Steve Job gets $1 and Tim Cook $59 Million | Hacker News Reader

Steve Job gets $1 and Tim Cook $59 Million

bloomberg.com

18 pointsbakbak22 comments

Apple is the company that Jobs founded and whilst he was ousted (and sold his shares) at the time, I'm sure that it will always be his 'baby'. He obviously loves what he does and doesn't need the money anyway. I can't remember where I read it, but he leads a relatively frugal lifestyle in comparison to his peers. Do what you love I suppose :)

He should have received right at $250,000,000 in dividends on his Disney stock since selling Pixar. He's certainly not hurting for cash, frugal or not.

Sure, he's certainly not going to need the money from Apple, but it also shows where his passion is that he still accepts $1 from the company and hasn't sold any shares. Whilst not everyone agrees with his methods or what Apple stands for, there's no denying the success that Apple has become since he came back on board and was the catalyst for huge change and growth.

Would be more interesting if it were "Joe Blow, CEO of ABC Widget Co."

Steve Jobs is such an outlier, we'll still be reading his quotes with Einstein's and Yogi Berra's in 150 years.

Tim Cook is worth every penny.

Your title is misleading because you're comparing Job's annual salary with Cook's total compensation. If you read the fine print of the article, it clearly states that Cook's annual salary "remained at about $800,000."

Later down, the article also shares that Jobs "holds about 5.5 million shares in the company and hasn’t sold any since rejoining." If you wanted to extrapolate Job's current worth based on Apple stock, it would be roughly $1.8 bil. ($334 / share * 5.5mil shares)

Anyway, I'm not sure what you were trying to point out with this article, but I don't think Job's is being short-changed. The $1 salary is mainly a PR stunt.

But Jobs received no stock this year. Cook received tons ($52.3 million to be exact).

Steve jobs knows what is the difference between owning a company and working for a company. When you are an employee you get a fixed salary, when you own a company you get whatever the company makes.

Apple made $14 Billion last year....

I believe in that philosophy, personally, but I doubt it has anything to do with why Steve Jobs takes a $1 salary. It's not as if Apple would suffer if he were to take a bigger salary.

I think it has more to do with the "Zen" of Steve Jobs. The bottom line is that Steve Jobs doesn't do it for the money, and he has all the money he'll ever need.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9zzvMOF4PEwC&pg=PA44...

I object to any executive making $59 million of the stockholder's money. It either goes back to the stockholders or is reinvested into company operations.

one could argue that giving the executives those shares is investing into company operations.

It's just investing in the executives. Actually investing in company operations means spending money to get things, not giving away money. Giving Tim Cook a ton of money doesn't actually get Apple anything. He could quit tomorrow and Apple wouldn't feel it at all.

He could quit tomorrow and Apple wouldn't feel it at all.

If any C-level executive at any corporation could quit tomorrow and the company wouldn't feel it at all, that executive needs to be fired. Employees are an investment like anything else.

It's a rare employee who is not expendable. Tim Cook is not that employee.

It seems your argument is that executives don't provide any value to a business. That's a pretty shortsighted view of how a real company works. Just because you didn't get a physical "thing" from paying an exec that kind of money doesn't mean he didn't provide value to the business. I guarantee that if you replace Tim Cook with me at Apple's helm, that the shareholders will feel some pretty significant pain.

Tim Cook held the ship steady while Jobs was away. Few people could have done that, Jobs is very central to the day to day operation of Apple. I'd say the stockholders got off cheaply, it amounts to a nickel in share price currently.

That's a weak argument. Tim Cook is talented, no doubt, but he is not unique. And $59 million is excessive compensation for any interim CEO. This is an example of why great companies oftentimes make lousy long-term investments. APPL is a speculative play if they aren't paying stockholders for the risk of investing their money in the company.

Well, given that pro athletes get much more and how well Tim Cook has done for the stock price, I am pretty ok with his pay.

$59 million in a year is something only the very highest echelon of pro athletes get after taking sponsorships and the like into account. Among American athletes, only three athletes (Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Floyd Mayweather Jr.) earned more than $59 million. Among foreign athletes, only Roger Federer earned more.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specials/fortunate50-2010/i...

Yeah, and given what Mr. Cook does, that is probably about where he should be. The Apple stock price went from 210 to 322, so it was a very good year.

Just like baseball players, it takes a lot of money to retain the highest level talent. If you think his value over replacement person (VORP) is lower than his compensation than it is in the boards interest to vote him out.

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