Lee Valley article

[Larry Kraus]

[Ed Pawlowski]

Good for them! Makes me proud to be a customer. The ratio has gotten out of hand in large corporations.

OTOH, we despise high paid executives and worship overpaid movie stars and athletes.

[PV]

Nah, I also despise overpaid athletes and movie stars. Well except athletes who earn their money, like golfers, if they don't perform they starve.

[Keith Nuttle]

+ fixed ratio between the highest pay grade and the lowest. In a small company that ratio may be right at 5:1, In a medium size company of 400 to a 1000 employees that ration may be 10:1. But should the president of a company of 10000 or more employees and a sales of 10 to 100 times that the company with 400 to 1000 employees make the same money.

It all comes down to financial responsibility the more money you are responsible for the more money you make.

The janitor with the financial responsibility for the $50 of materials he uses is paid one thing and the person who is responsible for the company with 10 billion in sales is paid something else

[krw]

What the executives, or employees, of a company I have no financial stake in make, is none of my concern. I don't care what my neighbor makes or how many toys he has, either.

Maybe you do. I think it's rather funny how much energy people put into worrying about what others make, or have. If they put half that much energy into bettering themselves and worrying about their families, they would be far better off. I can't control their lives, so just giggle at them.

When I see someone with a beautiful house on a lake, I think "go for it!", not "why don't I have that?". I *know* why I don't have that.

[krw]

"But it's not "fair"!"

Or the specialized skills you have (which amount to the same thing).

Unless you're a stockholder, what does it matter what the CEO of MegaCorp makes? If you are, you get the same vote as the next share. Unless you're a stockholder of &NFL_Team, what difference does the contract price of the quarterback make? It's *not* coming out of your hide.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------------------ Brings to mind Lincoln Electric.

Check out a book by James Lincoln, "Incentive Management".

It's thin.

Lincoln's Christmas bonuses were famous.

Actual amounts were never made public; however, a bonus equal to your straight time annual earnings have often been reported.

Lew

[EXT]

How many times have overpaid executives been paid huge bonuses for watching the company they were supposed to be responsible for, fall into or come close to bankruptcy. If they are really making the company grow and providing jobs then they may be worth what they earn, but if they are just bleeding ideas and concepts from underlings they they should be booted out with no golden parachute and let knowledgeable people take over.

[Larry Blanchard]

In your world, is compensation based on performance? Sure doesn't seem to be at most corporations.

[Ed Pawlowski]

For the most part, I agree. But even in the largest company, there is a limit to the real value of the CEO as opposed to the value of the people that make his company a success. Most important, are ALL employees getting a wage that is fair with the job they are doing? Does the wage match the skills?

Even the CEO needs his wastebasket emptied and bathroom cleaned and he needs the guys running the machines in the factory. Before you take a big bonus, be sure they are getting a fair wage. Federal minimum of $7.50 is not a fair wage for anyone.

BTW, if you offer me $10 million a year to play right field, I'll accept no matter how bad I'd play.

[Doug Winterburn]

Certainly doesn't seem so in DC - lots of overpaid people, especially the CIC.

[krw]

It does in every corporation I've worked for. Perhaps you don't agree with their measurements but that isn't their problem.

[Keith Nuttle]

Performance and pay grade are not related. (Performance affects pay within a grade or classification) You can be a poor performer in a Janitor job, the same way you can be a poor performer in a 10million dollar job. Regardless of what the company does, the question is did you meet the goals of your job classification.

[Keith Nuttle]

What I said about compensation and job classification does not seem to apply to Washington DC, where there some of the highest paid failures around. On the other hand may be the classification is based on if they are sitting at their desk.

[Doug Winterburn]

Especially when asked about anything in their sphere of responsibility, they claim they didn't know anything!

[woodchucker]

In most companies managers and execs make boneheaded maneuvers that in many (not all) cases is just to boost their apparent rating of look what I did. But in reality it usually the same old shit. many just reinvent the wheel or change direction to a direction already tried b4.

Where I am working now, there is an idiot in charge of storage. We need to get off our servers as they are no longer supported really old, have many issues. The O/S is not supported, other items are not supported. We are having issues. We can not get storage for our new servers because the idiot in charge is trying to cut costs, so in order to get more storage we must return 110% of our ask.. So for a server that is suffering from lack of storage already we can not get less than we currently have, we need more, we've been suffering, and we can not get new storage on the existing servers because of the status of the existing hardware. So this idiot looks good to his peers at his level, but is killing everyone trying to deal with this below him. No one will speak against him for fear of being let go before the bonuses are handed out... or ever for the same reason. This same problem is repeating among many different organization

The Dilbert principle at work.

I could tell you about our CEO, but I'll leave that for another time.