Full time employment is rigged. For everyone. Tech workers are just now waking up to the reality that they are the same disposable peasants like all the rest. Seeing this kind of compensation and thinking .. oh well that guy must have done hell of a job must be some kind of delusion.
Everybody is free to start their own businesses or to get hired as a CPO at a booming startup. I see a lot of people complaining, but not that many actually using those very simple rigged opportunities to make 100M fast.
There are vanishingly small number of these positions in the world, and a vanishingly small percentage of that vanishingly small number are hiring. These positions are also gated by things that commoners do not have access to, like prestigious educational backgrounds and well-connected networks of executives. Same for becoming a founder. Unless you bootstrap, the minute you want to raise funding, you're more often than not going to be blocked by those same gates.
This is a class issue, not a "seize the opportunity" issue.
I understand starting a business, but pulling off the kind of career moves the executive in question pulled off requires a level of grift that most honest people can't really fathom.
It's pure luck most of the time; right time, right place, right connections. It's not usually talent especially in crypto and other legal ponzi schemes
I don't have 100m. I run a small bootstrapped business, and I know for a fact that running a business is a lot of hard work, so I don't share dismissive attitudes in comments.
He was a full-time employee - VP at Google before, and a PM before that... at least $300-500k/year, is that not enough or something? How does one of the highest salaried jobs around make you a 'disposable peasant'? Do you just go through life not knowing anyone on an 'average' income?
From a VC’s point of view startup VPs are disposable peasants too. And to a pension fund, VCs are disposable peasants. As someone choosing which pension fund to invest in, I’m going to chase the best return, so they’re disposable peasants to me and we’ve gone full circle. Of course there’s a name for this: a market. When the pie is growing, it’s not so bad :)
1) Originally giving large amount of stock to the C-suite was seen as a way of locking in the motives of executives to enrich the corporation (or at least bump the share price), not just themselves.
2) They stayed okay with it, and even increased the options, because it was now standard practice. And if they didn't okay it they wouldn't get the 'best' executives.
The problem with all of this is that some shareholders are longer-term holders than others. And if executives are jumping ship to get a higher payout every couple of years, then they are only incentivized to boost the share price for those couple of years (or until their options mature). So executive's motivations are only in sync with the best monetary interests of short-term shareholders.
You'd think the shareholders would design compensation policies to encourage long-term executive retention and thus long-term "shareholder value", but this doesn't seem to be the case.
Berkshire companies don't have outrageous compensation plans. There are plenty of companies that will perform well without the hundred million dollar motivation.
Agreed but...is this just a problem with the US? Does this kindof thing happen in any other country?
And if the answer is "yes, but not just to this degree"...what about relatively speaking? If country X has GDP of Y...is the ratio of executive fleecing that happens in America comparable to any other country?
