Apple CEO Tim Cook requests and receives a 40% pay cut

I'd be surprised. they didn't hire nearly as much as other peers and they're not one to follow trends like google

Has Apple ever had a history of big layoffs? Particularly post 2000

That would be trivially gamed by either requiring more compensation up front or the CEO simply behaving against the interests of the company during hard times.

Why would the executive (or anyone) continue to do the job?

So in that case they would just reduce hiring.

If investors see layoffs and judge that the company just became more valuable, either they are right or they are wrong.

If they are right, then isn't the job of management, in a principle fundamental to the US economic system, to follow their wishes? Management doesn't have to do whatever investors ask for, but there is no real justification for them to do something which is both against their wishes and against the interests of the company.

If they are wrong, then surely the problem is that most US companies are having their decision-making driven by a group of people who are paramount but who are making misguided or misinformed decisions. Any tweaking of the exact incentives which doesn't solve this problem is both a distraction and subject to the law of unintended consequences.

Note that I am not strongly in favor of either sweeping layoffs or of the specific US variant of capitalism in general. I just think that one should be honest about to what extent problems are unavoidable to the extent that one cleaves to a given system.

I’ve been noodling around this thought that businesses that provide “necessary for life and health” services (power, food, housing, healthcare, and tech) should not be allowed to make more than X profit year over year, provide bonus to C level and up, or give dividends/buybacks if, within a rolling 3 year period they have laid off anyone for a “financial” reason, or not increased employee wages tracked with inflation.

Those that ignore that rule become heavily fined.

That's not the way companies and capitalism works, nor a company. Most of these firings are because they were booming during the pandemic. The role of a publically traded company isn't to provide jobs, it's to provide return on investment, and however the people who run a company see that should be carried out. I wish they could see beyond a quarter of two and see the value of building employee loyalty, but that seems to be a thing of the past.

…what? All the executives would leave. What are you talking about

Cut the dividend, not exec compensation.

Salaries for most of these Tech CEO's are irrelevant. This gesture from Cook is all about the PR and will have nearly zero (or zero) impact on his daily life and compensation from running Apple. It looks really good though, and makes for a great headline.

For these folks, it's all about the stock.

By making this salary cut into a PR event, Cook's long term compensation is likely to skyrocket as shareholders reward the company's direction.

Because most mgmt seems to have no skin in the game. When they make bad decisions, the underlings often pay for it. This is especially true when they write corpo-speak blog posts "taking responsibility," which includes laying off 10% of the workforce.

A CEO cutting his own pay seems like a much better first step. It signals accountability.

Losing your job is a big deal to the average person, but a salary cut is immaterial to a big tech executive. An executive salary cut would save hundreds of jobs. People are laid off because the company is trying to spend less. There are multiple people in the same role and the headcount can be decreased to decrease spend on overall salary without decreasing the salary of individuals. But just because there is only one person in each executive role does not mean that money can't be saved on executive salaries.

I'd argue if a company has failed to plan a smooth transition from growth to profit, that's a failure of that companies leadership.

Layoffs are bad for a myriad of reasons. They are purely an accounting action, but they ignore that the line items represent people. Layoffs say that we will sacrifice our employees when the company has poorly planned, because our people are only positive assets when we're trying to hire.

Management and especially executives are the least affected by layoffs, yet it was their decision making that led to the layoffs in the first place. In fact, these people stand to gain from layoffs because they have heavy equity compensation and shareholders seem to froth at the mouth for layoffs.

This idea that companies move from growth to profit and back and forth seems naïve at best. Yet, companies do indeed do this. So the executives who rode the past three years of insane stock growth, making a ton from equity and investments and hiring like madmen, now get to turn around and say "we're sorry, good luck paying your mortgage".

The incentives are all wrong, as the very people who control the decisions that lead up to layoffs are both immune from the layoffs and tacitly benefit from them.

Everyone and their dog knew this market clawback was coming, and it's been here for over a year already. You're telling me these supposedly brilliant executives couldn't have planned better?

Lately, and I've seen it happen, after layoffs, the companies immediately start hiring again for the exact same positions they just laid off. Over time, they hire a large portion of the positions back. So, what was the point? The point was to appease stockholders in the short term.

If you go out there and say "it's all my fault and I take full responsibility", but there's no consequences out of that for you, then your words are meaningless.

That's the thing - the company's not even doing layoffs

So is it fair to say that the title is misleading given that the shareholders, specifically institutional shareholders, requested the decrease in pay and Cook simply obliged?

Also, institutional shareholders are just other billionaire individuals and institutions. I think I care even less about their financials.

If reductions in pay of executives somehow made it to consumers, then that would be interesting.

>I’m curious what your reaction would be if he got a 40% pay increase.

It would be equally performative. This is morality theater. I'd only question his judgment about public relations.

I do understand the reasoning for this adjustment of his salary. I'm simply saying I wish it was not necessary. It's sad.

What does "refreshing" even mean?

What would be refreshing is an adequate social safety net. Not mega rich getting slightly less megarich.

>symbolic gestures constitute a large part of the fabric of society.

In fact, we all know that saying Thank you may provide real value to both sides, because we mean it

But meaningless gestures, such as a billionaire at a wealthy and healthy company taking a paycut, harm and devalue our social fabric

>This isn't a PR exercise. Context is needed

Thank you for explaining the context so well. But I disagree with your first claim. I'm saying it is totally a PR exercise.

I moved my goalposts?

The goalpost comment really isn't necessary; there are a lot of people on this site, and it's inevitable that conflicting opinions will get expressed. I think there's an interesting point to be made about how widely differing expectations can make it difficult for public figures to avoid criticism from one group or another, but it's muddled by the dubious assumption that people commenting on articles are some monolithic unit rather than a varying set of individuals from one article to the next, each of whom have potentially unique perspectives and aren't necessarily the same people who commented on a different thread.

if it's different people making the comments, then they don't need to be consistent.

and if the same, then if their outlook has class struggle leanings, they're being entirely consistent, capitalist class bad.

CEOs are too rich to ever have skin in the game. It's a meaningless exercise.

Tim Cook will never feel the pain of a layoff like someone at the genius bar.