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Comment by GJR | Hacker News Reader

What is the actual point of giving anyone $226m in pay? How would that motivate them to deliver any more..? Ratio of CEO:staff pay at 1000:1!

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It's not to motivate a particular person to deliver more, it's to ensure that you're able to hire that person - if they would pay, for example, $2million, then no one with experience at managing decent size tech companies would apply as they can get a much better offer elsewhere.

Also, CEO compensation is effectively between the shareholders and the CEO - if the CEO is making the shareholders happy and they want to gift him $200m for no good reason, well, it's their right to do so, it's their money to spend or waste as they wish, not the employee's.

By doing so, don't you restrict the pool of talent that you can hire from?

Why does Buffett get up and go to work in the morning?

Certainly not because he needs to work for a living, or for anything at all.

Certainly not for money, he lives in a simple house and drives a simple car. Probably because he just likes his job

Why would someone work for $250m but not work for $150m? Or at that level of wealth work for free.

Surely it's just for keeping score

Mr Buffett is 92 years old and works every day and is worth approx $120 billion.

In the past 70 years hes had more money than needed for him to decide to give it all up. Why hasn't he?

Why are you asking this question? Is it rhetorical, and if so, what point do you feel you are making?

Why are you asking that question? The post to which i replied was asking why someone who has made that much money would continue working.

Which post asked that

You were the one that asked that.

It's sad really

Some people are so poor, all they have is money

So his salary is irrelevant, whether he is paid $1 or $1b a year makes no difference to his lifestyle.

By why would someone work for $150m when they can get $250m? The pool of CEOs that can successfully run billion dollar companies is pretty tiny.

The question isn't whether someone would work for $250m but would not work for $150m; the question is whether someone would or wouldn't work for you for that amount. If someone else offers $200m to the same person, they would work for you for $250m and wouldn't work for you for $150m.

Why would the money come it to it rather than the challenge, opportunity, colour of the carpet in the hall, etc

To beat competitors, not have tons of beemers for beemer sake. The motivation is relative. The 3 big "robber barons" of the late 1800's use to send each other brag-grams over who was richer.

Warren Buffets salery has been $100.000 for decades. And as far as I know Berkshire doesn't do stock based compensation at all, Buffet just holds the shares he always held.

To keep score.

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