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Comment by educaysean | Hacker News Reader

I assume the "top" percentiles for most fields will have reported above average earnings. It would have been a more interesting article if they also looked at the pay for top 100 doctors, athletes, or other salaries positions as a point of comparison.

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That's kind of not what this shows. They're taking the top paid CEOs of companies that are worth >$1Bn, and then looked at their pay YoY. Your comparison doesn't really apply, because they're not looking at the 100 people who go the biggest pay rises, they're looking at the best paid. So most likely what's happening here is you have a bunch of CEOs of top companies in 2021/22 and they were paid like they were great, and this year they're being paid even more - even though last year they were already being valued like they were rockstars. It's not a great metric, but it just sort of highlights that CEO pay continues to just sky rocket away from normal pay.

I think the question to ask is: Look at these companies, did their CEO do: (a) better than expected this year, (b) as expected this year or (c) worse than expected this year. What seems to consistently come out of these articles is that CEOs who fit (a) get paid a lot more YoY, CEOs who fit (b) get paid a lot more YoY, and CEOs who fit (c) get paid a lot more YoY.

And of course, some of it is richly ironic, one of the companies listed is equilar - a company whose raison d'etre is suppressing employee pay, they're a legal version of a cartel.

Surely, if you get to the position of running a multi-billion dollar company on some level you should know what you're doing? No one is taking a rookie kart racing driver and putting them straight into Formula 1.

>Surely, if you get to the position of running a multi-billion dollar company on some level you should know what you're doing?

They probably know somewhat more than a recent MBA grad, but they aren't special geniuses, they made the right political decisions and have good connections. That meme, "your network is your networth," is very true.

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