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
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u/BigGreen4 Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

Which is a good and valid point that CEO’s are not the one’s who control employee wages long-term. It’s the shareholders.

If Tim Cook gave all employees a 50% raise - everybody’s happy in the world. Until earnings come out, and the company (likely) underperforms. When a company underperforms, their shares tend to lose value. When the stock loses value, the shareholders lose money. The shareholders then pressure the board to fire the CEO (Tim Cook). New CEO moves in, cuts wages to get earnings back in line, and we’re back where we started.

Yet everyone points their fingers at the CEO.

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u/beavedaniels Jan 13 '23

Part of the CEOs job is to be the one who gets the finger pointed at them.

It's like the commissioners of the major sports leagues. They accept huge amounts of compensation in return for being the villain, so the real villains can continue doing fucked up shit behind closed doors.

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u/ChillyBearGrylls Jan 13 '23

They accept huge amounts of compensation in return for being the villain, so the real villains can continue doing fucked up shit behind closed doors

Amusingly, that also describes Ticketmaster et al - they would have no price setting ability if venues and performers didn't work with them. TM is the 'heel' in the story.

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u/beavedaniels Jan 13 '23

Yep! No shortage of people and organizations willing to trade the moral high ground for money haha

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u/FuujinSama Jan 13 '23

It's ridiculous, even. Venues have limited tickets. Clearly, there are enough people willing to buy the inflated """"scalper"""" prices. So why not set that as the initial sell price?

Instead they pretend concerts are still "affordable" and sell cheap tickets that they themselves immediately buy to sell again at the correct price. This in turn means the people that fail to buy the affordable tickets in time blame "scalpers" and "ticket master" instead of blaming the venues and artists for having the ridiculous but correct pricing.

In truth, it's all just an artifact of huge wealth inequality. If there's an event in demand with limited lotation (say 10,000 seats), the price of that event is what the 10,000 richest people that want to see the event can afford. In a world with huge wealth inequality that might be $500 or it might be $1000 whereas a reasonable price for the average worker would be $50 or lower.

Poor people will soon be unable to attend any sort of concert. That's just how it is. No money at all in filling a venue with poor people when there are enough rich people willing to pay. This wouldn't magically change if we added laws against scalpers or anything was made about ticketmaster. The only change would be venues and artists coming clean with the whole deal.

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u/mloofburrow Jan 14 '23

Except that Ticketmaster owns the venues and forces the artists to use them if they want to perform at said venues. So... no. Ticketmaster is still the asshole here.

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u/AndrewKemendo Jan 14 '23

It's almost as if, by supporting the villains, you become one too!

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u/beavedaniels Jan 14 '23

We are all villains and victims, humanity is complex!

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u/Bakoro Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

"Underperforms" the completely bullshit, high sloped infinite growth curve that shareholders expect, even during a recession.

The greedy psychopaths we generally call "shareholders" look at a perfectly healthy company, with steady returns, and a good long term strategy, and those shareholders will says it's "underperforming", because the company could also be sucking the blood from newborn children to maximize next quarter's profits.

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u/BigGreen4 Jan 13 '23

Those “greedy psychopaths” are generally your average, everyday citizen with a retirement plan. Or at least it’s their votes, proxied by their broker. Maybe everybody should stop allowing their brokers to vote for them, and instead tune in for the calls and/or votes?

I totally understand what you mean though. The world could be a much better place if people/corporations (that aren’t trying to advance the planet, human race, etc) could be content with matching last years’ record profit, vs upset they didn’t beat it by another 10%.

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u/Bakoro Jan 13 '23

Those “greedy psychopaths” are generally your average, everyday citizen with a retirement plan. Or at least it’s their votes, proxied by their broker.

Yeah, and brokers are likely greedy sociopaths.

Anyone who can look at a downward trending economy, or an industry devastated by some event, and still demand that they outperform the good times, is either a greedy idiot, or a greedy sociopath. That's all there is too it.

We've seen it time and time again.

The selfishness and short-sightedness is astounding.

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u/jobonki Jan 14 '23

Maybe don’t have brokers, direct register shares, then all votes are purposeful votes from informed individuals not psychopathic businesses

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u/Bakoro Jan 14 '23

That would be a step in the right direction.

Ideally, no one who doesn't directly work for the company would have ownership. Funding for businesses should either be in the form of loans, or people investing their time as well as cash.

The idea that someone can provide a one-time monetary investment and then get returns forever, but employees who actually create the value only get paid once, is a ridiculous, farcical system. The only reason people are fooled into thinking it's anything like a fair system is because the modern world derived from fuedal systems, and eras where humans owned humans as property, and that's a low bar to clear.

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u/baseball43v3r Jan 14 '23

Tell that to the average 65 year old that had a 401k and had the ecomony crash right before they retired, thus delaying their retirement. Are they greedy and sociopaths for wanting their investments to go up?

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u/siegmour Jan 14 '23

Pretty much this. It baffles my mind that people imagine shareholders as some kind of lizard people.

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u/Aururian Jan 14 '23

yeah what’s the alternative? capitalism is flawed but it’s the best system around, and if you say socialism is better you’re literally a genocide denier

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u/group_XIII Jan 13 '23

Which means that the CEO that keeps the job is the one that is willing to exploit the workers. They certainly deserve to also be blamed.

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u/s0lesearching117 Jan 13 '23

What kind of ass-backwards reasoning is that? If you build a system that favors psychopaths, then don't be surprised when psychopaths dominate it. In other words, don't hate the player; hate the game.

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u/alieninthegame Jan 13 '23

Yes, those poor innocent psychopaths, simply exploiting the system put before them, just minding their own business, please don't blame them for their horrible, murderous tendencies.

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u/s0lesearching117 Jan 13 '23

You're missing the point. Hate the psychopaths all you like, but if you don't change the system, you'll only end up with more psychopaths to take their place.

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u/alieninthegame Jan 13 '23

I agree that the system needs to be changed, but psychopaths should still be punished and shunned for being psychopaths. There are billions of us living in the same system, and we're not all psychopaths.

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u/BigGreen4 Jan 13 '23

Lmao how did we get to Tim Cook being labeled as a psychopath?!?

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u/xenthum Jan 13 '23

You can hate both.

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u/moustacheption Jan 13 '23

Right, employees need to start advocating to becoming shareholders via RSUs or other stock compensation so they can vote on shareholder proposals and actually have a say in the direction of their company.

Otherwise you’re really just a contractor with a shitty contract you can’t update every year.

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u/kbotc Jan 13 '23

Right, employees need to start advocating to becoming shareholders via RSUs or other stock compensation so they can vote on shareholder proposals and actually have a say in the direction of their company.

Apple gives very generous RSU grants, though I'm sure some of the people are disappointed that their $180k in RSUs have been losing money, but that's tech as a whole. My grants are in the toilet

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u/runningraider13 Jan 14 '23

For any public company (such as Apple) employees can already become shareholders by just buying shares, doesn't need to be any changes in how they get compensated.

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u/phantom_eight Jan 13 '23

I get RSU's and options every year from my company... my votes are still like passing in the wind when you count up my shares vs shares of Directors, VP's, and other SLTs.

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u/Windex17 Jan 13 '23

Wall Street unironically controls everything. All of the business decisions the largest companies in the world make are made to appease shareholders by law and the vast majority of policy pushed by politicians on both sides are made to appease their donors who are primarily from the financial sector. Money talks and Wall Street has all of it.

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u/Dshmidley Jan 13 '23

Which proves stocks are a massive joke/scam.

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u/timsterri Jan 13 '23

Ironically, with Apple, they could easily cover a 50% global pay rise thru the org with their cash they’re saving for a rainy day.

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u/AndrewKemendo Jan 14 '23

Close, it's actually simpler: CEO's MUST fuck over employees and users, on behalf of shareholders

Otherwise the board will fire the CEO. CEO has no option unless they are the largest shareholder.