[glenstein]

If it impresses you that the CEO pay is 20% of earnings, then, well, software development is going to be something like 500% of earnings, overhead will be 250%, and so on. The relative proportions of the different expenses will be the same. They just look bigger when you compare them to profits.

The CEO pay certainly matters and it's more than I would like, but I don't see how considering it as 20% of profits rather than 1% of revenue demonstrates that it's taking more away from development than any other 1% of their spending.

[jfengel]

Yes, but now you're comparing the CEO to entire departments. Each individual software developer is receiving less than 1% of earnings. Is the CEO really 20 times more productive than they are?

Would it be possible to increase net earnings with a CEO who took home only 19% of net earnings? Changing out a single developer for a cheaper one is not going to be meaningful. But a CEO who takes home a significant fraction of the profit could probably be replaced by somebody who does 99.9% as good a job for 95% of the salary.

In fact, there's a good chance that one of those developers could do 50% as good a job for 1% of the salary. The shareholders would take home more money.

[glenstein]

I feel like I've been consistent throughout by evaluating costs as a percentage of revenue. That’s the actual denominator Mozilla uses when allocating its budget. There’s no switch or sleight of hand happening here. One percent of revenue is one percent of the available operating budget.

It seems like you've changed your framing entirely. Your original point was that CEO pay is significant because it's 20 percent of net earnings. That implied this metric better captured the weight of the cost. But now you’ve moved to a different argument, comparing the CEO’s compensation to individual developers and bringing in a shareholder-return perspective. These are entirely separate lines of reasoning and don’t follow from the point you started with.

Also, Mozilla doesn’t have shareholders? So the idea that the CEO should be compensated in a way that maximizes shareholder earnings doesn’t really apply. Mozilla’s spending decisions should be judged in terms of how well they serve its mission, not whether they increase a surplus that could be distributed to hypothetical owners.

I’m not even necessarily defending the CEO pay on its own. I just don't think you can make the case that it crippled their ability to work on needed features, and I think the logic you’re using has shifted in a way that doesn’t hold up when applied to Mozilla’s actual structure or purpose.

[justsomehnguy]

> Is the CEO really 20 times more productive than they are?

People up the ladder are getting more money not for their productiveness, but for the risks. A single developer can't ruin the company/sales (well, most of the times). A single C-level can do that with ease.

[dingaling]

Isn't the general employee at higher risk than the CEO? Entire departments can be RIFfed at the stroke of a pen and the employees don't have a Golden Parachute or a revolving door to the next corporation.