Category: Money

Oh, for the love of—here we go again with Captain Planet over here getting another galactic jackpot while the rest of us are fighting over the last stale donut in the break room. Apparently the board looked at a guy who’s already got more money than every god combined and said, “You know what this dude needs? Another cool trillion. Yeah, let’s just yeet a trillion dollars at him like it’s a participation trophy for showing up and tweeting memes at 3 a.m.”

Meanwhile, Susan in accounting hasn’t had a working space heater since 2019 and HR told her to “layer up.” LAYER UP. It’s negative four degrees in her cubicle, Karen, she’s not training for the Iditarod.

And the excuses! Oh my god, the excuses are richer than the man himself. “He created so much shareholder value!” Yeah, cool, so did the guy who invented the McFlurry machine that actually works for once, where’s HIS trillion? “He’s a once-in-a-lifetime genius!” Buddy, I’ve seen this dude try to pronounce “worcestershire” sauce—there’s no lifetime genius there, just lifetime Wi-Fi money.

The vote was basically a room full of yes-men in $5,000 sneakers nodding so hard their AirPods fell out. “All in favor of giving the guy who owns the company more money than the GDP of Europe?” Every hand shoots up like they’re trying to flag down a waiter at a crypto conference. Democracy in action, baby.

But sure, tell me again how “no one works harder.” Bro, I’ve seen this man’s sleep schedule—it’s just Red Bull and spite. I work hard too; I once answered 47 Slack messages while on the toilet. Where’s my trillion? Exactly.

So yeah, congrats on the trillion, champ. Hope it keeps you warm when the rest of us are burning our performance reviews for heat. Enjoy counting it—I hear it only takes about 31,700 years if you count one dollar per second. Don’t strain yourself.

You know what’s wild? I’ve been in tech for decades now, and I’ve watched a lot of ridiculous compensation packages get approved. But there’s something uniquely insulting about watching a board of directors look at a number with so many zeros that Excel switches to scientific notation and going “yeah, this seems reasonable for like, four years of work.”

The justification is always the same tired song: “unprecedented value creation.” As if value just spontaneously generates from one person’s brain without, you know, the tens of thousands of engineers actually building the products. As if stock price going up is purely a function of executive genius and not market conditions, government subsidies, investor hype, and the labor of people who’ll never see a fraction of that wealth.

And here’s the kicker – the shareholders voted for it. Again. After a court already said “this is so absurd it violates fiduciary duty.” But hey, let’s just vote again until we get the answer we want, right? That’s definitely how good governance works.

What really gets me is the argument that “if we don’t pay this, he might leave.” Brother, WHERE IS HE GOING TO GO? To start another company? Great! Do it! See how well it goes without the infrastructure, the brand recognition, the existing customer base, and the thousands of employees who actually make things work. There’s this mythology that certain executives are so uniquely valuable that they deserve compensation equivalent to a medium-sized country’s GDP, and it’s just… exhausting.

Meanwhile, back on earth, the rest of us are told there’s no budget for cost-of-living adjustments. That layoffs are necessary for “operational efficiency.” That we need to “do more with less.” But somehow there’s always money for executive compensation packages that would make Croesus blush.

The really infuriating part is watching people defend it with “but he took stock options, not cash!” as if that makes it better. Stock options ARE compensation. They have value. Massive, incomprehensible value. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

I’m tired, folks. I’m tired of watching wealth concentrate at levels that would have embarrassed robber barons. I’m tired of the reality distortion field around executive compensation. And I’m especially tired of boards that are supposed to represent shareholder interests acting like a rubber stamp factory.

But sure, let’s keep pretending this is normal and fine and just how business works.

[sips cold coffee and returns to actually working]