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Comment by ordinaryradical | Hacker News Reader

I legitimately cannot tell from the way this is worded if this is a promotion or if he's stepping aside. I guess that's intentional and means it's the latter, right?

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> I legitimately cannot tell from the way this is worded if this is a promotion or if he's stepping aside.

CNBC uses a more "obvious" headline, "Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller steps down from role". [0]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/04/apple-replaces-longtime-mark...

Phill became 60 years old, this step is just him taking a smaller role while he can educate his replacement until he decides to retire (which is certainly financially possible for him to do after he becomes 65).

I imagine financially he probably could've retired a while ago, no?

I would say so:

"Mr. Schiller owns over 69,491 units of Apple stock worth over $18,846,432 and over the last 16 years he sold AAPL stock worth over $73,528,915."

So you're saying he can have big dinners at the local Golden Corral every time he wants?

He can buy the local Golden Corral any time he wants.

is this "actualized $73MM in gains from selling AAPL shares" or some backdated math like "at the current price, the amount of shares he's sold are worth $73MM"?

I would assume he could retire now. He's been with Apple forever, he must have a ton of stock. I assume he's not depending on social security to fill any income gaps, and that the majority of his net-worth is likely outside of tax advantaged retirement accounts.

I don't get why any of these people stay so long in their roles. If you're SVP or CxO at any of these large tech companies for any significant amount of time, it basically means you've achieved perpetual generational wealth. You've beaten the game. Why keep playing? Once your net worth is eight digits, what really does the ninth digit get you?

They probably enjoy the work. A lot of people identify with their careers as well.

When you don't have to work you're probably more likely to be in a place where you enjoy it. Having said that, I wonder how much work these guys do once they're in these roles and have already proving themselves time and time again. I imagine most of the less satisfying work is delegated away and they get to spend time on whatever they want.

Wouldn't we all be doing that if we could? Earn enough that you can have a team of people taking care of the menial tasks that are high effort/low reward and focus your attention into the important bits.

I believe I'd enjoy any role like that, if I'm skilled enough to tackle the problems I want to while having a trusted team which I can delegate things I know how to do but don't want to.

I can imagine those roles being a lot of fun. They know what they're doing, respected in their roles, working with people they like and respect I would guess. Salary can't be bad and you'd expect they can offload any of the work they don't like to subordinates.

Their identity defined through what they do. They can’t stop because then they won’t know who they are.

Maybe they Really do love the job as much as they say. I mean, it not impossible, right?

That does appear to be the idea, yes. It reads like a demotion in role but a promotion in seniority.

The navy used to have the concept of a "desk admiral", which was an admiral with no ships. It was effectively a promotion into a less relevant role - which is exactly what this feels like.

This looks a bit like the Ive stepping aside. Which might be good in the end.

A bit of both, it's sort of like moving from CEO to Chairman of the Board of a company. Still influential, but less involved in day-to-day operations.

It's a quasi-retirement I think.

It strikes me as quite similar to what happened with Kaz Hirai at Sony.

It’s not a promotion if anything it’s “great news”

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