<story><title>90 Cents of Every &apos;Pay-For-Performance&apos; Dollar for CEOs Are Paid for Luck</title><url>https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/09/29/90-cents-of-every-pay-for-performance-dollar-are-paid-for-luck/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Singletoned</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t disagree necessarily, but I&amp;#x27;m definitely more cautious in criticising someone else&amp;#x27;s pay when I can&amp;#x27;t do their job.&lt;p&gt;I certainly know that a lot of people who know nothing about computers think that I&amp;#x27;m overpaid as a software developer.  Why should I earn several times their salary when I just sit at a computer all day, whilst they do hard work?</text></item><item><author>mpdehaan2</author><text>Excellent points in this article - another factor is they are often paid outrageous base salaries (plus options) for the success of a company, when the success of that company can often be in spite of the CEO, coming from within, and embodied equally by all of the collective employees.&lt;p&gt;Executive comp is a major racket, enforced by the standard that this is &amp;quot;what the market average is&amp;quot;. Which is set by executives overpaying themselves.&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself if your CEO is really working 100x as hard as you, or 100x smarter than you. The answer is usually a definite no.  I&amp;#x27;d really like to see more fair pay in this area and a culture that treats contributions of all employees more equally.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mpdehaan2</author><text>In my case, I &lt;i&gt;CAN&lt;/i&gt; do their job. They have a lot of support structures to delegate between. You may think you can&amp;#x27;t do their job, but you could, if you wanted - though getting there is a game of thrones of sorts, and you may not wish to play.&lt;p&gt;However, they can&amp;#x27;t do  your job.  Assuming you are a developer, they are making a living based on your work. Your work has equal value. Well, if you &lt;i&gt;ARE&lt;/i&gt; doing hard work.  If you are just sitting at a terminal, more ambition might be a good thing :)  Cultivate it and you can get there.  If you want.&lt;p&gt;We need not assume all leadership at the top is steering the entire ship, more so than steering parts of things, decisions trickling up as well as down, alongside information.</text></comment>
<story><title>90 Cents of Every &apos;Pay-For-Performance&apos; Dollar for CEOs Are Paid for Luck</title><url>https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/09/29/90-cents-of-every-pay-for-performance-dollar-are-paid-for-luck/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Singletoned</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t disagree necessarily, but I&amp;#x27;m definitely more cautious in criticising someone else&amp;#x27;s pay when I can&amp;#x27;t do their job.&lt;p&gt;I certainly know that a lot of people who know nothing about computers think that I&amp;#x27;m overpaid as a software developer.  Why should I earn several times their salary when I just sit at a computer all day, whilst they do hard work?</text></item><item><author>mpdehaan2</author><text>Excellent points in this article - another factor is they are often paid outrageous base salaries (plus options) for the success of a company, when the success of that company can often be in spite of the CEO, coming from within, and embodied equally by all of the collective employees.&lt;p&gt;Executive comp is a major racket, enforced by the standard that this is &amp;quot;what the market average is&amp;quot;. Which is set by executives overpaying themselves.&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself if your CEO is really working 100x as hard as you, or 100x smarter than you. The answer is usually a definite no.  I&amp;#x27;d really like to see more fair pay in this area and a culture that treats contributions of all employees more equally.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ythl</author><text>&amp;gt; Why should I earn several times their salary when I just sit at a computer all day, whilst they do hard work?&lt;p&gt;Yeah, why should you? I mean, you are essentially being paid to surf Hacker News and plunk out a few lines of code every once in a while, while the janitor is working hard all day.</text></comment>