I think that's also silly calculation. Beyond a certain (admittedly unknowable) point, compensation becomes a meaningless number for the individual.
Would Tim Cook "rage-quit" Apple if they could only pay him, say, 75 million instead of 750 million? If yes, then it's pure greed. If no, then it's too much.
Is there something substantive behind that 750 million figure other than very powerful people just paying themselves as much as they can get away with? I think not.
Why quibble about such a small amount? You’ve paid 0.03% of your current Apple holdings for a decade of growth creating value many orders of magnitude greater.
I am not quibbling about THAT amount.
I am quibbling about the fact that he (like other tycoons) sits on top of a giant pyramid of human labor, the majority of which earns just enough to make ends meet in a low cost of living country.
Sure, Tim Cook is a good person and deserves reward for what he has done and it should be "a hellava lot". At some point, however, that reward starts becoming absurd and nonsensical.
Disregarding market cap as not real money would be like disregarding your checking account as not real because the bank operates a fractional reserve.
Then again, I'm not sure it makes more sense to compare stock-based compensation with revenue than with market cap.
If you are already rich enough to retire many times over, why should you keep working on something that doesn't move the scale of your money (and consequently power and ability to do other things, including starting a new business that could disrupt your previous business?)
Think of it this way: a lot of the money that is being paid to Tim Cook is to ensure that he doesn't go to work somewhere else.
Could he turn Apple into an online education platform that leverage open source platforms and open hardware to make it as affordable as possible to everyone? No, he can't. Apple depends on the brand of exclusivity and premium products.
Need I go on?
I think these numbers are set by compensation committees of the Board of Directors using consultants that analyze other private and public company data. So if you have some small number of greedy individuals pushing for massive compensation based on stock performance, then that trickles through the industry. Cook doesn’t have to be greedy to just not want to be underpaid relative to market, even when the market is set by a few greedy individuals.
It is a race to the top. Solvable via regulation if anyone really cared, but I suspect no one really does.
Well put. I suppose no one cares enough because, after all, there aren't THAT MANY billionaire tycoons. And, sure, they perform a valuable function in putting many people to work and giving away millions of turkeys on thanksgiving, etc.
But now, we're in an era of billionaires racing each other into space and compensation levels which are "astronomical". It's in some ways a repeat of the age of robber-barons except I don't see it slowing down any time soon. Now I wonder what ended "the gilded age" ~100 years ago? Oh yeah, world war + economic crash.
Would he have reached/pushed for a particularly aggressive goal for less? Could someone else have achieved that goal for less?
No doubt there is some element of personal relationships between everyone in the compensation committee and the ceo.
