[onlyrealcuzzo]

Contrary to popular belief, at a company the size of MSFT - the execs could drop all their wages to $0 - and it would not be able to save 5% of the workforce from getting fired.

The execs get paid a lot - but there's not that many of them, and there's 200k people at MSFT making an average salary (with benefits) >$200k. That's >$40B per year. The execs don't take home >$2B per year.

Satya made <$60M last year. There's not 35 execs at MSFT making the same amount of money or higher. There's 18 others, and they make a lot less money on average.

[roflyear]

MS c-suite makes a total of roughly ~$135,244,086, the board of directors make a total of about $4m (gates takes no salary at all, btw).

This 10k layoff, at an average salary of 190,302, is about $2b a year. So yeah not quite - but for them to suffer no consequences is still pretty gross.

[notfromhere]

Worse thing is that MSFT minted $72B in net income last year, so these layoffs are really about them saving...2.7% of net income in exchange for messing with the lives of 10k employees.

[LadyCailin]

> gates takes no salary at all, btw

This is in part, due to the fact that he has nothing to do with Microsoft anymore.

[roflyear]

Ah, I thought he was still on the board. One website listing salaries lists gates. Weird.

[raydev]

> it would not be able to save 5% of the workforce from getting fired

This part of your statement has no relevance given MS's position, even taking into account the current market.

MS as a company is in no danger here. In fact, they are doing quite well.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> This part of your statement has no relevance given MS's position, even taking into account the current market.

You hire people if you need them, fire them if you don't. It's really that simple.

Your employer doesn't owe you a job.

[culi]

If all 10k of these workers get paid an average of $150k, Satya's salary alone would cover 4% of them. I find it hard to believe you couldn't save 5%

Do you have any actual numbers on the number of execs vs workers and their salaries?

[mrandish]

I just saw a headline yesterday based on a new study which said the average U.S. CEO's compensation is 399 times the average employee. So there's your number. A CEO taking zero would cover less than 400 employees. Also, keep in mind the vast majority of Satya's compensation is in long-term vesting stock options which can become worthless if the stock is lower in four years than it is this year. Also, due to how capital gains taxes work, Satya is going to hold his vested options for at least another year after they vest.

Plus, every sale of the company's stock by a key executive is immediately reported to the SEC and publicly available on the SEC and company's websites. Wall street watches this like a hawk. If any key exec unloads more than a few percent of their entire holdings at any one time, it will hurt the stock price pretty substantially. Effectively, it makes it so the CEO can't sell a lot their stock at once while they are CEO.

The big numbers you see for CEO compensation for this year are largely stock options that were granted years prior which vested this year. Almost all of Satya's compensation is performance-based instead of guaranteed. The company he leads must deliver sustained profitable growth over the long-term for his comp to be worth a lot. The fact it's worth a lot this year is almost entirely due to him already delivering on his commitments to shareholders in the past. Keep in mind that the average public company CEO is in the CEO job less than five years. Satya is in the minority that is succeeding. Due to the high visibility of the CEO role, the majority who don't succeed have a high likelihood of never earning significant compensation again.

[culi]

> So there's your number. A CEO taking zero would cover less than 400 employees.

That's not our number at all. GP said "executives" which includes a lot more than the CEOs. For all I know 1% of the company could be executives

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Well, I told you how many "execs" are at MSFT. It's 19 out of >200k employees - so there's 100x less execs than your guess.

[cocoland2]

Out of curiosity, Did you mean 20k people making more than 200k. The overall strength is 220k at MS isn't it