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Comment by bberenberg | Hacker News Reader

Would you be happy if they paid him $1 a year and drastically increased his equity stake? That's what CEO comp looks like in small and scrappy. I expect he would take it, and so would most anyone else.

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> and drastically increased his equity stake

But he also to roll a critical three times in a row on a D20 to get a payout. Just to make it have the same feeling as small and scrappy, you know.

So like Musk's performance based equity comp package that depends on him hitting certain goals?

You can't increase his equity without buying back shares and that's going to cost money. But yes the general sentiment is if you are serious about reducing costs, then reducing salary is a major way to get there. The idea is cut costs and the share prices will rise as the company becomes more profitable.

That's not really how equity works. A company can issue equity out of thin air, and in fact, this is how most employee stock based comp works. In fact, Google specifically is criticized on their financial returns because of how much of their compensation is based in equity which dilutes existing shareholders outside the company. You can read about the high level ideas of this at https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/modeling-stock-base...

Equity doesn't buy me breakfast, and nor does a dollar a year. You have to be rich already, if you're going to work for a dollar a year.

Equity in public company vests frequently and you can sell it.

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