I mean I’d argue that the Wikipedia execs are still paid too much given their actual productive output.
Comment on The salaries of Wikimedia executives are sparking an online debate about tech sector wages
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 6 months agoThe CEO of Docusign, a company that JUST signs documents for you, made $85,940,000 this year," wrote another person, whose post garnered over 22,000 likes.
That just shows how grossly overpaid other executives are. The problem isn’t that Wikipedia execs aren’t paid enough, it’s that other executives are paid way too much.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 6 months ago
TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why is this such an unpopular take? Is it because Lemmy is largely comprised of tech bros who make too much money? I just don’t understand how people are justifying any salary above 200k, and even that’s a huge stretch.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Yeah I mean the point I’m making isn’t that Wikimedia execs are paid too much, it’s that all executives are paid to much. The workers actually create value, all an executive does is direct that value generation and claim the rewards for themselves.
a4ng3l@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Fair point. I find it interesting that there’s such an emphasis on « just »; it takes some efforts to get to a point where as a company you can trust the process to the extent we trust docusign… it’s not exactly trivial. Still waaaaaaay overpaid indeed but still.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
How much of that success was a direct result of the CEO, though? The more time goes on, the more any company depends on the historic collective achievement of humanity. The company couldn’t have succeeded at all without an educated workforce, infrastructure, “the economy”, or a million other general social, economic, and political factors completely outside the company’s control.
Think of it like this… Most of math as we know it, and by extension computer science, wouldn’t exist without Euler. Does that mean Euler, or Euler’s children, should own all value generated by Euler’s math? How about if he started a company that copyrighted those algorithms? All tech companies in perpetuity? How about the VC that conducted the hostile takeover with other people’s money? Should the CEO who leads the robotics company that replaces the human workforce, rule ALL of humanity for the remainder of eternity?
Even though my examples are fucking ridiculous, the way the world actually works is that any CEO who started an ultimately successful company, regardless of whether or not they were pivotal or hindered the company, and even average executives who jumped in for a year just before IPO, frequently end up wealthier than hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people — wealthier than entire nation states — weather than people who had many orders of magnitude more influence in the success of the company than they ever did…
Ultimately, no matter how much you do or achieve individually, human civilisation and all its achievements could not exist without the collective effort of billions of people (and counting). In the grand scheme of things every hot shot CEO is just an inevitable statistic fulfilling a role that someone else would have fulfilled if they had never been born.
a4ng3l@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You’re preaching the choir. I agree he (and others) is overpaid. I solely reacted on weird spike thrown at docusign.
Where in disagree is on your very generous of billions in humanity’s achievements ; pretty sure a lot of us didn’t pitch in. Pretty sure my own name isn’t appearing in the credits for example. But I salute your optimism.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Have you ever worked for a company that did something? Then your name should be in the credits. You probably did a greater amount of directly value generating labor than the executives did.
prole@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah, until we find out it doesn’t when they inevitably get hacked. Like the credit reporting agencies. I’m sure those CEOs were (and still are) doing just fine.
a4ng3l@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Hardly an argument ; it can be said just about every company… and also unrelated to their CEO to a large extent.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I stand by my opinion that CEO pay should be pegged to the “lowest” employee on the totem pole, everyone should ride the wave and spread out the earnings. Its just gross how it currently is.
cryptosporidium140@lemmy.world 6 months ago
prole@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
They’d just do what they always do and make the money elsewhere (mostly using accounting tricks), and claim they made $0 in income.
Good luck going tit for tat with capital. They always win.
Blackhole@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I don’t think the raises would be as big as you think.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Look up mondragon Spain. Its a town in Spain whose economy was struggling after WWII. They turned it around by adopting a cooperative business model. This means all employees are owners. So all employees get to vote how the company operates. Essentially executives work for share holders right. With cooperatives, the share holders are partially employees creating this business oroboro where your boss and their boss have an interest in keeping you Happy as an employee. And as employees you’re invested in keeping the company profitable. They have voted on rules like the CEO pay is tied to the lowest salary in the company. It can never be more than X amount of the lowest salary. If the want it to raise they have to increase all salaries in the company first.
They don’t get filthy stinking rich. But what they have shown is that the people living there score happier than others. They also show that they are economically more resilient. For close to a 100 years they have with stood lots of recessions and economic down turns.
theguardian.com/…/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperat…
prole@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
In addition to Mondragon, look into co-determination laws in places like Germany, where they have profit sharing, and a certain % of a company’s board needs to be made up of actual workers.
This can be done.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 6 months ago
And congressman/representative salary should be pegged to minimum wage.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Why?
You’ve use the word “should”, which means you’re applying a value judgement. On what metrics are you basing this value judgment? Does a company perform better using this guideline? Do they lower any risks? Does this increase retention? Improve cross-team communication? Reduce waste or losses?
While I also personally think these salaries are insane, without answering about a thousand more similar questions, there’s no justification for the metric you’ve provided.
Another way to look at it: if a company could hire someone for less, and get similar results, wouldn’t they?
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 6 months ago
so heres where I disagree, if you’re paying the minumum you’re attracting the minimum, the reverse can be said for the worker, why work here when I can get more elsewhere? with pegging the top and bottom rungs of the ladder and spreading the income everyone is motivated to come in to work everyday because they know that if they take care of their work, their work will take care of them. I don’t think thats radical. everyone wins.