I mean, it is a little weird because compensation these days usually includes stock, so, some ownership of the company. But not much real decision making power beyond the limited-scope decisions around we implement their will.
Maybe a consultant could be considered like a vassal?
I could afford a house, sure. In the boonies. Could I afford to buy the NYC apartment I live in? No chance.
(More seriously though: the real challenge to this approach is that cloud compute resources are a game changer and they can be at best approximated with the high-latency connections of hundreds of distributed users. The problem to solve goes a bit past "everyone should host their own email..." And even that is a tall order if you want your email to actually be sent and received and to not drown in spam).
* RTO mandates that reduce productivity AND job satisfaction
* High CEO pay outstripping worker pay
* Loss of work autonomy and space (working without an assigned desk)
* Layoffs out of the blue for successful teams
* Weakening benefits
* AI being wedged into whatever task you are working on
I don't care if it's a union, I don't care if it's a guild, I don't care if it's just a group of folks deciding to take action together, whatever. It's time we (especially us in tech) to stop acting like "got mine" and start acting like "get ours".
I’m all for taking action. I just don’t know what action best suits my needs, other than finding a new job or starting my own business and hoping I don’t become one of the greedy ones too.
Tech companies used to hire all the brilliant engineers because they were worried about startups eating their lunch.
Without antitrust enforcement, they've grown large enough that they can essentially bleed money in any of their non-core markets for decades without it impacting them. So this clearly isn't the case anymore.
We need to:
(1) get the DOJ/FTC/EU/ASEAN/etc. to slap the FAANG / Mag 7 hard. Bust them up into many companies. It would probably even result in greater market value being created as these companies are inefficiently sitting on gold mountains that they do not monetize and also making insane malinvestments that simply waste millennia of human engineering in stupid ways that have absolutely no potential of succeeding. But more than anything, this oxygenates the field for competition and provides greater upside to the financial / labor / innovation capital that are actually doing the work.
(2) start lots of startups that erode the key money makers of these companies. They're quite vulnerable right now. And they've laid off a lot of highly skilled labor.
Google should be four or five companies, at minimum. And it's time that the governments of the world demand it.
Tech workers shouldn't punch down against unions. We should be pro-union in general.
While you could argue "too many tech workers think they are some kind of top 50% of tech workers" and be correct, that is very different than claiming unions help everyone but the top 1%.
Unionized employees make more than their non-unionized counterparts [0]. Even if the top earners to bottom earners gap shrank in relative terms, in absolute terms both would likely be higher.
[0]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/weekly-earnings-of-nonunio...
If I'm one of many types of service worker, sure I very well might join a union because I'm pretty replaceable and my income has little to do with my individual performance. I'll do better by forcing my employer to collectively bargain on terms that are relatively favorable to me by law.
That doesn't mean that all tech workers should support unions entering their field.
They’re saying too many erroneously believe they are part of the top 1% of their field. They’re thinking they’re better than they actually are. And so, mistakenly, it follows that unions are of no use to these top performers.
Unions basically buy job security for a fixed duration of time for their members by offering concessions related to compensation. Competent workers in a non-declining field (i.e. pretty much all of tech) already have job security via their skills, and don't need to explicitly guarantee it by giving up some compensation to offset that risk for the employer.
It makes even less sense for software development since it can be moved overseas so easily in most cases.
However, unions in practice enforce mediocrity while also becoming an institution that exists to support itself (aka its leaders) rather than its members once it reaches a large enough size (which is not unique to unions at all).
Unions makes no sense for a top performer in a field where an individual can outperform other workers performing similar tasks by orders of magnitude. Software development is one of those fields.
What part of that do you take issue with?
now your employer holds you hostage via health care & if one spouse loses a job the other is not able to quickly replace part of that income
The same could be said about back of house restaurant staff or caregivers like CNAs or daycare staff.
The two most vulnerable groups of people in our society are young children and the elderly. And the people who take care of those two groups are treated terribly and paid non-living wages.
Having them go on strike for a few days would at the very least bring a great deal of attention to the matter.
Elderly care, yes that would probably be more effective. However, I can see a scenario where people would pass away from a lack of care even if for a few days. This opens up a whole new can of worms.
I'm sure the folks with legal power would try to use that law to tamp down on any full-on nationwide action.
The CEO pay issue is agitprop nonsense. It's purely political without proved mooring to worker interests. It's predicated on the same fallacy that more taxes will mean more appreciably more social benefits for the poor. Instead, the money gets routed everywhere else. The only metric that matters for workers is their own pay. You have no idea if higher CEO pay isn't linked to comparably higher worker pay, not less. No worker in their right mind would spite-lower CEO pay just to have their own be static or decline.
TIL
To put it plainly - not paying the CEO wouldn't free up any meaningful amount of more money to pay the workers.
If the company is public...you can just buy shares like anyone else (well depending on your position you might need approval).
Equity isn't a magical thing that prints millions. There are ample people on this forum that could tell you endless stories about "equity" and "getting rich"...
Equity in a privately held company is certainly more complicated to deal with, but if -- as per my original post -- you offer someone a substantial raise in the form of equity I'm quite certain they won't turn it down.
> If the company is public...you can just buy shares like anyone else (well depending on your position you might need approval).
I can't help but suspect you are ignoring the substantial raise part of my post at this point, as otherwise this comment seems like a non-sequitur.
> Equity isn't a magical thing that prints millions. There are ample people on this forum that could tell you endless stories about "equity" and "getting rich"...
This is condescending and not conducive to a polite discussion. I did not ask for and do not need an explanation of equity compensation.
I'll one up your tautology: not paying shareholders would free up meaningful amounts of money to pay the workers.
Apple?
My (perhaps moronic, but hey, I’m not an expert) metric is this: if a company X constantly buys other companies just for the sake of preventing competition —- it’s bad, and we risk to have a monopoly. Which, we almost do have with Google, Apple, and many others.
I mean, it’s a fine line to thread: companies should be able to do M&As, but at the same time, they should not be allowed to become monopolies.
That's ... not how monopolies work.
PS you do not have to have a monopoly to get no or minimal competition.
Here's an example: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/a-no....
And another: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/7/129...
This doesn't seem like a topic with an irrefutable answer, though, due to the complexity of measuring. Here's an interesting paper on that complexity and a contrary point of view: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32762/w327...
... but ask nurses whether they feel "white-collar."
> The report listed Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol as making 6,666 times more than the company’s typical worker, the largest pay gap in the S&P 500. (Niccol took over the company’s helm last September. The AFL-CIO annualized his compensation, listing it as nearly $98 million, compared to the typical Starbucks worker’s pay of less than $15,000.)
But what happened after he was announced? The stock jumped nearly 25%, resulting in an increase market cap of 27.2 billion [0].
So the $98m per year compensation is a great bargain for Starbucks and all their shareholders. This at least suggests that CEOs are very important (or investors are stupid?). But the stock price today is about the same level post announcement, so the value of his leadership mostly matched expectations for now.
It would be great if the article had some of this context and nuance rather than a press release from the AFL-CIO.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2024/08/13/why-starb...
And their employees, too, actually, since they have something called the Bean Stock[1] program. But citing this wouldn't fit the article's narrative. Comparing salaries of a regular employee and a CEO (especially one of a public company) is like comparing apples to oranges; it has nothing to do with fairness. The two are fundamentally different in effort, incentive, and risk:reward structure.
[1] https://www.starbucksbenefits.com/en-us/home/stock-savings/b...
There's something about the human mind that makes it feel worse for a rich person to lose insignificant-to-them millions than for a poor person to lose a thousand bucks.
I personally have significantly more of a problem with Congress having no term limits and being able to trade on the very market they're regulating.
And what conviction length do those tiny few who get convicted of aomething actually get?
Not sure if this is rhetorical, but there are Wiki entries, investigative articles, documentaries, and even entire books dedicated to corporate malpractice and its consequences over the past century.
Take the VW Diesel scandal, several engineers went to jail over this. In contrast Winterkorn has been charged, but AFAIK the case has been suspended and I'm not sure if it will ever go forward.
I think you misunderstand the risk that non-CEO employees are exposed as cycomanic pointed out. CEOs that make this much money are more capable of defending themselves than a regular employee, not only from their wealth but from their network. It's rare that a CEO has to testify to Congress, or deal with FTC/FCC, etc. And dealing with BOD, hostile takeovers, or activist investors pales in comparison to what many people deal with day to day. A CEO is not going to go homeless from a hostile takeover.
Surgeons walk away with their pay whether a high-risk patient lives or dies, aside from provable malpractice. Why? Because they made a good faith effort to do their jobs despite an uncertain outcome.
Did you do any research at all into whether this makes a material difference to starbucks employees?
$100m per year / $400k employees = $250 per employee per year.
Meanwhile, $ of stock per year is really hard to estimate, but one person online said ~$500 per year for a barista. A 25% increase in price due to a new CEO is then +$125.
It seems surely more interesting to ask why the rest of us bother to go along with it.
No we aren't? Not even everyone on this forum is a shareholder, nevermind everyone in society?
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
The society whose foundations 'this' is built upon, the one that built the middle class, was built on very different rules. Marginal tax rates over 90%, strong(er) labor protections, and CEO-to-worker pay ratios today's CEOs would balk at.
'Income inequality' is really just a pyramid scheme with branding pretending it's still an extension of post-WW2 America that built the middle class. The American public isn't buying it anymore.
I guess you go along with it because it's a proxy for using precious resources efficiently and creating things people want.
Aug 12th, 24: Stock price is 77.03
Aug 13th, 24: New CEO announced, stock price is 95.9
Sept 9th, 24: New CEO starts, stock price is 92.21
(Peak) Mar 3rd, 25: 117.46 (est)
(Trough) Apr 30th, 35: 75.5 (est)
Jul 23rd, 25: 95.92
In no way do I look at the starbucks stock price history and think "wow the new CEO really turned the ship around!" There was a huge spike when he was ANNOUNCED and no growth since. Vibes economy.
Edit: Data from NASDAQ https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/sbux/advanced-...
If you're gonna make up a headline, don't make up one that is factually false.
I'd argue the gap is still atypically wide, these past few years, though.
There are countries where that gap is lower where you can move to if you really care about this. Most of Europe is a lot more equal, but you'll take a significant pay cut.
Not to mention that the American system is one of constant, frequent, and oftentimes contradictory forms of market interference, even if the manner of interference differs a bit from Western norms.
Look deeper into who's reaping all the benefits and who's interefering with the market.
Your argument is just trickle down economics dressed up. But worse, we know that doesn't work. Not, we think. WE KNOW IT DOESN'T WORK.
In fact, once you realize it's just the same tired trickle down economics argument, then when you start asking why is growth stalling, why are living standards falling?
You can easily answer it. Because trickle down economics don't work.
Because too much value is being captured by a tiny minority, who use that capital poorly.
US top tiny amount of incomes pay vastly more, even per dollar earned, than in any other first world country, where middle and lower class pay a much larger share.
Around the bottom 50% of US taxpayers pay zero federal income tax, and after post tax transfers (aid, etc...) the lowest decent sized chunk get money back, i.e., negative federal income tax.
Then, after already covering the vast majority of US tax burden, the really wealthy end up paying another large chunk in estate taxes (and no, there isn't magic sauce where they all hide all assets in foreign lands - you can simply go over public IRS data, or CBO data and see).
Here's historical effective rates by quintile. Bottom two were 9.3% and 15.0%, top 27.1% in 1979, in 2019 they were 0.6%, 8.9%, 19.3% top 1% remains over 30%. https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-average-fe...
How much more progressive is enough?
https://www.cbpp.org/research/what-do-oecd-data-really-show-...
Too much progressive taxation is as unbalanced as CEO pay is.
I am lucky enough to live in New Zealand and be taxed at 39% plus 15% sales tax. At some point I feel like the government is getting its pound of flesh. I just don't feel motivated to work hours to earn extra.
The incentive of the government should be to encourage me to earn more since it would get its cut. Every other citizen misses out on 39 cents when I feel it is not worth trading my time for less than 61 cents on the dollar.
Incentive systems matter. It isn't only about money - it is also about what feels fair.
Everybody complains about the people earning more than them. If you're in the US you are excessively rich compared with most of the rest of the world. How about we tax everybody in the US at 50% and spread some of that wealth down to the workers in Vietnam or Bhopal? Strange how so many people whine about fairness but those same people don't wish to share their wealth fairly.
Basically, in 1919, Henry Ford sought to reinvest the Ford Motor Company’s profits into raising employee wages and expanding hiring, arguing that sharing success with workers would strengthen the economy and the company’s long-term prospects. However, minority shareholders John and Horace Dodge (who also ran their own competing auto company) sued Ford, claiming that his actions violated the fiduciary duty to maximize profits for shareholders.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Dodges, declaring that a corporation’s primary obligation was to serve the financial interests of its shareholders and not broader social goals or even the well-being of its employees. This decision established a legal precedent that continues to shape corporate law even today and reinforcing the doctrine of "shareholder primacy" and limiting the ability of companies to prioritize stakeholders (like workers or communities) over investor returns.
It's been downhill for employees since.
I don't actually see any reference in the wikipedia article that Ford was saying he wanted to use the dividend money to raise wages:
>...Henry Ford, sought to end special dividends for shareholders in favor of massive investments in new plants that would enable Ford to dramatically increase production, and the number of people employed at his plants, while continuing to cut the costs and prices of his cars.
And as usual in these cases, there are other unstated reasons that might actually be more important to the decision maker:
>...Ford was also motivated by a desire to squeeze out his minority shareholders, especially the Dodge brothers, whom he suspected (correctly) of using their Ford dividends to build a rival car company. By cutting off their dividends, Ford hoped to starve the Dodges of capital to fuel their growth
Companies and investors need to think further than 90 days ahead.
> Twenty-five years ago, Bill Clinton campaigned on an idea for limiting excessive pay for American CEOs: Cap the tax deductibility of top executives' compensation at $1 million, and companies, not wanting bigger tax bills, might reel in their pay. In his 1993 budget, advisers suggested a compromise: Companies couldn't deduct CEO pay over $1 million unless it was "performance-based."
> But many believe the loophole had the opposite effect, driving companies instead to pay more in stock options and certain performance-based bonuses, which actually supercharged the growth in CEO pay. In 1989, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the median value of annual CEO compensation was $2.7 million. By 1995 it was $6.6 million, and it reached $13 million in 2016.
Ref: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/11...
It hasn't worked out like that for sure.
https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/ceo-worker-pay-gap-problem-am...
Ford didn't want to share with the employees. He was very strongly anti-union (granted, not a factor until post-WWII). He was a Nazi supporter and not just because he was a notorious antisemite, Nazis opposed organized labor, too. He is sometimes mistakenly acclaimed for being for civil rights because he hired so many black men (who were not unionized, in an attempt to defeat the unions).
The lawsuit wasn't about shareholders vs broader social goals. It was about shareholders vs the CEO. The article is not about shareholder vs CEO pay. This lawsuit is unrelated.
And before someone claims Ford paid his workers enough to be customers (the reason he still wanted to pay them more in 1918), consider that in the early days after he'd implemented an assembly line the work became incredibly monotonous and workers were leaving for other automakers, so Ford was forced to pay them better to stay with him.
Let's say you hire a general contractor to remodel your house. How would you feel about him doing what's good for society without consulting you - e.g. buying sustainable material that is more expensive, or locally sourced material that is less durable or less safe? Or hiring more workers like they do on NYC construction projects cause it's good for labor? Especially if it's something you disagree with, like he's maga and refuses to hire cheaper immigrants, giving preference to disgraced former cops. When the bill comes with all the extra costs, hed just say he's not working for the owner value but for the good of society as he sees it :)
> The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Dodges, declaring that a corporation’s primary obligation was to serve the financial interests of its shareholders and not broader social goals or even the well-being of its employees.
> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate.One thing we absolutely don’t want to do is disincentivize companies hiring people at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder. If employing those people lowers how much executives are allowed to get paid, what do you think is going to happen?
No, it compares the top 500 CEO pay out of 250k+ CEOs to all workers, which is as ludicrous and misleading as comparing the top 500 worker pay to all 250k CEOs and thinking this is the useful metric to rage about.
But it can provide some information when you look at it in context and with other information. Practically any comparison between a 10-person hedge fund and walmart is going to be silly.
Your employer can at any time replace you with an H1b who MUST work at the company to even stay in the country.
As soon as we can reform immigration we are going to see much higher software salaries.
Employers put them up and everybody wastes their time applying. When the employer "can't find anyone qualified" they import an h1b for less money who can be worked harder because they have no choice.
They love that they can hire and train people who can't complain or even legally leave to join a competitor. Pound sand, Americans!
There are 120,053,000 age workers with median weekly income of $1,159 = $60,258 annual income [2] (and this includes part time, people in college, semi-retired, many people who have had high incomes in the past or will in the future).
A story about a 4.3x of CEO to worker pay, which is the actual stats of CEO to worker, doesn't generate enough outrage.
Comparing the top 500 (ish) of them to all workers is simply bad analysis designed to rile up people.
Surely people here would call out the dishonesty of comparing the top 500 wage worker salaries (many millions/year each) vs all the CEOs (258k) as dishonest. It's funny seeing how many people eat this equally dishonest comparison up as indicative of all CEOs and companies...
As to all the theories as to this or that law being some culprit, or some evil intentions, note the pay of the top performers in nearly every category, from musician, to athlete, to lawyer, to top 500 CEO, to even employee, have seen pretty much the same growth over the same time. It's nearly impossible all these are driven by something as specific as a labor law, a union change, a stock market or money format change. It's almost a certainty these are all driven by an excess of accrued capital in the US (and other markets) allowing those paying these incomes to pay for what they see as talent, whether is a huge rise in middle class disposable income, a larger share of US money available for retirement accounts, etc. Many years ago chasing down this exact set of ideas revealed a ton of econ papers reaching the same conclusions....
In short, high (someone else) pay rarely is money taken from the poor, and in more cases the poor and middle get higher wages as the top get higher wages simply by econ effects like the Baumol effect. This is the effect that as some jobs pay more, it attracts more people, so for society to get older jobs done, they must now also pay more, even if productivity in the latter jobs have not increased. It's why the lowest labor in the US pays many, many fold over what you'd get for the same output in most of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
Just some thoughts....
[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm [2] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm
Also, I highly suspect that even if we take the ratio of top 1% CEOs compared to top 1% of non-executive employees the picture would not change dramatically (unfortunately I can't find easily accessible information).
mc32•7h ago
Screw it, tax them progressively for every multiplier above the average Jack and Jill’s pay —with adjustments for company size and whatnot.
Hikikomori•7h ago
ndrwdvvs•7h ago
Analemma_•7h ago
michaelt•7h ago
navbaker•7h ago
m00x•6h ago
There was bi-partisan support for blocking congress from trading due to clear insider trading and the Democrats refused to support the bill.
Democrats were also the ones to move all manufacturing to China, which hurt the American worker more than anything we've done in the past 20 years. If the democrats were actually serious about the working class, they would've let Bernie compete against Trump.
wat10000•6h ago
bpt3•5h ago
If you think anyone is going to pay an effective tax rate of 90%, I'm not sure what to tell you.
wat10000•5h ago
The point isn't to actually collect $90 million in taxes from a CEO paid $100 million, the point is to discourage that kind of ridiculous pay package in the first place.
_DeadFred_•5h ago
bpt3•4h ago
wat10000•2h ago
Anyway, most CEOs don’t own a majority share in their company. I’d like to see a CEO try to argue for a massive transformation of the company just so they can personally be paid more. Shareholders should boot them out pretty fast.
bpt3•2h ago
But even talking about publicly traded companies and their private equivalents in scale, plenty of them move their HQ when it makes financial sense to do so and have non-US entities that could employ their CEO so he or she could do the same.
I have no idea why you think Starbucks, with thousands and thousands of locations outside the US, wouldn't consider employing their CEO out of a non-US location to let them avoid a confiscatory personal income tax rate.
wat10000•1h ago