[reb]

The extra $3k might not mean a lot, but knowing your CEO gave $28m back to the workers at his or her own expense? I'd argue that kind of thing is great for retention.

The challenge, obviously, is that CEO pay is a market and the current, insane pay scale has emerged from it. The only way for it to change would be a) regulation (good luck to the enforcers), b) a global moral awakening among CEOs that causes a sufficient majority of them to abandon their salaries willingly (ha), or c) labor unions, where extortion over pay becomes bidirectional (rather than the traditional CEO->Worker shit flow).

In any case, people tend not to care much about CEO pay until the company stops paying workers' bills and keeps padding leadership's massive fortunes. People will accept insane wealth inequality so long as it doesn't come at the cost of their personal livelihood. Easiest way for CEOs to keep making idiot money without political costs: lead well enough to keep your workforce employed and reasonably paid. Literally the bare minimum expected of the title.

[Aeolun]

If I’m being paid about 150% of market average, that’s a win for me, regardless of what the CEO is paying himself.

If I’m paid below average, any cent he makes more than me will build resentment.

[eigenvector]

"CEO pay" is only a market if you believe that having been paid an astronomical amount of money as the CEO of an unrelated company is a prerequisite to being the CEO of, say, Activision. In the past, companies promoted CEOs from within their own longterm management, instead of CEO being some kind of mystical profession unto itself.

[dnautics]

That's very much a market, and you've pointed out exactly what's wrong with it

[briandear]

> knowing your CEO gave $28m back to the workers at his or her own expense? I'd argue that kind of thing is great for retention.

If Tim Cook gave his entire comp back to the company, it wouldn’t be barely a blip on the paycheck. Cook leads over 130k employees and indirectly is responsible for several million more employees of suppliers; his comp has nothing to do with what people get paid. His salary is not even a rounding error compared to Apple and supplier revenues and the value of the company. They could double his pay and it wouldn’t even show up on the radar. Interesting, he doesn’t even have the top compensation at the company.

[skookumchuck]

> is great for retention.

So move to a company that meets your standards. I don't really understand the complaining.