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Comment by CurtHagenlocher | Hacker News Reader

Jamie Dimon earned $39 million in 2024.

That's not actually a huge number in the grand scheme of things. That's entertainer/pro athlete money. Especially considering he runs one of the most powerful companies in the country and his net worth is $2.6 billion.

>That's not actually a huge number in the grand scheme of things.

Your comment seems to lack any awareness of the distribution of annual income.

No, I'm aware. It's just $39 million a year is not actually a salacious number. It's actually a semi-reasonable salary given the size and performance of the company in question.

If only compensation for the 0.1% stopped there. But unfortunately, the distribution of income pretty closely follows the Pareto principle.

Your claim requires the belief that $39M is a reasonable compensation rate for anything at all.

I dispute that.

However, I also acknowledge that I don't have a solid proposal to deal with how to distribute vast revenue/profits within organizations that successfully raise them. Mostly I think it indicates they should be charging customers/clients less, but I'm not a proponent of any sort of simplistic "maximimum salary" rules.

I find it morally repugnant that anyone makes $39 million in a year.

I find it hyper salacious. Driving a boat twice as big doesn't make you inherently deserving of double the pay, just as investing double the money doesn't make you inherently deserving of double the return. And the oft-cited accountability of leadership over large machines does not come even an additional 5% closer to validating that salary.

I am of course speaking from a human context, which I realize is not the context normally used when talking about these things. You're utterly right: It's not salacious in the capitalistic context from which we have yet to find a viable escape.

I'm with you -- that much yearly income is more than enough to retire on, after one year.

Yes, one can argue that the world is (today) set up such that these numbers aren't huge, to which my response would be that today's world is badly mis-calibrated along the axis of income inequality.

That's such a strange number to me these days. If I got paid that much in a year, I'd instantly retire, and yet it's still essentially nothing compared to $1 billion, which Elon Musk probably makes or loses in an average day (and has lost much more than that over the past few months due to the drop in TSLA) and has no actual effect on his lifestyle.

Why retire? You work just a few more years and you’ll have $100million+

because you can do everything you want to do for the rest of your life for $30million and don't need to continue working for 100?

No you can’t? You can blow $20 million on a house that then costs $500k a year in maintenance, and that’s just the beginning.

And then you might say well just buy a regular house?? Why bother going through the struggle of becoming a CEO just to work for one year as CEO then go live in a regular house? Does not make sense at all.

Warren buffet would like a word.

https://www.fancypantshomes.com/celebrity-homes/warren-buffe...

> For six decades, Buffett has lived in the same residence in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha, Neb. The “Oracle of Omaha” purchased the home for $31,500, which would be worth about $250,000 in today’s dollars.

> As it turns out, the house was the “third-best investment” he’s ever made, Buffett wrote in a letter to his shareholders in 2010.

The list of foolish things a person might do to squander a fortune is effectively endless, but one also has the freedom to refrain from being stupid.

I mean, you pretty much answered your own question with "blow" which doesn't indicate it being a worthwhile purchase.

The people I know who have done well in business don't have extremely fancy houses anyway. They vacation a lot.

> Why bother going through the struggle of becoming a CEO just to work for one year as CEO then go live in a regular house? Does not make sense at all.

People's priorities change. Maybe you're driven and got that kind of position and then think shit I can leave this and live well for the rest of my life.

do that a few more times and pretty soon you're taking real money

The more money you have, the less utility you gain from each additional dollar; the longer you wait, the more valuable each remaining year of life becomes. At some point you're not going to have enough (healthy, active) lifetime left to do anything interesting with more money, even if you could get it.

The only CEO who I've worked for who I would describe as winning at capitalism is a former bank CEO who worked in the job for 8 years, retired in his late forties (IIRC) having pulled in a minimum of $50m over that time. And actually retired.

The rest of these people are as addicted as heroin addicts.

Ok, and?

That's probably why he's happy to work in the office seven days a week.

i would work for the taliban if they paid me that much

Ok I laughed so hard at this.

But yeah, really tired of CEOs criticizing their workforces when they make as much money as they do.

Pay me your salary and I’ll live in the office.

We have FAANG'ers bringing in hundreds of thousands and still complaining about RTO.

We never had WFH before - it was an experiment. For many businesses, the experiment didn't work. If you don't want RTO, find some other business that allows WFH. It's pretty much that simple...

Where’s that data that it didn’t work? No one can show me this.

It works fine.

The data is all of the companies saying it doesn't work and calling for RTO. Does anything really think they're doing this for funsies? Does anyone comprehend how expensive it is to operate office buildings?

We think of these mega-corps as inhuman, penny pinching, stingy monoliths - yet we then believe they're blowing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars a month on office space that's unnecessary. The math ain't mathin'..

You think these ego-maniac CEOs are entirely rational machines?

They’re just as into vibes as the corner shop trying to sell you spirit crystals.

Show me one CEO with a building and I’ll show you one who doesn’t have one. ThE MaTh AiNt MaThInG

https://apnews.com/article/jpmorgan-chase-bank-earnings-prof...

Speaking of "math that ain't mathin'" what about the fact that their best year ever was a year while they had a shitload of remote workers?

If it didn't work how did JP Morgan bring home record profits in 2024? And in 2023, and in 2022, and in 2021?

Nothing is failing. Bro likes the office. He thinks everyone should too.

It’s insane to me how all these companies have profit numbers up and to the right for half a decade under hybrid policies, but then are like “you know what will make us do even better? Pissing off the whole work force all at once for no good reason.”

It’s just comically stupid.

My guess is that it probably has more to do with the fact that Dimon probably has an entire floor all to himself with all kinds of customized artwork, couches, lounge chairs etc, with personal assistants, likely a private elevator, maybe even a private chef or personal catering everyday etc. He doesn’t have to deal with fighting for conference rooms, loud office mates, a shitty cubicle, etc.

Dimon’s office is likely bigger and nicer than most of his employees homes, so of course he doesn’t mind working from there.

Does he? I wonder what his attendance record is.

I doubt it, but he apparently claimed he does.

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