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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

I understand that he contributed to a portion of the $150B growth, but that’s true of every other employee too. Literally every employee works to create that growth. Why is the CEO’s high compensation so obviously justified but the thousands of underpaid workers are viewed as “a separate issue?”

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Leverage. The CEO has control over more resources than a front line employee, so their decisions have more weight behind them. Front line employee makes a slightly less optimal decision while performing their job? One customer has a slightly worse experience, skips disneyland next year and Disney loses like $500. Iger buys the wrong company or the right company at the wrong price and Disney loses a billion bucks.

Because of how much impact their decisions have, you really really want to have the best possible person making them. The best person is someone with experience making those decisions, which means they're rich too. So the person you want needs truckloads of money waved at them to be motivated to do the job, and you're quite willing to pay the truckloads to get the best, therefore the compensation ends up being truckloads.

Because they do CEO work.

Look at any CEO who is doing a good job and you will see insane people who are getting low amounts of sleep, focused solely on the company growth to the exclusion of family time, and actually doing work. The work is comprised of tons of knowledge and skill sets.

Let’s take Elon Musk for example; disregarding whether the the company is well run or not. If you look at his work schedule, he is saying things like sleeping at the Tesla factory, working longer shifts, handling regulatory and politician issues, etc. The skill set required and time commitment is something that most people shy away from. Look at the horrified responses to Ma’s work dedication missives and you are on target where the normal person holds up. The insanes go to the political meeting on Capitol Hill, hire and fire subordinates, identify the direction of the company, and then execute on those decisions.

The skill set for the underpaid workers is easy to develop and put together. The dynamic life of a CEO is an item that is difficult as it operates in a dynamic environment that constantly changes and requires time and money investments that mean the employees who report to you may not have Christmas presents for their kids.

This honestly sounds like hero worship. The hard working style you describe is common with low paid workers too - very low paid workers still work super hard for long hours.

I agree the skill is unique but I don’t see how this work is “worth” many thousands of times more than other hard workers.

> Let’s take Elon Musk for example; disregarding whether the the company is well run or not.

If you have to give this caveat, maybe you're on the wrong path to how to evaluate a CEO's worth?

> that mean the employees who report to you may not have Christmas presents for their kids.

Yes, and when you find new and inventive ways to drive down wages of your employees, that's kind of the point of this conversation, isn't it?

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