employee's net worth quite a bit.

Is paid really the same as worth?

Hmm. By what mechanism will Taylor be able to net billions of dollars to Salesforce in the next few years?

Well he helped build google maps. That's a decent example of how small teams can create large value over enough time.

Another example: the original tablet at Apple was built by one guy. Sharp people can focus on good investments and generate disproportional returns, even if they didn't do the work directly.

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