Thursday, October 16, 2008

Not Worth It

Kent, our UPS guy, brought a couple packages as I was getting ready to head to lunch. I haven't seen him in awhile, so we stopped and chatted for 10 minutes about life, the economy, etc.

I told him that one thing I thought was that no CEO is worth a $10mm bonus or more. No one sways the company that much and they shouldn't be paid that much ever!

I came back from lunch to this story about Larry Ellison of Oracle being eligible for an $13.5mm bonus this year. He's a heavy handed executive and in many ways the face of Oracle, but he's not worth it. It's a waste of money, he doesn't affect the revenues that much, at least not without lots of people delivering other value for him, and he's not worth it. Honestly I'm not sure anyone is worth more than $1mm a year in salary and $1mm a year in bonus tops. Not when most people make less than $50k a year. Even at Oracle there are plenty that make < $100k and I think a CEO making 100x the average is ridiculous.

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