Steve Jobs tops list for California CEO compensation

[radhak]

Of course, that leaves Apple with $74.75 Million left over to buy more talent.

and then maybe make mistakes and get somebody like John Sculley, Mike Spindler or (shudder) Gil Amelio, who will all claim to be better than Jobs, take all the stock options he had, and demand much much more in actual salary than his 1 dollar, and finally run the company to ignominy.

i don't think anybody will disagree that these three above named are the sole reason Apple faces such a struggle it does today. The biggest mistake Jobs did in his life was when he requested (!) Sculley to take over the CEO position way back in the 80s. if only he had been the sole chief of Apple all these years (like Gates of MS), we might have been in a better world, technologically speaking.

 

[pjkelnhofer]

Of course, that leaves Apple with $74.75 Million left over to buy more talent.

Yes, but it will buy talent that gets frustrated and leaves for another company since they don't want to work for a CEO who is an idiot anymore.

and then maybe make mistakes and get somebody like John Sculley, Mike Spindler or (shudder) Gil Amelio, who will all claim to be better than Jobs, take all the stock options he had, and demand much much more in actual salary than his 1 dollar, and finally run the company to ignominy.

i don't think anybody will disagree that these three above named are the sole reason Apple faces such a struggle it does today. The biggest mistake Jobs did in his life was when he requested (!) Sculley to take over the CEO position way back in the 80s. if only he had been the sole chief of Apple all these years (like Gates of MS), we might have been in a better world, technologically speaking.

Your post makes it sound like Jobs left by choice. I had always believed it was not entirely his decision. Can any point me to a good resource for the story behind Steve leaving (I believe it was in 1985?).

 

[radhak]

Your post makes it sound like Jobs left by choice. I had always believed it was not entirely his decision. Can any point me to a good resource for the story behind Steve leaving (I believe it was in 1985?).

Maybe I can clarify. As I understood it, Steve got Sculley in as CEO, which would mean that Steve would have remained as the Founder/Chairman of the company. This is a generally accepted practice, splitting the work load and leaving somebody like Jobs with the task of thinking up new stuff and generally creating a brand name out of (say) 'Apple'. Given good chemistry between the Chairman and CEO, this works out well. But that was not the case here.
A brief description of this was in the MacAddict Jan 2004 issue. Online, I got this with a google : Histories

 

[pjkelnhofer]

Maybe I can clarify. As I understood it, Steve got Sculley in as CEO, which would mean that Steve would have remained as the Founder/Chairman of the company. This is a generally accepted practice, splitting the work load and leaving somebody like Jobs with the task of thinking up new stuff and generally creating a brand name out of (say) 'Apple'. Given good chemistry between the Chairman and CEO, this works out well. But that was not the case here.
A brief description of this was in the MacAddict Jan 2004 issue. Online, I got this with a google : Histories

This is more how I remembered it. Steve made Sculley CEO than when they couldn't get along Steve made a push to get rid of Sculley but the board took Sculley's side and Steve resigned (later he founded NeXT).

So really, it is those members of the board who caused the dark days of Apple history. Although, I am not sure Steve would be who he is today if he had not started NeXT and failed.

 

[topicolo]

Yes, but it will buy talent that gets frustrated and leaves for another company since they don't want to work for a CEO who is an idiot anymore.

Steve Jobs has been known to be really crappy to his employees (temper tantrums, forcing them to work extremely long hours, stealing their ideas, etc). He is good at the whole visionary thing, but he's terrible at managing.

 

[Abstract]

Thank you Doctor Q for making sense. The problem is that this is what you have to pay to get a decent CEO since there are other companies willing to pay it. Think of it like sports, CEO's are worth whatever the company thinks it will take to keep them from leaving. I don't think you want the kind of CEO that $50k, $100k or even $250k gross compensation would buy running Apple.

I don't want to think of it like sports. Star athletes get paid too much as well.

If a corporation wants to pay me $75 million in stocks instead of $2 or $3 million dollars, then sure, I'd be willing to take the risk for them. My problem with this isn't that he gets paid a lot. My problem is that the price of products, say sports tickets, rise in price because of it. If the salary of every athlete gets cut in half ("oh no, my salary is only $4 million this year!!"), ticket prices could be cut by a large percentage, say 33% or so. Instead, they're too expensive for me to buy because people get paid too much. I think Jobs deserves to get paid millions of dollars (say $5 million for being one of the best CEO's), but $74 million, even in stock, is quite a lot of money.

And Bill Gates isn't the CEO of Microsoft anymore, so we can't compare his salary with Steve's, right?

 

[pjkelnhofer]

I don't want to think of it like sports. Star athletes get paid too much as well.

I only meant to think of it like sports in so much as people get paid what some one is willing to pay them. If you want to the best you need to be willing to pay premium or else some one else will pay it.

And Bill Gates isn't the CEO of Microsoft anymore, so we can't compare his salary with Steve's, right?

Gates hasn't been the CEO of MS for a few years now, but I still think it is a fair comparison because Gates is MicroSoft and Jobs is Apple.
BTW, Steve Ballmer who is the CEO of MS made $877,000 in cash last years. I couldn't find his stock option but he is currently #11 on Forbes richest with a net worth of 12.2 billion (Jobs is #78 with a net worth of 2.3 billion).