Hacker News Reader

Comment by frankjr | Hacker News Reader

> When CEOs Are Paid for Bad Performance

That's good news for Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) who receives millions while Firefox usage has been dropping for years and has recently hit a new low (https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity).

View on HN

> In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

Yes, Ms. Baker, how can anyone support themselves and their family for a measly $2,458,350 a year?

> "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much."

This is a fascinating statement, and shows a (willful?) misunderstanding on her part: the pool of people who could do her job at a replacement level is not "other CEO's"--it's a much larger group, including, I'm sure, a great number of people who work for her own company for much less than the CEO's salary. The fact that other CEO's are paid more than this is precisely the problem, and evidence that the role allows CEO's to abuse their power to get paid disproportionately more.

Gosh, if she is being underpaid so badly maybe she should quit and move to one of those > $10m positions instead?

That said, while it is extremely rare to find a CEO that truly inspires (ala Steve Jobs), there are a lot of CEOs that can really tank a company. So many only want to siphon money as fast as possible before bailing out, so there is a danger in hiring a cut rate CEO.

You get offers for roles at 5x your pay. You tell your boss and she says "Fine I'll match it." (Assume for the sake of argument you are not lying. Further please ignore the fact that your boss might be foolish to make that offer, that may be true but it's beside the point I'm making here.)

Now go home and tell your spouse and children that "I could earn a salary five times higher than what I am currently making, but I've chosen not to."

This comparison is kind of moot when you are CEO, your main product has dwindling market share, and your company is laying off hundreds of employees while your salary continues to double every 3 years.

I think you miss my point.

I try to earn a competitive salary, as I’m sure you do. Why shouldn’t she? You, she or I may be bad at our jobs. That makes our employers foolish - it doesn’t make you, she or me bad people for trying to make a lot of money.

> Why shouldn’t she?

Maybe I'm still missing your point, but isn't the writing on the wall here? She's at the top of the hierarchy and her poor decisions negatively affect everyone at the company. Why shouldn't she? Because the company is already bleeding money and employees.

When Nintendo saw a financial downturn between 2011 and 2014, their CEO voluntarily halved his salary for two years. Why should he do that? Maybe because it shows responsibility and expresses solidarity with the rest of his workers.

EDIT: spelling

That name immediately came to mind upon reading the title as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com