GoPro's CEO Is Highest Paid Executive In America

sfsuphysics said:
I'll be the first to trash CEOs, but I'll say it again, this whole company is based on HIS invention, so out of all the CEOs out there he fucking deserves to get some huge income inequality between himself and his workers.
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His invention my ass. As an army-of-one, I can assure you he would have accomplished exactly NOTHING. You would never have heard of him, and you wouldn't see GoPro 4 Black's on store shelves, and he'd be poor.

The GoPro exists because of the hard work of everyone in that company, or they wouldn't be on the payroll in the first place. None of these CEOs are mountains onto themselves, and while certainly some people can do the same job that might take five others, he isn't doing the work of 500 people to deserve 500 times the average employees wages.
 
Rizen said:
I don't think you know what CEOs actually do.
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-Lots of meetings that get to no where
-Lots of decision making that cause more stress on lower tier employees
-Lots of power lunches that get to no where
-Lots of late power dinners that get to no where


There is no actual work a true CEO does. Its all meeting/decision based actions.
I have worked with the CEO of Boeing, and a few other places I have worked. I have been around a few enough to know their lives do suck balls for the most part but when they do vacation they ball out of control.
 
Tekara said:
Why pay them at all? Provide food and shelter via gruel and eight-bed rooms and you're set to go. If the employees don't like it, they can go to some other country.
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Pay them in tokens, only redeemable at the company store!
 
Disposed said:
What a bunch of shit. Most ceos these days do very little. They come up with no ideas, instead they hire teams for that. They raise no money, just hunt down vc money.
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You have absolutely NO idea what a CEO does then.
 
JPF_ said:
-Lots of meetings that get to no where
-Lots of decision making that cause more stress on lower tier employees
-Lots of power lunches that get to no where
-Lots of late power dinners that get to no where
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People like you that think that are a cancer on the work force.

Every employee of every company I've ever worked for and now all of my employees all complain about how their CEOs are idiots, how they don't do anything all day long, and how the company would be better off without them. It's interesting listening to people whose crowing achievement in their careers is to make $30k a year working for someone whose crowning career achievement is worth millions. They're delusional and jealous but they don't possess the work ethic, skills, or intelligence so that's all they can do, complain about things their woefully ignorant about.
 
Disposed said:
Yeah, keep drinking that kool aid.
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I own two companies both with many employees that say the same stupid shit you do. People like you are an absolute cancer for corporations.

Keep complaining about how the person responsible for your income doesn't do anything. Their hard work is the reason you get a paycheck every month.
 
Blown 89 said:
People like you that think that are a cancer on the work force.
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Nah, the real cancers on the work force are those in upper management who sacrifice everything for short-term gain if it means they make more money, and even when they fail horribly, are rewarded for it.

They're delusional and jealous but they don't possess the work ethic, skills, or intelligence so that's all they can do, complain about things their woefully ignorant about.
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Often though, it's usually just because they lack the connections or they're not sociopathic enough to go for those roles.
 
CEO's are important. Someone needs to set the goals and make the top level strategic decisions for an organization.

It's just that no human being adds so much value that they should be compensated 5690 times the median American family.

U.S. CEO salaries are ridiculously over valuated in large part due to the board structures, conflict of interest and corruption defrauding shareholders.

It winds up being an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" type situation when the board voting on your CEO salary are CEO's of companies you sit on the board of... :rolleyes:

We could learn a lot from Europe, with flat organization where teams share the leadership responsibilities, and even the top executives of the largest companies rarely make more than $500k, with the rewards of a successful organization spread more evenly across its workforce that made the same success possible.

I would be all for a national $500k salary cap :p
 
SLee said:
That's the truth though, that's why there are so few really good CEOs and so many mediocre and terrible ones.
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No, it's not. I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince you that you're ignorant. I gave up trying to convince my employees of that years ago. They don't see the 15 hour days, working on the weekends, working through entire vacations, late night and early call-ins from home, remoting in from the sofa during family time, the impossibility of ever eating lunch, the worry about a hoard of people whose lively hood depends on me, the years and years I spent not taking vacations, etc, etc, etc. Being a CEO is grueling, absolutely grueling work that takes years off your life so when I hear my employees try and feed me the same bullshit your just did while asking to leave an hour early or take a vacation the only thing I can do is roll my eyes and move on. If you want to remain ignorant and think that you're the reason your company is growing and evolving more power to you junior.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/ive-always-wondered/what-do-ceos-do-all-day
http://www.economist.com/node/18651811?story_id=18651811
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/03/12/ceo.health.warning/
 
Blown 89 said:
People like you that think that are a cancer on the work force.

Every employee of every company I've ever worked for and now all of my employees all complain about how their CEOs are idiots, how they don't do anything all day long, and how the company would be better off without them. It's interesting listening to people whose crowing achievement in their careers is to make $30k a year working for someone whose crowning career achievement is worth millions. They're delusional and jealous but they don't possess the work ethic, skills, or intelligence so that's all they can do, complain about things their woefully ignorant about.
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You got me all wrong. I didn't say anywhere that I was jealous or think my ceo's I have worked with/for are idiots. I clearly just stated that they are not as functioning and "in the know/process" as they used to be.

They are no longer invested in the company as they sit on boards of other companies. They are just movers and shakers that will work someone for 2-10 years and move to another company.

They are educated, and talented. In reality they are so far out of touch with their employees they are in another world.

Even more so when their management team lies to them about productivity and such.....
 
Zarathustra[H];1041553586 said:
CEO's are important. Someone needs to set the goals and make the top level strategic decisions for an organization.

It's just that no human being adds so much value that they should be compensated 5690 times the median American family.

U.S. CEO salaries are ridiculously over valuated in large part due to the board structures, conflict of interest and corruption defrauding shareholders.

It winds up being an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" type situation when the board voting on your CEO salary are CEO's of companies you sit on the board of... :rolleyes:

We could learn a lot from Europe, with flat organization where teams share the leadership responsibilities, and even the top executives of the largest companies rarely make more than $500k, with the rewards of a successful organization spread more evenly across its workforce that made the same success possible.

I would be all for a national $500k salary cap :p
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We can also see how those things are working for a lot of the European companies in tech who cannot compete.
 
///AMG said:
We can also see how those things are working for a lot of the European companies in tech who cannot compete.
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I wouldn't blame that on a lack of CEO pay.

After all, Europe has many well managed large industrial companies following this model.

And what's more, CEO's in Europe are typically knowledgeable in the field of the firm they are running, rather than just being bean counters or lawyers by education, often having worked their way up from Engineers.

That deep understanding of the product helps explain why many European mechanical designs, like industrial tools and vehicles are as superior as they are, as compared to silly U.S. companies run my marketeers, bean counters and lawyers who think badge engineering is a great idea.

U.S. success in tech has more to do with first to market advantages, and a culture and skills base growing up. it has taken a while but the rest of the world has caught up and bypassed us in many cases. The advantage of being first to market - however - is that you can grow rather large and take control of said market making it more difficult for other entrants.

More and more tech is shifting to southeast Asia though. We won't stay ahead forever.
 
Gweenz said:
Some? Yes. Several hundred million vs. 30k to 100k? NO.
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Why?

His idea, his work, his and his parents HUGE risk to invest into the idea, and it has now paid off.

Who cares where the money came from? I only WISH my parents had that kind of money to help me start something. What is wrong with being successful and providing for your kids that is so wrong?

My, how our society has done well making people hate wealth, as if not having money makes you better or worth more? If it is so easy, show me your idea that is worth million or billions, I am willing to bet 99% of the people here would never even get that far, rich parents or not.

It also does not matter who he has working for him now, to make improvements etc etc, I am sure they get paid, if they don't like what they are paid they should take a job else where or change what they do for a living.
 
Sp33dFr33k said:
Living the American dream. Hope he rewards the employees who are doing the bulk of the work.
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Funny guy.

Smashing Young Man said:
Name one SINGLE employee under him who is doing the equal of his work.
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Well I'm just guessing at numbers here, but if he brought in 284.5 million, let's say the average salary at his company is 50k. Not only do I bet there are at least some employees working as hard as he does, but I somehow doubt he is doing 5,690 times the work of the average employee.

Blown 89 said:
No, it's not. I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince you that you're ignorant. I gave up trying to convince my employees of that years ago. They don't see the 15 hour days, working on the weekends, working through entire vacations, late night and early call-ins from home, remoting in from the sofa during family time, the impossibility of ever eating lunch, the worry about a hoard of people whose lively hood depends on me, the years and years I spent not taking vacations, etc, etc, etc. Being a CEO is grueling, absolutely grueling work that takes years off your life so when I hear my employees try and feed me the same bullshit your just did while asking to leave an hour early or take a vacation the only thing I can do is roll my eyes and move on. If you want to remain ignorant and think that you're the reason your company is growing and evolving more power to you junior.
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That description sounds an awful lot like game developers:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/...e-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/

Their reward is frequently unpaid overtime then being laid off after a project is completed. Hell, most jobs nowadays unofficially require a certain amount of unpaid overtime to not make waves with the company culture.
 
wabbitseason said:
What an idiot. Everyone at the company earns the same now, regardless of intelligence or work ethic or crucial knowledge. At the cost of 75-80% of their yearly profits.
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Of course you won't hear about what a disaster this turned out to be when the inevitable comes to pass.
 
Blown 89 said:
People like you that think that are a cancer on the work force.

Every employee of every company I've ever worked for and now all of my employees all complain about how their CEOs are idiots, how they don't do anything all day long, and how the company would be better off without them. It's interesting listening to people whose crowing achievement in their careers is to make $30k a year working for someone whose crowning career achievement is worth millions. They're delusional and jealous but they don't possess the work ethic, skills, or intelligence so that's all they can do, complain about things their woefully ignorant about.
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LOL, yeah CEOs are so valuable. They deserve our respect because their crowning achievement is making millions a year. Right? Don't you see the cyclical retardedness in your thinking? In my short career I've already acquired extraordinary contempt for and disappointment in high figures in several companies.

The fact is most people are useless. Fancy people with fancy titles included. My experience has led me to conclude that almost everyone is a bullshitter, and almost everyone got where they are through luck, connections, corruption, psychopathic/manipulative political prowess, or some combination of the above.

Honorable, intelligent, hard-working people are not rewarded unless they "play the game" properly. That is a simple fact. Those at the top are not the most honorable, nor the most intelligent, nor the hardest working. They are simply the best at reaching the top. Don't confuse that despicable ability with true merit.
 
Wow ... the CEO hate runs strong in this crowd ... I am reminded of the famous Aesop tale of the Fox and the Grapes ("it is easy to despise what you cannot get") ... I have seen some pretty incompetent CEOs at companies I have been an employee at and at other companies ... I have also seen some good ones (isn't Elon Musk kind of a tech darling that everyone loves, and he is a CEO) ... the Google CEOs have done pretty well with their company ... and if pay is the guideline then everybody should have loved Steve Jobs (he was only paid a $1 salary)

I don't believe in placing an arbitrary limit on employee compensation ... that should be up to the board and the shareholders ... not the employees, and certainly not external groups ... the only part of CEO pay that I find totally alarming and that I think should change is the "Golden Parachute" ... CEOs with one of those have almost zero accountability ... I do think that for CEOs of public companies though, that they should be paid primarily in stock (as that is the value of success that most public companies are measured against) ... if that stock gives them hundreds of millions or billions in compensation though then that is fine ;)
 
kbrickley said:
I don't believe in placing an arbitrary limit on employee compensation ... that should be up to the board and the shareholders ... not the employees
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So the majority of people who do the majority of work at a company should have no say in their compensation huh? God bless America.
 
kbrickley said:
and if pay is the guideline then everybody should have loved Steve Jobs (he was only paid a $1 salary)
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Oh please, he was given $1.2 BILLION in Apple stock and $4.4 BILLION in Walt Disney stock.

And for those that say, "OK, sure, he was given billions of dollars in stocks instead of cash directly, but at least he took no bonuses!!!!", well, except he kind of did, like his $90 million Gulfstream V.

But, but, surely its because his expenses were so high... oops, well, he was allowed to expense $250,000.

To pretend that he isn't one of the 1%ers that equally have a complete divorce of contribution from compensation, where sure they had value, but to have a net worth so high that most people couldn't even figure out a lifestyle to burn through that much money in a lifetime is ludicrous!!! He did his job, fine, give him ten times what the average employee makes, but not hundreds of times while he parades around in turtlenecks and jeans pretending to be Jesus and taking credit for everyone else's ideas and work. Hell, he was so rich that for laughs he traded in one of the most expensive Mercedes models you can buy every six months so that he'd never have to drive with a license plate. That crap just makes me angry, and it should make you angry too.

Again, its not that CEOs are worthless, its the question of how much their worth really is. At what point do you just stop and say "GOD DAMMIT, THAT'S TOO MUCH!"? If you can't even think of a number, something is inherently wrong with your reasoning skills.
 
tetris42 said:
So the majority of people who do the majority of work at a company should have no say in their compensation huh? God bless America.
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A company is a either a private institution owned by its founder (in which case the employees should have no say) ... or it is public and owned by it's shareholders (in which case employees should have no say unless they are also a shareholder) ... companies are not democracies nor should they be ... employees have one vote they can and should use (the decision on whether they wish to work at a company) ... if the company encourages employee ownership through stock purchase (like Southwest Airlines) then the employees should endeavor to purchase stock and exercise their voice as one of the owners ... if they choose not to own stock then they have no voice other than opinions (and we all know what those are worth) ... insisting on the employees running a company reeks of communism and that didn't turn out that well for folks :cool:
 
Ducman69 said:
Oh please, he was given $1.2 BILLION in Apple stock and $4.4 BILLION in Walt Disney stock.

And for those that say, "OK, sure, he was given billions of dollars in stocks instead of cash directly, but at least he took no bonuses!!!!", well, except he kind of did, like his $90 million Gulfstream V.

But, but, surely its because his expenses were so high... oops, well, he was allowed to expense $250,000.

To pretend that he isn't one of the 1%ers that equally have a complete divorce of contribution from compensation, where sure they had value, but to have a net worth so high that most people couldn't even figure out a lifestyle to burn through that much money in a lifetime is ludicrous!!! He did his job, fine, give him ten times what the average employee makes, but not hundreds of times while he parades around in turtlenecks and jeans pretending to be Jesus and taking credit for everyone else's ideas and work. Hell, he was so rich that for laughs he traded in one of the most expensive Mercedes models you can buy every six months so that he'd never have to drive with a license plate. That crap just makes me angry, and it should make you angry too.

Again, its not that CEOs are worthless, its the question of how much their worth really is. At what point do you just stop and say "GOD DAMMIT, THAT'S TOO MUCH!"? If you can't even think of a number, something is inherently wrong with your reasoning skills.
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I don't necessarily agree with CEO pay scales but I don't see it as being any of my business either ... if I owned stock in a company I would care ... if I was on the board of a company and made the hiring, firing, and compensation decisions for a CEO then I better care ... but as a bystander I can argue that the market is making these decisions (even if I don't agree with them), and that is how a free market works (they don't always make decisions I like or agree with)

my choice as a consumer is to choose which companies I will support by my purchasing decisions ... once I give them my money their only obligation to me is for the product or service I purchased (not to appease my sanctimonious opinion of their CEO's pay) ... as an employee I have a choice of which companies I choose to work for ... as an employee that is the extent of my involvement in employee compensation (if I don't like what I or others get paid then I can find another job and quit ... I can request a change in their policies, but they are under no legal obligation to take my advice, and depending on the state in which I work they may be entitled to release me) ... most of us are neither qualified nor able to perform the job of CEO so our objection to their pay seems somewhat misguided ;)
 
What is his invention? I mean were cameras you strap onto yourself not in existence before?
 
kbrickley said:
A company is a either a private institution owned by its founder (in which case the employees should have no say) ... or it is public and owned by it's shareholders (in which case employees should have no say unless they are also a shareholder) ... companies are not democracies nor should they be ... employees have one vote they can and should use (the decision on whether they wish to work at a company) ... if the company encourages employee ownership through stock purchase (like Southwest Airlines) then the employees should endeavor to purchase stock and exercise their voice as one of the owners ... if they choose not to own stock then they have no voice other than opinions (and we all know what those are worth) ... insisting on the employees running a company reeks of communism and that didn't turn out that well for folks :cool:
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You know that model is absolutely broken in practice.

Unless you're already very wealthy, any individual shares you hold are meaningless, especially when you award huge amounts of shares in lieu of compensation to the exact management you are attempting to police.

Secondly, because any individual or employee would hold so little shares in the company, their opinion can only be of significance if they are organized to take action and create accountability, but we know they are not organized and so are a discord of random voices of no value.

Lastly, the goals of employees and even the public at large compared to share holders (and those with significant shares tend to already be wealthy 1%ers) are at conflict, and any individual only cares about the increasing value of the investment, not about the fair distribution of wealth. Generally, as long as the stock prices are going up, it doesn't matter to the individual if the CEO is forcing his employees to be sex slaves and uses small children for target practice or dog hunting. They aren't there to be moral police, they are there to make money, and a CEO being only one person isn't likely to massively effect the bottom line, and even if he does all that matters still is whether or not the stock price increases that quarter or not.

To pretend that this is an excellent system to ensure maximum efficiency and fair distribution of the fruits of the combined labor of that organization is asinine.
 
tetris42 said:
It's called syndicalism, and it actually can work out pretty well, like being one of the larger corporations in Europe for over 50 years and bringing in billions in revenue.
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It can work in very specific situations (the Green Bay Packers football team is owned by the city as well) ... I don't believe this model would work for a company like Foxconn (with somewhere around 1 million employees) or Walmart (more than 2 million employees) ... I also don't believe that the largest multinationals could be successful with that model and maintain the revenue growth ... Walmart (470 billion + annually), Royal Dutch (460 billion annually), Exxon (400 billion + annually), etc

Our modern system of capitalism is based on growth ... the CEO pay system doesn't seem to be hurting growth yet, but as soon as it does the process will change ... most employees are paid what the market demands ... it would be poor fiduciary responsibility for any public company to pay their employees more than they need to be paid ... a company has this fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders, not its employees ;)
 
And yes I know there is no easy answer to that problem while maintaining the open competition and freedom that makes the free market than consolidating that power into government officials that then themselves are typically corrupt and overly powerful and usually incompetent.

One obvious solution is just to create a progressive tax system that after you start making $1 million a year in total compensation goes into exponential overdrive, effectively creating a soft-cap in outrageous income disparity so that someone making $20 million and $200 million bring home not much different salaries at the end of the day and eliminating the multi-billionaire 1% problem where a few people have more power and wealth than they can really even manage as a single human.

The problem then of course is that doing so the money gets funneled to people in government now in charge of all this wealth and how to distribute it, and that is a new monster.

The other problem is that now you're also distributing wealth based on leadership that is there by popular vote, so pretty soon people can figure out that they don't even really need to work and can just vote themselves into a living, something Democrats have successfully exploited in recent years encouraging people to "Keep Obama in President, you know"! This only encourages dependency and lethargy, and again breaks what we're trying to accomplish where you get a fair share of the fruits of your labor... since in this case, you're getting a share of OTHER people's labor and it has nothing to do with you.

So I don't have all the answers, but can recognize a problem when I see one, and am annoyed when people pretend that everything is hunky dory. Usually its not genuine denial, but a hope that "Hey, pretty soon I hope to be one of those 1%ers and hitting the jackpot myself, awwww yeahhhh baby!".
 
*derp "makes the free market more successful" is what I meant to write, damn lack of edit... that's what I get for typing responses while making meatballs. :D
 
Ducman69 said:
To pretend that this is an excellent system to ensure maximum efficiency and fair distribution of the fruits of the combined labor of that organization is asinine.
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We will just have to agree to disagree since I don't believe it is society's or the government's job to manage "fair distribution" ... I am not one of the 1% and will never be one of the 1% (unless I win a big lottery or something) ... however, I don't believe that they should be penalized for being wealthy

I have only worked for three multinationals but they have (for the most part) paid what the market demanded for employees (that is how economics are supposed to work) ... at one point during my employment at Intel as an engineer I made about 4 times as much from the employee stock options than I did from salary (some employees, especially the executives made many more times that) ... there was nothing wrong with that

Intel was mostly a meritocracy as well due to their rank and rate system ... the more you worked and harder you worked the more likely you were to succeed at the company ... however, it also wore you down over years of being in competition with your other employees (since all employees were compared against each other) ... that was certainly a fair system and a highly efficient one and could be easily copied for other companies (many companies do use a competitive ranking and rating system) ... but it was also a very unforgiving system (fairness can cut both ways) ;)
 
Here's how I look at it. If the people whose greatest accomplishment in life is making $30k or under, kill them off and then let the 1%ers build with their own labor SkyNet to finish off the job.
 
kbrickley said:
We will just have to agree to disagree since I don't believe it is society's or the government's job to manage "fair distribution" ... I am not one of the 1% and will never be one of the 1% (unless I win a big lottery or something) ... however, I don't believe that they should be penalized for being wealthy
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Its not about punishment, its about trying to fix a broken system without tearing it down. And I said straight up that I don't trust the government or society to manage fair distribution either. I don't know the fix, but to pretend its not broken... cmon.

And this "fair market wages" doesn't apply in crony capitalism, where who you know is more important than what you do.

The concept here is a simple one in which we just want to distribute the goods approximately balanced with their contribution to the total sum or our labor. The more skilled and harder working people ABSOLUTELY should make more money. No one is saying janitors should make more than CEOs. No one is saying that the guys that screwed off in highschool not paying attention in class and partying and just doing the bare minimum at work to not get fired should get paid the same as those that bust ass.

The question is one of scale. Again, tell me, what number to you is TOO MUCH?

If you can't define what too much is, you have a problem and you really need to think about it and figure out why you can't come up with something ballpark. If 99% of people are literally starving in the street and resorting to cannibalism while 1% control virtually all of the world's resources and each live in giant Taj Mahal palaces, is that too much? That's the question, when are we finally going to put our foot down and say that CEO compensation, which in the United States has grown outrageously during our generation is "too much"?

I can understand that some see the line further left or right, but the people that say there shouldn't be a line? :rolleyes:
 
Ducman69 said:
You know that model is absolutely broken in practice.

Unless you're already very wealthy, any individual shares you hold are meaningless, especially when you award huge amounts of shares in lieu of compensation to the exact management you are attempting to police.

Secondly, because any individual or employee would hold so little shares in the company, their opinion can only be of significance if they are organized to take action and create accountability, but we know they are not organized and so are a discord of random voices of no value.

Lastly, the goals of employees and even the public at large compared to share holders (and those with significant shares tend to already be wealthy 1%ers) are at conflict, and any individual only cares about the increasing value of the investment, not about the fair distribution of wealth. Generally, as long as the stock prices are going up, it doesn't matter to the individual if the CEO is forcing his employees to be sex slaves and uses small children for target practice or dog hunting. They aren't there to be moral police, they are there to make money, and a CEO being only one person isn't likely to massively effect the bottom line, and even if he does all that matters still is whether or not the stock price increases that quarter or not.

To pretend that this is an excellent system to ensure maximum efficiency and fair distribution of the fruits of the combined labor of that organization is asinine.
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Fantastic post, sums up the issues I have with this reasoning a lot better than I can.

kbrickley said:
.. I am not one of the 1% and will never be one of the 1% (unless I win a big lottery or something) ... however, I don't believe that they should be penalized for being wealthy
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I think if that's all this was about, there would be a lot more merit to your argument. The problem is when that exact same demographic turns around and hires lobbyists to change the law to make them even wealthier, often coming at the expense of the bottom. Common CEO practices nowadays would have led to prison terms for wage theft in the past. Trade agreements pushed by millionaires make workers have to compete with sweatshop labor. Taxes that would have funded things like schools and roads get gutted in order to lower tax rates for the wealthiest bracket. It goes on endlessly. Essentially money from business interests at the top makes it way towards changing the law to negatively affect everyone else. So while not every CEO is the problem, seeing such an enormous economic divide between worker and management generally isn't a positive thing for society.
 
Ducman69 said:
The more skilled and harder working people ABSOLUTELY should make more money. No one is saying janitors should make more than CEOs. No one is saying that the guys that screwed off in highschool not paying attention in class and partying and just doing the bare minimum at work to not get fired should get paid the same as those that bust ass.
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This is exactly it. Those who work hard and are successful should most definitely be more highly compensated.

But no one. Not a single person, regardless of their level of qualification should work a full time job and still not be able to pay for the bare necessities of life, especially not while some individuals are taking home over 5000 times as much as the median U.S family. That is just shameful.

And stop pretending that it is a fair market price for CEO labor. It is a horribly corrupt system where compensation is extremely exaggerated based on buddies giving each other raises because conflict of interest. Too many of these CEO jokers are buddies with everyone on their board that set their salaries. In many cases the CEO is a board member in another company and helps set the wages for the very people who are setting his.

Smoke filled rooms, conflict of interest, corruption, and investor fraud is what it is, and it is disgusting.

Even discounting this outright fraud, the truth is that making it to the top has a lot less to do with hard work than it does with what family you were born into, who you know, and just plain dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time.

This isn't just my opinion, this is confirmed fact. Even Bloomberg Business agrees, and you don't have to spend much time googling research docs to find confirming research studies.

And what's worse, one of the psychological side effects of wealth is that you actually believe you are better than everyone else and deserve said wealth. This study is very sobering, and confirms this fact.

The richer you feel, the more mean, selfish and convinced of your own greatness and deserving your fortune you become. Human psychology. How fucked up is that.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041554211 said:
In many cases the CEO is a board member in another company and helps set the wages for the very people who are setting his.
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And even those that are not members of multiple committees and boards and what not tend to attend the same social functions and circles as others that do. That's actually one of the main purposes of big charities; the cause isn't really that important but by setting say a $10K a plate you get to intermingle with others in power and form relationships so you can hop from one place to the next with your golden parachute, even when failing.

The same thing applies with their children and Ivy League schools, which are less about learning and more about forming relationships early on.

Far too much "you pat my back, and I'll pat yours" happening, where they give each other great slabs of meat from the table of the companies they manage, even if it only leaves scraps for the people that farmed and prepared the meat on their table.
 
wabbitseason said:
They deserve our respect because their crowning achievement is making millions a year. Right?
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Wow. Is that what you think CEOs do? Sit back and rake in money? CEOs are responsible for the livelihoods of every employee under them. The person that worked ten times harder than you ever will is responsible for your livelihood and the livelihood of your family. Grow up children.
 
It is actually the governments job to redistribute wealth to some degree. The role of the government is to serve the people, when the government fails to serve the people the people will revolt. We have seen this many times before in history. The question one would ask is, if CEO pay or the top 1% is getting so out of hand that the common people no longer feel like they have anything to live for what will they do? The answer is they will take to arms and destroy the top 1% and they have done it many times before and will do it again. The reality is most ultra high paid people just don't understand that this is a very real possibility. So the government is supposed to appease the people by keeping things "acceptable" this results in a system where the people do not take to arms and wage a war that destroys a nations infrastructure and economy. The reason democracy is so great is because instead of waging war every time conditions become unacceptable we simply vote in a new government give them a couple years and then do it again. The role of a very good government is to strike a balance that does not allow the wishes of the aristocracy or the common people to get out of hand and destroy the economy. The USA is generally viewed as a place that has such a reasonable balance where a place like Russia is not.

With all that said most people here are way off base when they discuss these issues. Trust me high level execs are not just wandering dumb shits who happened to be lucky enough to randomly be given the job because they knew the right people or hung out in the right circles. Once you get past a certain level of management in most larger companies your performance is almost pure numbers. You produce the numbers you move up, you do OK, you might stay put if you fall behind you get demoted or canned if you know the right people great you might get a chance no one else has but when given that chance you must perform trust me when I say I know shit loads of rich ass kids who should have every opportunity but no one is hiring them for these jobs. And most higher level execs I know work a lot of hours and never have any time where they can really just chill out and forget about work they are always hammering away emails and taking calls. That's one thing the 9-5ers never get when you go home the day is over and you can simply forget everything and watch the game, when management they are always a phone call away from working in a corner room at the family event.
 
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