Phill became 60 years old, this step is just him taking a smaller role while he can educate his replacement until he decides to retire (which is certainly financially possible for him to do after he becomes 65).
is this "actualized $73MM in gains from selling AAPL shares" or some backdated math like "at the current price, the amount of shares he's sold are worth $73MM"?
I would assume he could retire now. He's been with Apple forever, he must have a ton of stock. I assume he's not depending on social security to fill any income gaps, and that the majority of his net-worth is likely outside of tax advantaged retirement accounts.
I don't get why any of these people stay so long in their roles. If you're SVP or CxO at any of these large tech companies for any significant amount of time, it basically means you've achieved perpetual generational wealth. You've beaten the game. Why keep playing? Once your net worth is eight digits, what really does the ninth digit get you?
When you don't have to work you're probably more likely to be in a place where you enjoy it. Having said that, I wonder how much work these guys do once they're in these roles and have already proving themselves time and time again. I imagine most of the less satisfying work is delegated away and they get to spend time on whatever they want.
Wouldn't we all be doing that if we could? Earn enough that you can have a team of people taking care of the menial tasks that are high effort/low reward and focus your attention into the important bits.
I believe I'd enjoy any role like that, if I'm skilled enough to tackle the problems I want to while having a trusted team which I can delegate things I know how to do but don't want to.
I can imagine those roles being a lot of fun. They know what they're doing, respected in their roles, working with people they like and respect I would guess. Salary can't be bad and you'd expect they can offload any of the work they don't like to subordinates.