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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Wow, 58 million dollars a year. What's the incentive to work for more than one year?

58 million dollars is more than I'll ever make in my entire life.

Normal people would just take 58 million dollars for the first year and retire. Then again, normal people don't earn 58 million dollars a year.

I guess it's one way of taking money out of the equation, assuring that he'll stay or leave for other reasons. If $58M wasn't enough already.

Leading one of the most exciting tech companies on the planet is the incentive.

But I really do wonder how much additional incentive all that money can offer. At a certain point it gets impossible to spend any of the additional money.

Don't discount philanthropy and how that factors in to someone's sense of gratification.

Take Bill Gates for example. He has accumulated far more money then he could ever spend on himself, so he went a different route and pledged to give much of his fortune away to causes he feels are worthy to give to. Remember, the process of Bill Gates giving away his money has spawned an entire business around that process:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx

I’m really not sure whether that’s an incentive. It’s just all you can do if you have more money than you can spend.

You'll be remembered far longer. That is an incentive. Think Andrew Carnegie.

My personal view is that chasing a legacy is a losing battle. I know some very well-known people who agree with me on that.

As for philanthropy, I'm reminded of a billionaire friend who said his fortune was more of an administrative burden than his business ever was.

Wow, seriously, guys? Is there nobody around anymore who cares about helping the downtrodden of their own good will? Maybe it's naive, but I seriously think there are still some rich people out there who care to use their wealth for purposes other than selfish gratification, and without ulterior motives.

No, no – I didn't mean to suggest that altruism isn't alive and well! My point was that giving is an end unto itself – not a means to establishing a legacy. Also, I just wanted to point out that it takes a LOT of work to manage a big fortune. It's a huge responsibility.

Think Andrew Carnegie.

I know I directly benefited from a Carnegie library as a kid. With philanthropy at this scale there is potential to benefit humanity in a way that may otherwise not happen. Compare this to other paths that wealthy people have taken, such as creating trusts that mostly benefit the family and still exist today (e.g. Rockefellers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_libraries

You'll be remembered far longer. That is an incentive.

An incentive to the egocentric. I don't think that is ever the primary motivator though. I'd like to believe most people just like helping others.

>"Take Bill Gates for example."

Not really a Softie to Softie comparison. The Gates give away more than a $billion per year.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-fact-s...

There's a five year cliff.

$58 p/y Assuming the stock prices will remain the same, http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL

It was Inevitable the stock would dip a little when Jobs announced he was stepping down. Considering he's still going to be the driving the force of the company as chairman of the board pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Secondly, he wouldn't hand pick someone who didn't share his vision. Cook is smart, he's not going to drastically change the course of the company like some other cough HP cough companies have done.

Considering these two things, I'd say the stock prices will stay the same if not continue to increase in value.

Anyone worth $58M is doing it for more than the money. Jobs most certainly wouldn't have hand picked a successor who would choose retirement over running Apple.

If you want to retire and live a 'middle-class' life, sure.

But what if you want to buy and run a sports team?

Or foster special technical projects under your own steam?

Or back a charitable foundation for the progress of -foo-?

Or build a mansion with a long heated driveway... and be able to run it?

A million or more per year is middle class now?

You're missing his point. The difference in 100M and 200M dollars is the potential good you can do with it.

I put 'middle class' in quotes for a reason. I thought it was obvious it meant the lifestyle of buying your home and making sure your needs are met, but not doing anything particularly unusual or entrepreneurial.

Honestly, given the context of the comment, what did you think I meant?

"buying your home and making sure your needs are met" with $58 million? You're economic scale is widely out of whack. You could buy a house and meet your needs with $60K/year. With 58 million you could buy an entire neighborhood and provide for the needs of your entire family for several generations. I hope I'm mistaken on your intent.

Ironically, you're exhibiting the exact behaviour I'm talking about - thinking tightly in the box.

"I have a lot of money. At last I can buy a very nice home, have no debts, set up large trust funds for my kids/friends/whatever, maybe buy a yacht and scoot around in it" is what I mean by 'middle-class', aka 'living the way I always dreamed' kind of stuff.

"I have a lot of money. I'm going to buy an NBA team and run it, and also fund a charitable organisation to eradicate malaria in Cambodia. Then I'm going to give patronage to an art school" is not.

The GDP of the USA is $14.12 trillion dollars. If you're truly the kind of people who seek to move the world forward, 58 million dollars is nothing.

If your idea for changing the world includes buying all the products and services the US economy produces in one year $58m is certainly not enough. I’m just not sure what kind of plan for changing the world that is.

Money is certainly handy when your plan is to change the world but it’s far from the only thing you need and probably not even the most important one. An idea and a plan seems quite important, for example. Just throwing money at a problem will seldom get you very far. Also, even a few billion won’t save you when some super power declares you a criminal, takes away all your money and throws you into prison or executes you.

No. If you really pushed the world forward (notice the scale involved), then you logically should have a significant positive effect on the $14.12 trillion dollars of production every year - e.g. increased it by 3% over 10 years. So your contribution to the world economy would be $423.5 billion over 10 years. At that scale, getting $58M is really nothing. In fact, only getting $58M back for $423.5 billion of contribution smells like communism.

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