Comment by demonshalo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by demonshalo | Hacker News Reader

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> lives of so many people would be significantly improved.

That's ~10k per employee after all the lay offs this year. Last year, it would have made ~8k per employee and even less the year before (only counting full-time workers which inflates these numbers). And it would be even less if you take into account employer taxes for all salary raises.

I personally don't understand this "redistribute CEO income across all employees" mentality because in reality there are very rare occasions where distributing the income leads to any substantial raise in the living standards of the employees. I do believe that she should have done that as a leader, but in terms of what is just/fair/etc, I find the redistribution of CEO income argument to be rather fallacious in most cases!

Note: I am not saying that there are no cases where your argument stands to reason but this is not one of them.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/260291/number-of-full-ti...

Edit: There is a post at the front page now about how 6 fig salaries are low income in SV. Adding a few thousands to that does not improve lives as much as you might think!

>I personally don't understand this "redistribute CEO income across all employees" mentality because in reality there are very rare occasions where distributing the income leads to any substantial raise in the living standards of the employees.

Who are you to make this judgement? Would you feel the same way if you were being considered for a payout? And how does paying Marissa Mayer all that extra money raise her standard of living? Paying out windfalls more equitably is itself a worthy thing. Sure, some of the money will be "wasted," but it's not for you to judge whether anyone is worthy.

I didn't even allude to who is worthy. What I said was in fact the same thing as you are saying. I am in no position to say who is worthy and NEITHER ARE YOU!

It is up to the board and shareholders to decide what level of compensation they are willing to put up with. But talking about redistribution of CEO income leads to substantial raise in living standards is MOST OFTEN purely fictional!

Even $8k per person would be a considerable increase to many. Especially those with kids.

Are you saying it's not worth doing if it isn't a "significant enough" amount?

What happens if the money is distributed according to effort and productivity?

I didn't say that it "absolutely has to be evenly divided".

The argument that it is substantial once you account for employer and employee taxes is purely fictional. Remember that we are talking about a yearly salary so in terms of net income per household, it does not add much. The idea that redistribution of CEO pay will lead to SUBSTANTIAL (keyword here) improvements in the lives of employees is NOT ALWAYS true. Sometimes it is, and this is not one of those times.

> What happens if the money is distributed according to effort and productivity?

It is. Just not according to what YOU think is just or fair. And here is the kicker, what you think is fair is not in-line with what the board and shareholders think is fair. Do you think any employee @ yahoo has created more value than Marissa? if so who? She clearly didn't steal that money but instead created the opportunities under which such a deal was constructed that allowed her to capture that sum.

From the outside, it is rather easy for you to make some fictional judgement. But it is important to understand that her pay, just like all other employees, is a function of how much value she can capture of the total productivity/profits she bring in.

I don't agree that she brings more value than the engineers building the product.

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