this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
310 points (96.4% liked)

Technology

74003 readers
3071 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Microsoft CEO Nadella's compensation drops... to $48M — CEO to employee pay ratio hits 250 to 1::Try to hold back your tears as CEO to employee pay ratio hits: 250 to 1

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cricket97@lemmy.world -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Making successful choices is not by itself sufficient to determine the “value” created. If I choose winning lottery numbers and win 100 million dollars, that doesn’t mean my decision on those numbers is worth 100 million dollars, it was luck.

I would argue this is exactly what makes successful CEO's so valuable. It's a very valuable skill to be able to take educated risks. it's not a lottery. CEO's don't get paid how much they do because they're lucky.

Then I sell the software to another company for 10 million dollars, take 9 million of it for myself, and give the rest of the developers 100k, is that fair and right? When without their labor, I would have zero dollars? My idea and leadership isn’t worth anything without the labor of the people I am leading and who make my idea reality.

Their labor is replaceable. The developers just did the work on the ground, which is honorable and should be compensated, but being in leadership to bring a development project past the finishline and into profit is a lot more scarce a skill than being a developer itself. And developers almost always make out like bandits if they have a decent package.

Sorry you haven't really made a convincing argument.

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

They actually do get paid what they do largely because they are lucky; lucky to have the privileges that allow them to get a high-end education, get into fancy business schools, make connections, have layers of safety nets for all the times their ideas fail, and then finally get lucky with their company, right place and time for it to take off and become extremely profitable, etc.

It's a lot more scarce a skill because it's manufactured to be that way. Imagine how many people would be able to test out their ideas in the market if they had rich parents and friends that propped them up for years until they finally succeeded.

Or are you a subscriber to the Ayn Randian, "Great Man" theory? Which is bogus BTW.

"The developers just did the work on the ground..." yeah...as in making the CEO's vision a reality, the only action that directly results in material creation.

You're arguing all this against a strawman anyways. Nobody is saying that having vision, ideation, and compelling leadership aren't valuable skills worth compensating well for. People object to the idea that those skills are hundreds and hundreds of times more valuable than any other skills that literally make those ideas reality and allow that monetary value to be captured. Nobody ever became a billionaire by sitting on a bench all day, dreaming incredible ideas into existence.