CEO Compensation Debate

Discussions center on high CEO salaries and total compensation, often criticizing their scale relative to company performance, revenue, employee pay, and comparisons to other executives or industries.

📉 Falling 0.3x Startups & Business
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e.g FY forbes.com CoinDesk LeCunn CE archive.ph www.bls apple.com southerncross.co salary ceo compensation salaries paid employees million 150k 1m brother

Sample Comments

taurath Jul 22, 2021 View on HN

This is what paying someone $150 million in a year gets you. Try the $10 CEO I’ll bet it’ll go better.

warent Sep 28, 2018 View on HN

I'm not arguing either way, but it's worth noting that's actually a relatively low compensation compared to the average fortune 500 CEO which makes about $13mm salary[1][1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianahembree/2018/05/22/ceo-pay...

jshen Jul 17, 2022 View on HN

How much was the CEO getting paid?

bongodongobob Aug 19, 2025 View on HN

Depends on the compensation of the other employees that actually do the work. 4000 employees making 61k to 250k/yr. I don't know if they get stock or not, but people are pretty tired of this massive imbalance. Give him 10 million and give everyone else an extra 35k. He is still filthy rich and 4000 people get a potentially life changing raise.

ogre_codes Dec 12, 2020 View on HN

People don't get paid a salary like that. If you are a founder or in the right startup with a good compensation package, it can happen.

klbarry Jan 29, 2011 View on HN

So Eric Schmidt would pay some pennies? (Since he is paid $1 a year :) )

pmoriarty Jul 4, 2017 View on HN

"honestly $100k is more than enough for me, let alone $150k"Same with CEO salaries, movie star salaries, professional athlete salaries, and VC profits. $100k is more than enough.

rubyfan Nov 5, 2017 View on HN

His high salary was $150k. You can still make millions without taking it out in the form of a salary. If he owns the company and the value of his equity increases into the millions, then he’s making millions. It sounded like he was reinvesting the money back into the business too. It’s probably a smarter use of profits if he has predictable margins that scale.

prepend Jun 10, 2022 View on HN

Perhaps amortizing really high salaries. $1M/month for a chief metrics officer or something.

belter Sep 29, 2023 View on HN

That pales compared to another "successful" CEO: "Dissecting Marissa Mayer’s $900,000-a-Week Yahoo Paycheck" - https://archive.ph/Q09Bd