Neither needed the money at all. Jobs knew that and didn't take any. Mayer for some reason took as much as possible.
We don't need a narrative of sacrifice to glorify an exec with. She has a family, 100 different wealthy suitors if she were to look, and the board approved the compensation because they thought it was worth the risk of turning the company around. The reason was because she could and had to reason not to.
Mayer was brought into a company in a death spiral, that she had no strong personal investment in, presumably knowing very well that odds of failure were great and will likely affect her future opportunities (I'm sure she'll do fine, but I'm sure she'd have done better if she'd gone to a big success)
How many people would take the Yahoo! CEO job without a significant risk premium over their market rate?
I know, crazy, like what kind of person would accept that kind of money if offered? It really boggles the mind. Hell, I was offered a raise recently, but I told them no way. I won't play that game!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/12/09/maris...
The whole point of FU money (which she already had) is you get to make big decisions, like what you're going to spend the next 5 years doing, without worrying about personal financial impact.
His total grants from 1997 and until death amounted to 5.5 mln AAPL shares (one would have to multiple this number by 7 to account for 2014 stock split).
Apple was a company that Jobs founded and got fired from. Coming back to "save" it would have been a very personal battle, and a way to prove people that fired him wrong.
Why on earth would anyone want to do the same at Yahoo for free (and tie their personal reputation to the success or failure), even if they didn't need the money?