Tim Cook's Pay Was $1.5 Million Less in 2016 as Apple Missed its Own Performance Targets

[citysnaps]

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree. Especially since, as someone who has been visiting Apple Stores since 2007/2008, the customer service at the Apple Store has really gone downhill -- particularly in the past two to three years.

Based on what I've observed, retail staff is now arguing with customers over things like hardware replacements that, in the past, would've been replaced on the spot and the customer would've been in and out in less than 30 minutes.

The last time I was at an Apple Store (about four months ago), I had an appointment, had checked in, was sitting at the designated table where they told me to sit, and I was still completely overlooked. I sat there for close to an hour looking around occasionally and seeing people that, in many cases, did not look happy to be there.

After the unusually long wait, I was finally able to pull one of the retail staff aside and they said that I had been taken off the list of people who were waiting for assistance. What? She pulled me up and the person who checked me in had notated what I was wearing in the system so that the staff would be able to recognize me -- so that was done correctly. I was just completely overlooked.

And the person in charge of retail got a nearly 23M salary last year. Lovely.

My experience has been far different over the last few years.

As just a single example, I brought my 2012 MacBook Air into the Palo Alto Apple Store yesterday for a battery replacement. The guy that helped me was smart, friendly, efficient, and engaging. He tested my laptop with their diagnostic tool to confirm it needed a new battery, checked battery stock in the back, and authorized the $129 reeplacement.

The Apple website said a replacement takes 3-5 days, and my advisor said I could pick it up the following day in the late afternoon. I received an email that evening the repair was completed and I could pick it up.

That experience far exceeded my expectations.

 

[lesbarn]

Now we know why they had to charge extra for the new MacBook Pros. I think it is crazy that over $122 million can be paid to just six individuals. At least I didn't help line their pockets too much because I skipped buying the new MacBook Pro due to all the battery concerns.

 

[kazmac]

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree. Especially since, as someone who has been visiting Apple Stores since 2007/2008, the customer service at the Apple Store has really gone downhill -- particularly in the past two to three years.

Based on what I've observed, retail staff is now arguing with customers over things like hardware replacements that, in the past, would've been replaced on the spot and the customer would've been in and out in less than 30 minutes.

The last time I was at an Apple Store (about four months ago), I had an appointment, had checked in, was sitting at the designated table where they told me to sit, and I was still completely overlooked. I sat there for close to an hour looking around occasionally and seeing people that, in many cases, did not look happy to be there.

After the unusually long wait, I was finally able to pull one of the retail staff aside and they said that I had been taken off the list of people who were waiting for assistance. What? She pulled me up and the person who checked me in had notated what I was wearing in the system so that the staff would be able to recognize me -- so that was done correctly. I was just completely overlooked.

And the person in charge of retail got a nearly 23M salary last year. Lovely.

Bold QFT...
Train your staff to install SIM cards right. To ask the right questions and do not tell your customer to go to Verizon to get a SIM card when your peer broke it in the first install. I was there for over 6 hours two days in December and what do I get after complaining to Tim Cook about the service and bad battery life? My usage and settings turned off.

I had mostly wonderful service at the 5th Avenue Apple store until last month. Phone was always 50/50 (never nice when you want to return something).

 

[Kaibelf]

I've grown weary of this smug, pontificating buffoon. I hope this salary is the last he'll get, and Apple will promptly change management.

Jealousy is a very ugly thing. If you're so great, then why don't you have the job?

 

[The Game 161]

The Apple that is today, feels burnt out and out of ideas. They don't even innovate on the phone anymore. Actually the last iphone was provocatively un-inventive...You would think with so little innovation and actual updates across all other products, at least they could put some effort into the phone. Oh well, keep this up, and 2017 might be Tim Cooks final salary from apple.
I would actually laugh if 2017 wont give us any proper mac updates and an iphone looking exactly like iphone 7, with a slightly better camera and processor. Then you know something really is going wrong in Cupertino.

Well considering the next iPhone is expected to have new screen, design, wireless charging I find it impossible for that to happen

 

[ChrisCW11]

Still makes too much. It amazes me how many fanboys wear rose coloured glasses blaming economic downturn to excuse Apples performance while Amazon, Microsoft and Google had near record breaking years.

Apple is stuck in a rut reissuing old products with new colours, cheap gimmicks, and rhetorical marketing Schtick and consumers have called Apple out for it and avoided buying into another year of disappointment Even staunch fanboys I know are starting to question if Apple can deliver anymore.

Tim Cook can no longer hide behind the products and success push Steve Jobs left the company with and on his own merits Tim Cook is one of Apples worst CEOs and making too much still for it.

 

[Jacbox9]

Jealousy is a very ugly thing. If you're so great, then why don't you have the job?

Says the person who doesn't know the difference between jealousy and envy.

 

[manhattanboy]

What would you do differently as CEO? Be specific.

For one, make sure your products work together (MBP and iPhone). But if I had to come up with a theme for how I would be different, I would say stop focusing on costs. Jobs once said that companies that only focus on cutting costs soon cut themselves out of business. Moves like not updating the Mac Pro or mini; getting out of the monitor and router business; eliminating the headphone jack; all of these are focused on costs.

Jealousy is a very ugly thing. If you're so great, then why don't you have the job?

I'll do it for half of Tim's price. Push for my success as I need your support!

 

[I7guy]

Jobs may have been smug, but he sure as hell was not a buffoon.

Tims not smug either and neither is he a buffoon.
[doublepost=1483721221][/doublepost]

Totally agree; privacy is going to be this decades major fight.
What is absurd is the pay the other executives are getting. I am sorry but when your retail employees are making peanuts and your top executives are getting a million dollars a MONTH, something is really messed up in this country. Human decency apparently died decades ago.

This has been like this for a hundred years or more. So you are right human decency died 10 decades ago. But I dont see anyone bemoaning the pay of other fortune 50 ceos.

 

[MacDevil7334]

What would you do differently as CEO? Be specific.

• Do something with Apple's ridiculous pile of cash to grow the company. Buy another company, invest it in new products, etc. Just do something with it already!
• Adding to this, move into a new product category. The iPad has already peaked, the watch hasn't met expectations, and the smartphone market is so saturated that 2017 may be the last year Apple can get a huge boost from a new iPhone release. The amount of time Apple can continue to wring profits out of its current lineup of products is starting to dwindle.
• Simplify product lines and product names. There are too many configurations of each product to choose from and some of the names are downright confusing. The iPad lineup currently consists of iPad mini 2, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro 9.7", and iPad Pro 12.9". I follow Apple very closely but that average consumer has to find that confusing.
• Focus on product integration. This adds on my last point but it seems like all Apple products these days are designed separately from one another. You have a new iPhone that drops the headphone jack because of "courage" but keeps the proprietary lightning connector. Then you get a new MacBook Pro a month later that has a headphone jack but no USB-A ports. So, you can't connect your new iPhone to your new Mac without an adaptor and you can't use the headphones that came with your iPhone to listen to music on your new Mac. I know this line gets used a lot on this forum, but Jobs would never have allowed something like that.
• Recommit to making quality software to go with the hardware. Apple is slowly abandoning all its pro apps. The OS on iPad doesn't even come close to utilizing the power of the latest hardware (or even that of the 2014 iPad Air 2). And the bugs...my god. The number of bugs in iOS since iOS 7 has grown at an alarming rate. But what really bugs me is that Apple can't seem to squash them despite a large public beta program. They seem perfectly content to release a buggy X.0 release and fix things a few months later with an X.2 or X.3 release. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a few years but no longer. This is one of those little things that is slowly killing my perception of the Apple brand as synonymous with quality.
• Improve the quality of services! This is one area where Apple has never been very good (anyone remember MobileMe and Ping during the Jobs era). But, this area is composing an ever greater share of Apple's revenue and they need to put some resources into making sure it all works properly. This is another area that is slowly sapping the goodwill of the brand. And only 5 GB of free cloud storage in 2017? Really?
• Lastly, don't pinch pennys. From cheaping out on the flash storage in the fusion drives on the latest iMacs, to the thin sapphire crystal lens cover on the iPhone 7 camera, to making you buy separate front and back covers on the new iPads at a higher price than the full case used to cost, to the insane numbers of dongles we have to buy to use the new MacBook, it is starting to feel like Apple is cutting corners in its manufacturing and wringing pennys out of its customers. While these decisions might be ok for the bottom line in the short term, they will almost certainly be bad for the company in the long term.

 

[KPandian1]

I feel his pain!

 

[McDonkel]

I would say, though, that most of the profit that's been made has been due to stuff Jobs put into motion.

This is true to the extent that every aspect of Apple has been put into motion by Jobs. But its undeniable that Cook took Apple in a couple directions that Jobs was lukewarm about, and they were very good decisions from a business perspective.

1. Bigger-screen phones took iPhone sales to their highest point with the 6/6s generation. Jobs wasn't a fan.
2. An intense focus on enterprise. iPhones and iPads are quite popular with businesses, because Apple has focused sales efforts and feature development on this market. Again, Jobs didn't have much interest in enterprise.

I know we all miss the innovative Apple of old. But the reality is that from a business perspective, Cook has been very successful, due to choices that he has made in the absence of Jobs.

 

[TroyBoy30]

no one should make 8 million a year. especially for doing such a poor job. now you know where your dongle money is going

 

[Wild-Bill]

His compensation should've been docked even further because of the MacBook 'Pro' nonsense, and the company's systematic destruction of professional apps and computers.

Apple has been going in the wrong direction for a long time, and it's only getting worse.

 

[xlii]

...and I work in his factory,
and I curse the life I'm living,
and I curse my poverty,
but I wish that I could be,
oh, I wish that I could be,
Richard Cory.

Paul Simon

 

[Thunderhawks]

He runs the company, which is a varied and difficult role and encompasses many different things. He does not design and create new products, despite what people on many forums think.

A lot of posters have no clue how difficult it is to run a company, nor could they name an appropriate replacement if they had to. TC runs it all based on finances and is trying not to interrupt the current creative team.
That is wrong! (If he is worried)
What I do not approve of is that they have not gone out (maybe they have and we don't know and ,I know it's not easy) and found a somewhat visionary type of person.

The same old, same old salami tactic of improving a beta type product per generation will not work forever.

They need an "unpleasant disturber" for lack of a better word. Not easy to come by as they usually are their own person, but if one never looks one will never find.

I am also not sure their current wait and come out when we think it's ready way of doing business still works.

Nobody can keep a product secret and SAMSUNG despite all it's bad press just had a record profit. They throw things at the wall until something sticks.

Some place in the middle may be the way to go fro Apple.

 

[iMcLovin]

Well considering the next iPhone is expected to have new screen, design, wireless charging I find it impossible for that to happen

THere has also been rumored it would be a 7s upgrade only with the same design.

 

[macbookhair]

It's over. You know when a relative or friend begins to show signs of dementia, and initially you ignore and dismiss them but after a while, you realize with a sinking feeling that something is seriously wrong. That's where we're at with Apple. They've got the corporate cancer and all the symptoms are there:

- Ruthless cost cutting
- Abstract and inconsistent marketing
- Pushing for maximum profit margins at the expense of product design and customer experience
- Overpaid executives
- Building an enormous HQ at massive expense
- Allowing lower volume products to stagnate
- A lack of a compelling forward vision
- Missing emerging trends and misreading customer needs due to complacency and/or arrogance

Make no mistake, we're at the start of a long and sad decline unless something changes drastically soon.

 

[The Game 161]

THere has also been rumored it would be a 7s upgrade only with the same design.

Actually all the rumors are saying 7s and 7s plus with an iPhone 8 OLED model with new design. So likely a lower cost model and the more expensive new design model

 

[citysnaps]

For one, make sure your products work together (MBP and iPhone). But if I had to come up with a theme for how I would be different, I would say stop focusing on costs. Jobs once said that companies that only focus on cutting costs soon cut themselves out of business. Moves like not updating the Mac Pro or mini; getting out of the monitor and router business; eliminating the headphone jack; all of these are focused on costs.

I'll do it for half of Tim's price. Push for my success as I need your support!

How about Jobs introducing the MacBook Air with a single USB port, an 80 GB spinning disk, 2 GB of RAM, an anemic CPU that (unbelievably) caused laptop overheating. All for $1,800. You think that was not driven by cost? I remember all the whining when that came out.

How about Apple getting out of the printer business years ago, a business that became incredibly commoditized with low cost printers, and one Apple could not compete in. Same thing with displays.

With respect to the MBP and iPhone working together, it seems you do not understand how transition periods work and there has never been perfection during past transitions. The MBP was released after the iPhone 7. There will always be a group of people not satisfied. Include the wrong cable, people whine. Include the other cable, people whine. Include both cables and people whine about Apple not caring about the environment and e-waste. Shocker...

Apple is greatly dependent on Intel's roadmap and their release delays for CPU versions suited for particular computers. And, Intels updates on CPU performance have been incremental over the last 7 years. The days of large performance increases are long gone.

 

[travelsheep]

For all ADHD surfers, who can't read an article down to the end: "Cook earned roughly $145 million last year, his biggest payout yet as head of the company."

 

[Born Again]

wow so many haters here!

Let's talk about Tim's successful products.

Airpods Months Late
Macbook Pro - overpriced, poor battery life, and a gimmicky touchbar
No New Macs
iPhone 7 - aka iphone 6 S S
Siri - still the same useless service

Guys you need to step back and see these accomplishments and see that Apple is on the right path and Tim Cook is the right leader for the job!

 

[H2SO4]

He might not be the best CEO for Apple and he's definitelynot Steve, but his strong stance on protecting our privacy is what I like about him.

I don't believe him about that either. If he can get up on stage and be dishonest then where does it stop?

 

[gpx21dlr]

Approximately $739,000 per month - it's a tough life I would imagine!

I'm on fixed with $1300/month so his 'tough life' is beyond my comprehension.
[doublepost=1483722909][/doublepost]How will one spend those millions before death?

 

[jeremy h]

But the reality is that from a business perspective, Cook has been very successful, due to choices that he has made in the absence of Jobs.

We'll see... At the moment Apple appears to be following the path of many companies that out grow their core competencies. The company has got a lot bigger and a lot more complex but this size has been built on pretty much single product - the iPhone. It has, in my opinion made them fragile which that huge pile of money hides. This pile has cushioned them from customer feedback. Its made the moaning and whinging of longtime Apple users such as myself irrelevant. If Timmy and the gang can consistently come up with such ground breaking products (say one every 5 years) that pulls in ever increasing numbers into their orbit then yes he's a massive success and probably deserves the obscene amount of money he's getting.

However, if such products don't turn up and I would argue there was a lot of serendipity in the runaway success of the iPod / iTunes and the iPhone (arrogant music industry people, hugely complacent mobile phone companies, trendy designer user base making the products desirable etc etc) - then all he's done is allow the company to become hugely fragile and fall into the trap that many companies do that put share holder concerns above those of their customers.