Poor miserable Ballmer's pay SLASHED to a measly $1.26m Failings on Windows 8 and a crippling Surface writedown have seen Steve Ballmer’s pay docked for a second year in succession. Microsoft’s outgoing chief executive received a total package of $1.26m – a base salary or $697,500 and a bonus of $500,000, according to Microsoft’s 2013 proxy statement. Ballmer’s bonus was just 79 …
So he stunk up Windows 8 AND Surface and still gets 79% of his maximum possible bonus? What exactly did he achieve to get this 79%? OK, WindowsPhone is showing some promising signs of growth but nothing stellar.
Seems like he should be getting 21% of his bonus, not losing 21% of his bonus.
"Seems like he should be getting 21% of his bonus, not losing 21% of his bonus."
That's simply not how executive pay works. I work for a certain major European corporation whose share price is now 25% of what is was some years ago due to disastrous strategy and blundersome M&A. During all of that time the bigwigs typically trousered bonuses of 150% of the eligible bonus amount. I know, because I supported one of the better performing bosses, and got to see, understand and manipulate the scheme, which allowed the bonus to be doubled for any objective where the director over-achieved by 5% or more. As a result my boss would enter the negotiations armed with proposals that I'd carefully selected as being acceptably challenging (inevitably a few targets would get missed), but ensuring that over-achievement was possible across most of the measures. And the weighting of the bonus for each objective was also considered by me before the boss sat down with the UK CEO.
Dirty, dirty business, but as Dominic Connor would perhaps say, know who you have to please, because despite what shareholders think, in practice it's not the company that pays your salary...
"Yeah and that's what should end, rendered illegal, these scumbag schemes your types play."
My types? Get lost mate, I'm not one of these lucky bastards. I'm a mere underling who has taken the king's shilling, but is wise enough to understand that.
I can't speak for you, but most of the rest of the commentariat are likewise working to make rich people richer, even if they can't see that.
Curiously, my master's dissertation was on financial performance, and the evidence is overwhelming that you get what you incentivise, for better or worse. The main problem is that what is incentivised is wrong. In my case I made sure that the games I was playing still delivered what the business needed, but not everybody does. In particular, the execs who didn't have a good henchman to manage these things tended to end up benefiting (or losing) from incentive schemes that rewarded them for doing nothing or even the wrong things.
Incentive schemes shouldn't be illegal, they should be mandatory, but with the significant change to permit retrospective clawback and pension rights cancellation. That way incompetent c*nts like Notsir Fred Goodwin would now be walking around in sackcloth and ashes, instead of enjoying an obscene and undeserved pension whilst he laughs at the rest of us.
Look beyond the headlines - Huge year in Server & Tools - taken LOADS of market share from VMWare. Great year through Office - O365 smacking Google. The Database area growing YOY - taking Oracle share every single quarter.
Have a look at the real stats. I'd be careful before bagging him to much... !
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