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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

Another way to look at it: mozilla is a sinking ship. Being a CEO of a shinking ship looks bad on the resume and is high risk for the ceo (reputation wise). High risk jobs should get higher compensation than low risk jobs.

I'd certainly argue that for a normal company. For mozilla though, there is a question of why do you even need a CEO? Does Linux have a CEO? I suspect at least some of mozilla's problems is trying to run an open source project with an unsustainable (and very non-diversified business model) as a normal company.

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Being a CEO of a fast rising ship shows evidence of competence, and people with high competence should get higher compensation than low competence.

Being a CEO of a stead fast ship show evidence of stability, and people with high stability should get higher compensation than low stability.

This create this perfect situation where regardless how the ship is doing the CEO should get paid more. There is always an argument for more pay.

> High risk jobs should get higher compensation than low risk jobs.

I agree with you, but isn't the problem more that they're sinking the ship? To take it to the extreme, if I joined a fortune 50 company as the CEO, and started losing billions a year with my decisions, should the board pay me more because I've created a risk to my reputation?

People aren't paid what they "deserve" but what value they provide to the company. If the situation exists (whether created by the CEO or not) that makes it more expensive to replace the CEO, then unless they plan on firing the ceo, the ceo's value to the company increases because they are expensive to replace.

Or to put another way, life isn't fair and outcomes dont neccesarily align with what people deserve in a moral sense.

That's not even true. If the CEO is running the company into the ground how are they being paid based upon the value they are bringing to the company?

Its justification of the status quo, not explanation.

> the ceo's value to the company increases because they are expensive to replace.

The CEO’s value in general increases but that of the current particular CEO which is running the company into the ground decreases a lot more than that.

Also people aren't paid what value they provide to the company, but what they can negotiate for - for example, if you need your job then your boss can get away with paying you peanuts even if you do 3x the work of your colleagues.

Incidentally, this is the basis of unions - the union negotiates your salary with the union's negotiating power of having the company's entire staff walk, which hurts far more than merely losing one employee.

This is utter BS - not from you, but from the marketplace and economic theory. What's being created here s additional cost, which is then being parlayed as a proxy for value based on the idea that there is normally a rough equilibrium between the two.

Or maybe, just maybe, it is way simpler.. How big is the temptation for a person just before retirement on a 'sinking ship' to stuff their pockets while possible?

This would be a reasonable argument if they were trying to attract a CEO to an already sinking ship. Being the one in charge when it starts sinking is a different case.

the risk of being an unemployed millionaire? lmao

I think it would be a lot more fun if CEOs had to show an actual offer from a competitor in order to invoke the "I need to be payed this much to stay" argument.

> Does Linux have a CEO?

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership/

Keep in mind the Linux foundation is mostly a vehicle for a bunch of empty suits to cash in on "all things Linux". The influence on kernel development is negligible except for the occasional cringe moment.

What a surprise they share board members!

Why wouldn't you need a CEO? Manage $1B by committee?

Endowments are usually managed by comittee, so yes.

However, if it becomes a more volunteer based organization, you tend to pay people in conferences and other infrastructure. Which is a very different type of thing. You still probably need someone to manage that, but its very different from being a CEO

So you replace 1 CEO with a committee of 6 people and save how much money?

If you pay each committee member $400_000/year, you’ll save $100_000/year. Sounds like a good move to me.

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