Yet CEO's bonus in 2022 was 20x bigger than his salary. I don't think it will be less this year either; with all-time high stock price and these "cost cuts", he will be wholesomely rewarded.
It was an amazing journey to watch HN denisens adjust their opinions as they went from creme de la creme and 'anyone can create a unicorn tonorrow' to, you know, being basically like a plumber but for JSON.
Nobody mistakes them for Capital, especially not plumbers themselves. Engineers seem to have gotten the wrong idea about themselves lately.
A good engineer can make a great deal of money for the company, far more than a plumber ever could.
I.e. an engineer has leverage.
Installing a toilet is more like wroting a bash/shell script that is 99% googleable - most people can figure it out in a weekend
Writing a whole applocation is more like doing plumbing for an industrial installation. that handles hangerous chemicals
It works like this. If I could hire bob for $10, but he produces $100 worth of value, hell yes I'm going to hire Bob. But Evil Corp sees that and thinks "damn, I want Bob to contribute $100 to my bottom line, so I'll hire him away from Bright Corp by enticing him with $20 pay.
Then, BadAss Corp thinks the same thing, and hires Bob away for $30. This process repeats until Bob's pay + opportunity cost == $100.
However, there is a point of diminishing value being added. If lots of Bobs are available, the incremental value (leverage) each one adds becomes less. There are only so many redesigns of one's database that improve productivity much.
As you can see, the more Bobs, the less they'll get paid. Until Frank comes along with a new idea for adding value, and starts the process over again.
I.e. an engineer who has a track record of delivering value can command a much higher salary. I know one who got a million dollar salary.
This is also why CEOs get paid so much. Leverage. Nadella is a prime example. As an MSFT shareholder, I'd say he was darn well worth it.
I usually find that this typically stops at something like $10 for most people. Despite people being “valuable for millions” offers for that much don’t magically seem to spring up. The people I know making a million a year typically make the company tens of millions…
Personally I feel that the "rest of society" is getting way too little money vs. us getting way too much (opinion based on the fact that profits/productivity have outgrown salaries for too long).
There is another name for it - getting shafted
When I was working at a non-FAANG for normal pay, I was basically living the exact same lifestyle as my dockworker grandfather. I could afford a house and car, wife didn't have to work, one vacation per year, moderate savings.
Same issue with GPT. It's generating low quality, poor performing, poorly designed code. Any company using it as a basis will be in trouble.
That said, this phenomenon should not be used to justify exorbitant executive compensation that is very out of line with what the positions lower on the totem pole are capable of getting. We do not need that kind of society.
This is an incredibly uncharitable way to frame the parent comment.
> If all the CEOs in the world were forced to make $0, it will not meaningfully change the amount of money in workers' pockets.
That's just not true.
> That's just not true.
But its not far from wrong -- cutting a ten million dollar a year expense and putting it to worker pay will not make workers rich in the colloquial sense.
I wonder if people read what they type before they hit "reply"?
It’s about equality, attributing it to ‘envy’ reeks of entitlement.
Although MSFT's all time high stock price was in 2021.
This goes for all public corporations. Anyone can get a piece of the action by buying some stock in them.
As for the size of Nadella's compensation package, speaking as a long term MSFT shareholder Nadella has earned it. You might want to check out a graph of MSFT's stock price before and after Nadella became CEO.
You know, the people who actually built and sold the products?
Microsoft has historically had low salaries - because the money was made from the stock options.
"Of this total $2,500,000 was received as a salary, $10,066,500 was received as a bonus, $0 was received in stock options, $42,269,560 was awarded as stock and $110,250 came from other types of compensation."
Set this against the several hundreds of billions added to the MSFT value during his reign, and his compensation is the bargain of the century.
As a longtime MSFT shareholder, Nadella's compensation is coming out of my pocket. I don't begrudge him a penny of it.
I'll let you in on a secret. Regardless of what the official policy is for a company, if you feel you're undervalued, and you're right, you can negotiate the pay you feel you're worth. And if you cannot reach an agreement, there are plenty of other tech companies. In the Seattle area, there's Amazon and Google, for example. You wouldn't even have to move.
Why are you treating him differently than the rest of the employees?
So, y'know. Not the 58% of Americans who are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
And, um...you know what you call people who buy a stock at its all-time high?
Suckers.
You can buy fractional shares from robinhood.com.
> Not the 58% of Americans who are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I've known many of them, with a McMansion and his&her new cars in the driveway.
> you know what you call people who buy a stock at its all-time high? Suckers.
You're in luck, MSFT is 20% below its all time high.