CEO Pay Debate

This cluster debates the justification of high CEO salaries compared to employee pay, questioning if CEOs provide value proportional to their compensation packages and often contrasting them with engineers or average workers.

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#9295
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Keywords

MS CFO US northwestern.edu JetPay lawenforcementtoday.com COO mckim.htm CTO CEOS ceos ceo paid pay company salary companies employee gravity employees

Sample Comments

627467 Feb 28, 2020 View on HN

There have been several CEOS who historically have paid themselves 1usd or very low salaries. They end up making up the difference in other parts of their comp packages. I suppose this boss is also the main shareholder so he benefits from productivity increase.

Mauricebranagh Jun 16, 2021 View on HN

Doesn't seem to work for CEO pay :-)

hardware2win Feb 6, 2023 View on HN

I do wonder what makes author think that CEOs job isnt worth 10s of milions

rlili Feb 18, 2025 View on HN

cool, will it do anything about CEOs which earn 100x what a common employee earns, despite not outputting 100x?

gambler Feb 26, 2011 View on HN

Maybe he just understand the concept of "enough", something many CEOs fail to grasp. $90/k is a decent salary, at least in US. What if he simply believes in his company and wants to put more money in developing it, rather than let it stockpile in some Swiss account? Does that decrease his "worth" as a leader? I don't think so.

wombatpm Feb 7, 2015 View on HN

you are right, only CEO's should be able to command those kinds of dollars

conradfr Jul 8, 2022 View on HN

"some other engineer will pick it", and CEOs are paid hundreds millions because "nobody can else could do their job"!

evilops Jul 23, 2025 View on HN

By the same argument shouldn’t CEO pay be reduced?

WalterBright Dec 29, 2022 View on HN

This article is a good answer to "how can CEOs be worth all that money they get paid?"

sp332 Feb 7, 2023 View on HN

If the CEO is getting paid 100x an average employee, at least one of them is clearly not being paid according to their value to the company.