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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Two problems with this first-principles analysis:

1. The highest paid executives in other industries tend to be at the apex of their careers, and new startups would be a status step down for them.

1. Empirically, executives do switch companies somewhat routinely.

Your last sentence presents a false dichotomy: either we're meant to reject the notion that flight money is a real phenomenon, or we're required to believe engineers shouldn't be compensated above slave levels. There's a huge excluded middle in that argument.

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I would buy this more if we routinely heard "problems with retention" as an issue with runaway executive compensation.

It's possible I've not seen them, but seems curiously absent in the discourse to me.

Engineers with skills related to self-driving car development are also currently much rarer than highly trained executives, and companies trying to get into the autonomous car sector need more engineers than executives. Failing to retain an executive simply isn't as much of a problem.

This response basically ignores what my comment said. We don't have "flight risk" problems with executive compensation because there is no higher-status place for an executive to go from the helm of a company that can reliably pay 8-figure salaries than to the helm of another such company. Starting new companies is a step down for those people. And, in fact, that's the ostensible reason executives make so much: because they can and do switch companies in pursuit of better compensation packages.

These are positive statements, not normative ones.

I left this unvoiced but let's fisk it:

> new startups would be a status step down for them.

No, but highly paid executives can always go to a higher status company; similarly, if you were status-motivated but also a well placed mid career goog eng…

it's not clear to me you _needed_ a sweet bonus in order to switch to your startup, ya know?

>executives do switch companies somewhat routinely.

I think the theory of what I'm trying to advance is, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

I personally feel I would be rather loyal to someone paying me fuck you money, but then again I'm well into my own incredible journey, so it's possible I'm now blind to status incentives relative to working at google.

I'm vocal about this because the concept of "flight risk" is a very old one, particularly in consulting land.

The premise behind flight risk money is that people might not be interested in optimizing their salary by constantly switching jobs, especially because they might really like their current job. But a lot of people have a short list of jobs that they would be interested in if money weren't a factor; many employees (maybe most) aren't in their absolute ideal job, but are balancing money and work life. When you give those people lots of additional money, you change that balance.

This isn't complicated, right? A pretty large group of people (1) like their current job, and (2) would like to start or join a new company.

That's just not the same as what happens with executives. Executives are not waiting for their big break so that they can start a new thing.

Maybe by the time you climb the corporate ranks you're reduced to an efficient profit maximizer but I would presume they suffer similar incentives - there comes a time you'd rather kick back on a beach somewhere rather than Q2 reports.

To be charitable to you, maybe I'm just really underestimating how many people are chomping at the bit to gtfo;

having been self employed for "forever", it's hard for me to empathize: mid career A player at the goog probably could've made the switch much earlier, if leading a startup was what was in their heart of hearts.

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