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Comment by palata | Hacker News Reader

I think that the "it's paid a lot because it's super hard" is generally a bad excuse. Many things are super hard, many people make a lot of sacrifices to be among the bests at what they do. Yet they don't earn that much.

When the thing you are good at is being a CEO (as opposed to, say, being a teacher), then you are very lucky. Because other CEOs before you managed to make it acceptable to earn an indecent salary for just doing a job. Ok, let's say they don't sleep at all, so they can work 2-3x as much as the average people. Are they paid 2-3x more? No! They're paid orders of magnitudes more. That's indecent.

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So what solution are you proposing?

Right now, you’re simply complaining about a perceived problem without offering any logical argument for an alternative.

I do not mean to sound flippant, I’d like to hear what your alternative ideas are.

> So what solution are you proposing?

To the problem of human beings receiving way too much money for the time they spend doing their job?

Easy: crazy taxes. If the company really wants to increase the salary up to some limit, knowing that 95% of that increase will go into taxes, then good for them. Otherwise they can do something else, like increasing other salaries or hiring people.

Also if you ask me, there should be laws for the difference between the lowest and the highest salary in a company. I.e. "the highest salary cannot be more than X times the lowest salary". Which means that if the CEO wants to earn more, they need to raise the lowest salaries.

> there should be laws for the difference between the lowest and the highest salary in a company

I'd imagine that at a place like Mozilla (effectively a high-tech nonprofit primarily staffed by white-collar workers), this difference in compensation is actually not that big, compared to, say, a business that hires hourly workers.

You're right, you probably need the law to also include contractors for it to have teeth.

To a first order approximation you’re advocating for communism over capitalism in that you believe the will of the State (funded by “crazy taxes”) takes precedence over the will of the People, represented by local decisions made in a free market.

Consider that you could attempt to solve your perceived problem in multiple ways within the existing structure. 1) Garner public support and lead a campaign to change our laws to be more inline with the thoughts you have around increasing taxes; 2) Exploit the market opportunity you’ve identified (of paying CEO’s less to pay others more) by starting companies that follow this ethos, attract talent, and deliver value to consumers; 3) Attain a leadership position as CEO or in the Board of Directors for a company where you can take responsibility and change these perceived compensation problems; so on and so forth.

The responsibility lies with you to bring the change you seek.

Do you even know what communism is? Or are you one of those people who calls everything that is on the left of the current US president "communism"?

There has never been real communism so how could anybody hope to know what is? Literally.

It is an ideology, it can perfectly exist only in books.

It’s telling that you haven’t actually responded to anything on the basis of your proposal.

Sorry I did not understand that. What do you mean?

I'm not sure how increasing CEO taxes helps Mozilla's position at all. I feel like something has taken a left turn in this thread.

Such taxes would apply to their competitors too and level the playing field

> I'm not sure how increasing CEO taxes helps Mozilla's position at all.

Who said it would? Though I may argue that it is not clear at all if you really get the best person for the job when you make them rich just by getting the job. Not saying that all the CEOs are here "just for the money", but... well if they are not here for the money, why do they get that kind of salaries?

> I feel like something has taken a left turn in this thread.

I feel like when people are talking about the salary of a CEO and whether they "earned it" or not, I am entitled to say that no human being can ever deserve that kind of salary. Just like a liberal could say "they don't deserve it because they did not please the shareholders that much".

You’re entitled to free speech in the U.S. (if that’s where you reside) of course, however that doesn’t mean you’re right. To the contrary, the market, represented by millions of individuals’ actions, disagrees with you about who “deserves” what compensation.

Are you implying that because "the market" (with the laws that govern it) ends up in a situation where some people get that kind of salary, then I must be wrong in thinking that no human being deserves that kind of compensation?

Because if that's the case, I think it is completely stupid. You don't get to make up rules and then say that I am objectively wrong because your made-up rules disagree with me.

Brendan Eich (former CTO & CEO of Mozilla) managed to get 1% of marketshare for Brave from zero.

FF has 3.3%.

I think FF would have done mych better under his leadership.

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