I just simply cannot agree with anyone who believes that 10 years of work is worth $750 million. Even if the thinking is that doing the correct decitions is worth much more to the company, I will still just simply refuse to accept that this level of compensation is right on the larger context of human society.
jollybean|4 years ago
At the very upper margins of highly effective systems, there are some incredibly amazing people: talented, intelligent, workaholic, literally decades of accumulated experience across sectors, relationships, and enough status to be able to lead such an organization.
Cook is up at 5 doing emails, and has been probably for the last 40 years.
Some of these guys are basically 'High Tech Monks' - they have not much concept of an identity outside the bubble of their careers - that's how much they've dedicated.
Assuming that Apple 'creates value for the world' - and on the whole this is probably true, the CEO of a company is going to have considerable influence, and just a few points one way or the other and it becomes clear.
While there are a large number of people in the world who could eventually be moulded into a guy like Cook ... there are very, very few people with 'all the right stuff' so that they could feasibly do his job really well.
That said, Apple's revenue comes from immense market power, there are other entities who do incredible work on that level but work in systems without the power to extract wealth and so are paid less.
One interesting example would be the White House and their staff. By any regular market standards they are vastly underpaid for the level of work they do, but because it's civic work, then their comp structure is designed from a different philosophy.
On the whole I think he's probably overcomped, but the average CEO in America actually doesn't make that much given the dedication and risk. The pay seems high because it's tilted towards the huge paying people at the helm of bigger companies.
s1artibartfast|4 years ago