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Comment by stego-tech | Hacker News Reader

The outages, attacks, and meltdowns will continue until business leadership stops thinking they know more about IT than their actual IT Engineers, and start supporting them accordingly.

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"United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby earned $33.9 million in 2024, compared to $18.6 million in 2023, and $9.8 million in 2022"

https://onemileatatime.com/insights/highest-paid-airline-ceo...

He must know something, right? And it seems he knows more and more as the years go by.

Nearly doubling the CEO's salary annually seems like there would be enough money to increase the budget of whatever department/team needing to update the company's software while still increasing the CEO's salary by slightly less.

I think it is the opposite. If you want to double the pay of your CEO every year then you're going to have to find that money somewhere, so it reduces the money available for other things. 'Slightly less' was never an option. That's why employees are often expected to work unpaid overtime and yet management gets ridiculous bonuses. And if it all goes bust: the taxpayer will make up the difference. These are all asymmetrical bets, CEOs pocket the gains and society ends up with the losses.

Yes, that's the cynical way of looking at it. I'm looking at it from another perspective saying it's even worse/more offensive as they could have given the software team a $1million increase, while still giving the CEO a nearly doubled salary. There's nearly double then slightly less nearly double? No. It's just nearly doubled no matter what at those rates.

Yes, that 'nearly' bit is the bit that matters. If 16M becomes 15M that is terrible for the CEO, better save some more on software (say another $10M) and pocket that extra million bonus based on higher profits for the shareholders. Because that's how it usually works.

Again, you're just pointing out what happens. I'm pointing out a reasonable alternative that gets both points achieved. If you're telling me that a CEO that is currently making $15 million but just won't be able to make it on $29 million instead of $30 million is just going to get no sympathy from me. None. At. All. The fact that you are on here just trying to use current logic on why the alternative I've proposed is the better solution is just preposterous and puts you in the part of the problem camp.

Not shockingly schools do the same thing. I had to buy a copy of Lord of the Flies for my high schooler’s English class, but the Super Intendant, who didn’t meet his performance goals, received a bonus that could have covered a good portion the English curriculum materials.

He knows how to save on software development.

Beatings will continue until morale improves.

I don't know, everywhere I look I see IT staff who don't care that much and can't problem solve. One possibility is that the IT leadership is herding cats very effectively and that things could be much much worse.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked in plenty of organizations where politics takes preference over outcomes, and every middle manager and senior leader wants their pound of flesh before allowing the objectively right thing to happen. These people then promote each other into higher tiers, because modern shareholders couldn’t care less about business effectiveness when share buybacks will juice their earnings - and the C-Suite’s.

It’s a perverted reward hack by leadership, and nobody - governments, shareholders, boardrooms, regulators, etc - seems to give a shit.

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