[TheOtherHobbes]

Fred Goodwin didn't fall on hard times. He seems to have been directly responsible for some very questionable dealings.

But the bottom line problem with CEO pay is that you get a huge pay packet just for getting out of bed, no matter how badly you do; pay is completely decoupled from performance.

When Leo Apotheker was at HP for just under a year he received $13m in comp, severance of $7.2m, shares worth $3.56m, and a performance bonus of $2.4m - all while losing $30bn in value.

Developers like to speculate about 10X programmers. But ahere's no industry acknowledgement at all that the 0.001X CEO or manager is a real phenomenon. Anyone working at that level seems to be completely protected from business consequences.