[tzhenghao]

My personal opinion on this topic has to do with the skill and requirements of the job, given the time and stage the company is at.

Sure, I'm fine with executives that come much later to be paid more than many that come before him/her. Should a number as high as $34m justify the kind of value he/she puts into the company? I dunno if I can agree with that, and in an early employee's perspective, I'd like to be proven otherwise. Then again, I don't work for Dropbox and do not know the scale of the problem in which this exec has been brought in to solve.

Ultimately, my core principles/values have to do with loyalty and being nice. As founder(s), you must not forget those who brought the company this far. They did unglamorous work and put in crazy hours to help the company achieve product market fit. Founder(s) risk breaking the trust of their employees < no.100 when they see people coming after them being compensated / valued 100x more than they do, not because they are just paid higher. That scale is the root cause for frustration.

The counterpoint to this is when the company scales, all other numbers will scale with it too (revenue numbers, employee headcount etc.), and sometimes hiring a key person who can, in the long term, cut costs by $100m might justify his/her salary. Capitalism works like that.

UPDATE: Curious to hear what thoughts founder(s) active in the HN community have about this though. Open to hear decisions on your end. I struggle to come up with a good answer myself.

[z3t4]

In an early upstart the employees might actually make more money then the founders. When the ship is in motion the founders might not need those people any longer, and there will be many more knocking on the doors wanting a job. The founders hires the execs to hopefully do a better job then the founders themselves are currently doing. And if the founders are making millions it will also be easy for them to pay the execs millions. And they don't want to hire just anyone to take care of their baby.