What a guy

There was a fascinating, in-depth article in The New York Times yesterday, detailing CEO's pay in the last year.

The title of the article on the front page of the business section was "Executives Took, but the Directors Gave".

The Times' take on big, overdone executive pay at corporations is shown, right away, in the lead sentence for the main article and that is that "Little of the ire against outsize C.E.O. paychecks has been aimed at the people who signed off on them: corporate directors."

And while that's true, there's also the really overlooked fact that these directors are virtually always friends, buddies and pals of that same CEO so who are these little directors to not give them big, fat paychecks? "You do for me here and I'll take care of you, over there" can frequently fit the description of the relationship. That, too, has been overlooked, I think. It's a pretty chummy relationship.

A little intimidation could go a long way, too, in getting your board to load your pay, but that's another matter.

One of the most fascinating things for me, in looking over the 2 full pages of charts they printed of CEO's pay was Steve Jobs' information.

All the other CEO's listed millions of dollars to them for pay and more millions in cash bonuses, another for "perks/other" while still more listed stock awards and options awards. Virtually every column had hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars going to this or that CEO.

Who knew there were so many ways to throw money at your executive? I didn't.

Naturally, when you're looking at this list, you're drawn to who makes the biggest amounts. You're looking for, kind of, "off the chart", big pay.

So yesterday I was looking at this and I got 3 sections down on the first page and I start seeing all these zeroes. And then a "1". And then more zeroes.

And I'm thinking, what is this, all of a sudden? What does this mean?

And then I see that it's a listing of the CEO of Apple Computer.

One Steve Jobs.

And I'm knocked out.

This guy got paid one dollar last year, for his work.

Now, I don't know how much he worked--how many hours, etc., but I do know Steve Jobs is the reason why Apple exists.

I also know he's why the iPod exists and he's the reason for such cool, really beautiful and intelligent design over at Apple, since the company began.

I also know there's rumors and news reports of his being sick so who knows how much he worked last year.

But then, go a little further on the list and you see that this same Mr. Jobs has a "Total Value of Equity Holdings" in Apple of $630,409,621.00.

Yow.

That's a personal net worth of over one-half billion dollars in Apple stock only.

So, sure, he only took home $1.00 last year in pay for his work at and for his company.

But he's worth over 500 million dollars.

And yes, I keep in mind this isn't money sitting in a bank somewhere--this is what he's worth in Apple stock. Not spendable money but investments, nonetheless.

What I'm left with is, here's a guy, Steve Jobs, who doesn't fleece his company for more and more (and more dammit!) money, just so he can acquire more and more and more, for it's own sake, quite unlike his CEO counterparts.

Here's a guy, this same Steve Jobs, who thinks up and creates cool--very cool--fun products and applications and sees them all the way to production and distribution, who has helped make, really, the 21st Century a lot of the fun it is.

He helped bring us the iPhone, the iPod before it, iTunes, cool computers, a great, working software system that doesn't get viruses and bugs--in fact, in sharp contrast to Bill Gates' Microsoft Vista software, this stuff works great--and he's not bilking his own company, in the meantime.


I hope Mr. Jobs is not truly, seriously ill, for sure. I hope he's with us for a long time and with good health in the meantime.

But I will say this, one day, when he's no longer with us, we're all going to miss this man, his creativity and his personal virtues a great deal.

Here's to Steve Jobs. A great man. May he be well and live long.


Link to original article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/05board.html?th&emc=th

And a NYT article on Steve Jobs:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/steven_p_jobs/index.html