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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

It is all in the noise financially. Mr. Yuan owns 22% of the company. He owns 22% of the salary savings on the balance sheet.

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In other words, he's lost $30B in the last ~2 years. Seems like a fair amount of accountability to me.

Yes, I agree that his ownership position gives him direct financial accountability for the performance of the company. He does well when it does well.

That said, the swings tech stock over the last couple years have very little to do with his leadership. Yuan is not responsible for the tech bubble and its deflation. No human on the planet could have made zoom hold its peak stock price.

Keep in mind that his income is probably not what he lives on. He probably gets loans with the stock. That 500 mill bump probably got him a large loan.

He probably doesn't need more stock borrow against if he has billions of dollars of equity already and a seven digit annual compensation. His stock transfers and sales are public information so you can look that up if you want. A cursory search shows that he sold at least 50 million dollars worth, which should cover some daily expenses

Given the stock went up 9% on this announcement, he just made $500M.

Against the backdrop of losing like $5 billion over the past 12 months.

So? What's the functional difference between $6 billion and $1 billion (which is roughly what Google says his current net worth is). Unless your net worth is $500M or more, you're closer to being homeless than ever seeing that kind of wealth.

> So?

It doesn't make sense to accuse someone of not feeling the economic impact of a downturn at all while downplaying the fact that they actually lost $5billion.

If there's no functional difference between before and after the loss, it damn well does.

Tell me, how did his lifestyle change as a result of losing this $5 billion? What actual pain of loss did he feel, above and beyond seeing some numbers go down?

classic example of moving the goalposts

I haven’t moved anything. You just didn’t know where my goalposts were to begin with.

You guys are going at it like cats and dogs.

> Tell me, how did his lifestyle change (...)

If you were serious or had devoted any thought into the issue you wouldn't even consider the silliness of framing a $5billion loss as a lifestyle issue.

In that case, how did his life change from his net worth going up 9% after layoffs? Which was the comment I replied to.

5 billion dollars.

His point, which you failed to address with your smug response, is the well-understood fact that the utility value of money falls greatly, the more money one has. The utility of 5 billion dollars is essentially zero to someone who already has a billion.

The marginal utility falls, but it's a hell of a lot more than zero.

Other than ownership of an NFL/NBA/Premier League/etc sports team, what life satisfaction or happiness improvements are unavailable to a one-billionaire?

Many people would love to own a major sports team.

He didn't make the money because it's unrealized gains, but your point still stands. The market certainly agrees that this is a good direction for the company, and if the market is correct, he will stand to benefit eventually

The phrase "net worth" claims another victim's mind.

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