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]