I remember a comment from their CEO complaining that a 3 million USD comp was a "sacrifice" she was making because she believes on the mission. Totally insane.
In Mozilla's case especially, such a gamble ("gamble"—I really don't think it's that out-there) seems eminently worth it, since they've been treading water at best for over a decade. What's the worst that can happen? They fail? Already happening.
I suspect this entire trend (across the economy, not just at Mozilla) is due to some combo of our modern intense aversion for taking responsibility for anything whatsoever, and pervasive self-dealing in the management class. Board won't replace the "right" kind of person with the "wrong" kind because it's Simply Not Done—why, if anyone in the top half of the intelligence bell curve and an OK work ethic could do their jobs with just a little experience and training, they might no longer command such insane salaries! Can't have that.
But, I'm open to the possibility that it did in fact become unworkable, for some reason I don't know about, to just train people into these positions as-needed, and in fact we do have to pay stupid amounts of money to a tiny, incestuous c-suite class who are the only possible candidates for these roles, or else everything will fall apart.
Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the American CEO institution you have to understand their first and primary argument is that they can still do things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke filled room where "big deals get done".
Sure—and I'm serious that I'm open to the possibility that something actually did change about the business landscape for non-shitty (i.e. not corruption or principal-agent-problem) reasons such that it's in fact true that there's a big advantage to hiring from the small pool of acceptable CEO candidates that justifies giving them entire train cars full of cash, but it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that way and things were... basically fine. Not that there weren't huge advantages to being in the "right" set, or whatever, as there has been in any time and place, but that it seems like for the specific case of CEOs it used to be more acceptable to train up existing employees, who didn't start their employment with the company somewhere in the top-exec echelon, into those kinds of roles, which behavior seems like it would act as a pretty effective relief valve on CEO comp getting out of control.
What's going on now sure looks like what would happen if the people in charge of hiring for these roles had a strong interest in keeping the compensation extremely high. But it's still possible there's something else going on, and there are good, non-corrupt motivations at work.
I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of corruption in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street in the 90s. People in power grasping community resources as their own is nothing new to humankind.
Its still worth being passionate about and rebelling against. While the general theme of the corruption may be similar its still eventful that it is occurring in new areas and in new ways (i.e. SPACs, ICOs).
The 90s might be the wrong point to measure from. Isn't it pretty well documented that CEOs are getting paid greater "multiples" of average pay than they had in the past (e.g. they used to be paid 100x, now they're paid 1000x)?
Even if there was a big advantage to hire from the same small pool of acceptable candidates, that's no justification for paying them "entire train cars full of cash." There's all kinds of scarce and valuable skills that are just as rare but compensation doesn't shoot off to infinity.
Agree whole-heartedly.
I'm all for reducing exec pay and wage disparity, but still... let's give ppl props when they do pro-social things. That's the moral equivalent of a talented software eng opting to take a 70% pay cut to work in non-profit or government sector instead of private sector. The majority of ppl reading and judging are doing no such thing
> Yeah the poor could sustain themselves on cake,
This is the opposite of what the anecdote is meant to say, right? The joke is that the poor can't sustain themselves on cake because lacking bread also means lacking cake. Is $3 million the bread? Is the CEO the poor? Am I having a stroke?
By comparison here is a CEO announcing a noble "sacrifice" at 3 million/yr salary while people and projects were being axed at Mozilla - and in my view Mozilla continues to falter relative to what its trajectory could have been given the extreme amounts of capitol and talent they've had access to.
A real sacrifice would've been to take $0 (presumably this individual is already enormously wealthy).
You do realize in these organizations not everyone is making 150k+.
comment 1: How dare she say 3 million is a sacrifice? That's more money than many of us will see in an entire decade, if not more! None of us can get imagine getting 3 million!
comment 2: Well she could make 10 million, so 3 million to her is chump change.
My guess is as follows: The "us" in comment 1 is the poor, the failure to "read the room" is comment 2 mentioning the 10 million when the vast majority of people identify with comment 1 and thus think mentioning 10 million when even 3 million is unattainable is tone deaf.
Thus, loosely speaking, 10 million is cake, 3 million is bread.
But I agree with you that the analogy is not perfect.