r/technology • u/geoxol • Jan 13 '23 • Bravo! 1 Helpful (Pro) 1

Apple CEO Tim Cook to take more than 40% pay cut Business

https://apnews.com/article/technology-apple-inc-tim-cook-business-d056553b10120c4a968b562cb7ece5d2
39.1k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

133

u/jeanyanndecannes Jan 13 '23

We can simultaneously assert that executives are overpaid without pretending like they don’t do any work

16

u/functionallylazy Jan 13 '23

This is Reddit. Anyone we don't like must be utterly incompetent.

12

u/leafs456 Jan 13 '23

reddit genuinely believes its more stressful being a service worker than it is to head one of the biggest companies out there. you know cause theyre on their feet all day, deal with shitty customers, etc while CEO's take phone calls from their YACHTS

1

u/magic1623 Jan 14 '23

A few comments up someone was legitimately trying to argue that a fast food worker works harder than a doctor.

-33

u/AttonJRand Jan 13 '23

Relativ to how they are paid the effectively don't do any work.

Can never convince me these dudes do anything near the work of 100s of their employees.

38

u/Seiglerfone Jan 13 '23

The key details missed is not how much work they do but the consequences of their work.

An average employee has relatively little impact, but if your executives screw up, it could tank the company.

-11

u/wwj Jan 13 '23

An average employee has relatively little impact, but if your executives screw up, it could tank the company.

Yes, but there is no risk for him either way. If he makes bad decisions, the company could be hurt and he gets fired but he will still have hundreds of millions of dollars. There isn't even an incentive to do a good job at that level.

5

u/Seiglerfone Jan 13 '23

I mean, there's generally an incentive to maximize the valuation of the company at the point they can cash out their stock options or w/e, but yeah, the incentives are screwy, and inclined to reward looting rather than long-term prosperity.

-2

u/Janis91 Jan 13 '23

That's really the key thing here. Even if they screw up, they are rewarded with a generous payment for being fired and just end up in another well-paid position somewhere else.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

1

u/Janis91 Jan 14 '23

So you're saying the outcome/punishment is the same, yet the value of the company a CEO can ruin is much larger than the equipment that you can ruin. I just find this disparity strange.

1

u/leafs456 Jan 14 '23

Yes, because a CEO can make or break your company, thats why u want the best available candidate leading your company. You can make the argument apple wouldnt be where its at today if steve jobs never returned. But you cant make the same argument with your average employee

-8

u/Colluder Jan 13 '23

If executives are corrupt and steal money, it could tank the company. Stop acting like a CEO is doing anything that a blue collar worker couldn't do, especially for large companies. Making the wrong decision doesn't mean the company fails, it means our gross profit margin is 12% instead of 12.3%. when a decision has a greater effect it's either a matter of ethics or corruption, or so obvious anyone could make the right decision

9

u/Seiglerfone Jan 13 '23

Stop acting like I'm saying things I'm not.

2

u/leafs456 Jan 13 '23

it means our gross profit margin is 12% instead of 12.3%

uhm no its the difference between a successful, profitable company and one that goes under. would apple be where its at today if you took over in 2012?

98

u/jeanyanndecannes Jan 13 '23

This is a naive argument that weakens our overall position, and is why some people can dismiss the issue as whining. Decision making at this scale has massive impact (both positive and negative), and cannot be dismissed as low or no value. That doesn’t justify the current disparity in wages in comparison to the general employee base. Tim Cook can both work hard and create a ton of value while still being grossly overpaid.

53

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

People who make those arguments have probably never been in charge of people. It's incredibly hard to get people to operate as a cohesive unit effectively. Making decisions that affect the lives of millions or billions and the livelihoods of thousands isn't easy and is definitely stressful. Not everyone can do it, but like you said it definitely doesn't justify the wage gap

4

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

-4

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

Cook doesn't need to micromanage those things. He hires people who do that for him. CEOs of a megacorp have no business being in the weeds unless something is horribly wrong.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

1

u/Colluder Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

No it's not, you are taking like 10 levels of management out of the equation and saying that's the same thing

To get from a CEO to someone who runs a line it's CEO - CTO - senior product manager - product manager - factory president - mid management - senior line worker. So the CEO has (at best) a very vague contribution towards any product line and is mostly felt through things like the corporate environment they help create.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

0

u/Colluder Jan 13 '23

You've clearly never worked in manufacturing, why would you assume you're right in the first place

0

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

If they hire the right people, yea. they don't need to do any of the day to day.

-4

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

People who make those arguments have probably never been in charge of people. It's incredibly hard to get people to operate as a cohesive unit effectively. Making decisions that affect the lives of millions or billions and the livelihoods of thousands isn't easy and is definitely stressful. Not everyone can do it, but like you said it definitely doesn't justify the wage gap

has nothing to do with the level of compensation of a tech ceo.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make

-1

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

Just trying to keep you on topic.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

im still not sure what point you're trying to make

edit: since /u/benderunit9000 blocked me for some reason, my stance is that they essentially repeated something i said without adding anything new to the conversation, acting like it was some huge gotcha. i just wanted clarification

-3

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

You went off-topic, I was bringing you back to the topic at hand. I can't spell it out any more than that.

0

u/rich519 Jan 13 '23

The difficulty of the job has nothing to do with the compensation? Of course it does. If not many people can do your job you will get paid more.

8

u/Lukeds Jan 13 '23

Thank you for your polite responses. I already agreed with you to be honest but your calm demeanor is really appreciated

6

u/rich519 Jan 13 '23

It’s really frustrating. There are a bunch of left wing subs on Reddit that I think have some good arguments and ideas but then like 95% of the users see everything in black and white and seem to have no idea what they’re talking about. The most extreme comments get upvotes and anyone else gets called a simp and the entire thing devolves into a toxic mess of people posting the same rage bait tweets over and over.

-39

u/Athelis Jan 13 '23

What "Hard work" does he do? Doesn't he also have financial advisors to aid him in those legendary "tough" decisions that people in his position are said to be making?

40

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

Since you're putting it in quotations, you're already being dismissive so why don't you start with defining what hard work is?

-2

u/Athelis Jan 13 '23

If he takes a vacation away from his office for an extended period, will anyone notice?

Why are there so many people here defending a billionaire?

5

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

Your definition of hard work is measured by whether people notice when someone is on vacation?

-2

u/Athelis Jan 13 '23

If people don't notice their absence, what are they doing?

Why are you defending a billionaire?

5

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

if a company is healthy and well run, one person missing, regardless of whether it's the janitor or CEO shouldn't be a problem. if one person missing cripples a company, something isn't right.

and im not defending a billionaire, not that there's anything wrong with that. im scrutinizing dubious positions

now would you kindly answer my questions rather than evading them and asking your own?

1

u/Athelis Jan 15 '23

So a well-run company can function without their top guy? So what use is he? If the company can function without them, what good are they? Isn't that why layoffs happen?

Again, why are you defending a billionaire? You think you're even a thought to him when he looks at the bottom line of the company he does nothing to "run"?

→ More replies (0)

17

u/VirginiaMcCaskey Jan 13 '23

It's more like listening to the conflicting advice of many staff who all have their own agendas while managing relationships with other businesses and governments. And doing it at a global scale for hundreds of thousands of people takes up their entire life.

-6

u/Athelis Jan 13 '23

And what is he risking? If he messes up and loses his position than what? He's still got billions.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

My boy here scrutinizing things as if he's in the position to determine whether or not a CEO is needed. 😂

Probably has zero corporate experience and his 10y Reddit account is the standout in his resume.

Dunning-Kruger in full force.

10

u/Whyeth Jan 13 '23

Doesn't he also have financial advisors to aid him in those legendary "tough" decisions that people in his position are said to be making?

Are those hard working employees, or more do nothing higher ups?

Tim cook isn't God, but he ain't shit either.

-2

u/Athelis Jan 13 '23

If they're the ones carrying him I'd argue they're worth more than he is.

Why are you defending a billionaire?

-30

u/AttonJRand Jan 13 '23

Okay you are way too deep into the Corporate kool aid.

22

u/skyely Jan 13 '23

No, I think you have a really wrong understanding of how the world works. An apple store employee can do the same amount of work at apple store or at bed bath and beyond. The CEOs of Apple and the work they have put over the years is why it is now worth 2T+ while the CEOs of BBBY are the reason why it is now on the brink of bankruptcy. Apple has 3x the number of employees bbby has. Why isn’t the latter worth 700B at the moment if executives do nothing?

17

u/TeslasAndComicbooks Jan 13 '23

You think 100 retail employees are worth more than someone who can architect a supply chain?

-7

u/iMissTheOldInternet Jan 13 '23

lmao at "architect a supply chain". He was one of the many American executives who outsourced all of our manufacturing to China because of the extremely subtle and hard-to-grasp value proposition of "we will let you do anything and grind up our people into paste while paying them a fraction of what you would have paid Americans, and if they try to organize a labor action we will literally kill them for you." Good for you, Timmy.

25

u/oboshoe Jan 13 '23

People are not compensated on the work they do.

They are compensated on the value they deliver.

This is true from the highest paid CEO down to most entry level of jobs.

3

u/ImJLu Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

Well, more like the minimum that the labor market can sustain, but yeah, impact plays heavily into that. People do tend to get paid below the theoretical proportional value they deliver, though, because otherwise profits wouldn't really be a thing because they'd be part of the value that gets split proportionally.

Can't pretend it doesn't lead to enormous inequity though, considering some things can scale massively and some really can't. CEO decision making can swing valuation by the billions, software can basically infinitely scale (e.g. I work on a product with billions of active users and recently pushed a change that runs hundreds of thousands of times per second), and hedgies can make decisions that affect where billions of dollars are allocated. Meanwhile, an individual physically can't flip a thousand burgers per second.

So some people get compensated far more than others, and while you could argue that it's proportional to their impact (or they're potentially even underpaid by that measure) and theoretically fair if you view it from that lens, it really is worth questioning whether that's good for society as a whole. And IMO, it's probably not.

17

u/bigspunge1 Jan 13 '23

Tim Cook isn’t a founder of this company. He’s been put in his position and compensated because the board finds him to be effective at his job. He is valued at what Apple thinks he is worth keeping for the company. It’s all because he does great work that 99% of people could not do. Similar to athletes who get paid in professional supports accordingly with being the top .1% of their profession, he receives that treatment as an exec. Pay increases exponentially at these levels of performance. It’s all what you’re worth to someone. Strive to make yourself more valuable or stop complaining about it

2

u/this_barb Jan 13 '23

He was Steve Jobs' #2. He's a defacto founder in the sense that he built the Apple we know today.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

That makes it sound like it was his buddy hired. Tim Cook worked at Apple for years.

-6

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

the value of work / $ compensated is incredibly out of whack.

13

u/TheTVDB Jan 13 '23

People generally aren't paid based on the amount of work they do, but how replaceable they are. I'm a senior developer and know that there are carpenters and waitresses and a lot of other jobs that work a lot harder than I do. But I'm paid more because those people are easier to replace than I am.

CEOs of public companies are slightly different, as their compensation is also based on how they affect the company's net worth. Company value is often driven by perception as much as by performance, so a CEO that can make investors feel good about the company while driving profits is going to be paid well for that. And it's not something everyone can do.

And again, it's fine to acknowledge that execs are overpaid. Nobody really thinks otherwise.

-3

u/benderunit9000 Jan 13 '23

Nobody really thinks otherwise.

and yet, nothing is done about it.

12

u/TheTVDB Jan 13 '23

What would you like to see done? Companies aren't going to adjust it because they want to stay competitive with other companies, and having a highly paid, highly performing CEO is part of that.

So you're limited to establishing a law that would restrict CEO pay. If attempted at the national level, individual states would fight it all the way through the Supreme Court and likely win because it's an overstep by the Federal Government.

If you attempt it at the state level, companies will avoid states that have those rules when incorporating since they'll be at a competitive disadvantage compared to states that don't have the law.

The only two ways to viably address this is:

  1. Convince the public they shouldn't buy from companies with overpaid CEOs. This isn't happening, but is a nice pipe dream.
  2. Leave it as is, but simplify our tax code and make it progressive so CEOs have to pay high taxes that help return a bit back to society.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Unless you can pay congress to rewrite several corporate laws and securities and exchange laws - keep dreaming.

Let me ask you a question. If you start a business, and it’s doing so good you need workers, and one day you’re making a lot of money - how would you feel if the government told you, you’re making too much and we have to start distributing your profit elsewhere and take half your company?

-16

u/teddytwelvetoes Jan 13 '23

I'm using hyperbole to highlight the absurdity of c suite compensation at colossal juggernauts like Apple

14

u/gophergun Jan 13 '23

Can you see now how that's misleading and distracting as a rhetorical tactic compared to just saying what you mean based on the reality of the situation?

-16

u/teddytwelvetoes Jan 13 '23

if grown adults don't know what hyperbole is or want to pretend that they don't know what hyperbole is, that's their problem

-8

u/Tathorn Jan 13 '23

As an investor why would I pay someone for not doing work?

0

u/Arucious Jan 13 '23

you bought a stock that someone else already had. unless you’re the original stock buyer from the IPO, you didn’t pay him anything

-4

u/Tathorn Jan 13 '23

Pay who anything? The CEO of Apple? That's not how IPO nor stocks work at all. The current CEO wasn't even in that position when it IPO, so that makes no sense.

As an investor (holder of stock) one ought to be concerned about the productivity of the executive. That's literally the point of holding ownership in the company.

Does Reddit seriously think this is how company ownership works? You just pay the CEO at IPO? You pay whoever sells it, which may have been the CEO, thousands of other investors, or the company itself.

3

u/Arucious Jan 13 '23

did you read what you wrote?

As an investor why would I pay someone for not doing work?

What does this mean? Who are you paying? Buying a stock isn’t paying Tim’s salary. Or anybody else’s for that matter. Apple has zero need for your cash. And the investment purchase gives zero money to them unless you bought the shares from them — which you didn’t — you bought them on a marketplace from other shareholders.

1

u/Tathorn Jan 14 '23

Yes I know how this all works. I am an owner of a business and any expense paid to an executive is less cash flow for me. Investors really ought to be mindful of that.

I'm sure you're not seriously thinking I meant that buying shares gives money to companies (except when they issues new shares it does). Come on.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

You misunderstood. It’s a hypothetical. He’s talking about the board of directors. The shareholders. They vote on CEOs and also have the power to kick them out if they deem the CEO is doing poorly.

So they’re saying, why would shareholders vote on an incompetent CEO who was running a company to the ground? They wouldn’t.

Reddit believes CEO do nothing all day but spend money. This isn’t true. Many work 60+ hours a week.

0

u/Nut_based_spread Jan 14 '23

Take 4000 people and have them do ANYthing. Plant trees. Build the world’s biggest burrito. Do simple arithmetic.

Four thousand. Think of how many hands and minds that includes.

Now tell me your enlightened view of how CEOs “do work.” Get outta here.