Tim cooking up the dough as his Apple pay rises 18% to $74.6M Apple supremo Tim Cook bagged an 18 percent pay rise in 2024, taking his total compensation to $74.6 million, according to a regulatory filing. The total remuneration package consisted of a $3 million base salary – unchanged in recent years – as well as $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive plan …
I can never fathom how some executives get a double digit percent rise of their already sometimes stupid number pay, whereas the workers have to fight for a 4% rise to their often meagre pay. We're all equal in that there's only so many hours in a day, it's not as if Tim can do more hours work in a day than his office cleaner. Shit! I sound like some commie loon!
Thats simple. Cost x Volume. Its always going to be simpler to justifiy an eye watering increase for 1 person versus a meager increase for thousands because guess which one hits the bottom line more?
Its especially easy when you have to look the one person in the eyes vs averting your gaze from the unwashed masses.
The total remuneration package consisted of a $3 million base salary – unchanged in recent years – as well as $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, and $1.52 million in terms of all other compensation
Only the $3 million base salary is taxed as pay, the rest is tax in a different way, and I would guess at a lot lower rate too.
In lots of white collar jobs pay and benefits are referred to as compensation. Covers things like Private Healthcare, stock options, pension contributions and the like....
One of my previous employers policies was never to refer to your gross or net salary but always Total Comp (-ensation) - so they could inflate it to some ridiculously large number you would never see or need until you told the recruiter for your next job "my total package is worth X".
Useful of HR to supply it for me ;)
"Why is executive pay refered to as "compensation"?"
There can be a considerable number of perks such as club memberships, use of company assets such as jets, housing, wardrobe, insurance, chauffeured livery, etc, ad nauseam. Stock options or outright grants are often a large piece which are offered to keep the executives head in the game. Since largish outlays have to be assigned to some account on the ledger, the company can't just gloss over that the Gulfstream jet was being used for holidays at no expense to the executive. A lot of it is a tax thing. I'm sure they tuck many more things that don't add up to more than noise into places that aren't counted as compensation. Meals might be one of those things that find their way to some obscure line item or the private kitchen's expenses get rolled into the accounting for the employee cafeteria.
Just like how the band Disaster Area needed an account with a doctorate in theoretical accounting to limit the taxes needing paying, the same applies to companies of a certain size. It's also much easier to hide things in a big company just like it isn't in a one bedroom flat with two kitchen cabinets and a wardrobe.
There are different sorts of people I suppose. I can't comprehend what keeps these people going.
If I had the multi-millions I would find a nice property with space for a four post lift and about a tennis courts worth of indoor parking/workshop and retire there.
Which is why I'll never have the multi-millions.
Funnily enough, I did. Well, I didn't have the multi-millions, but I was earning enough to put in the two-post lift in the large garage and pay off the mortgage, at which point I mostly stopped working. I think I can thoroughly recommend it, although to be honest I'm still making the mental shift to not having to look for customers, which is taking a while.
GJC
>Elon Musk wants about 700 times as much for running Tesla.
Well to be fair, Apple has an excellent product line, beloved of it's customers and an insanely profitable captive app-store and streaming market.
Tesla is a disastrously unprofitable company, with a disastrous production line and new product launches that are a laughing stock and many competitors making much better offerings that can only be kept out by tariffs.
So Musk deserves much more money for having to manage this shit sandwich
now we’ll see what Trump does about that
Given that it was a state court who ruled that.
Musk can simply have the board vote him the same package effective in 2025. Then it is done under the laws/courts of Tesla's new corporate HQ in Texas rather than its former corporate HQ in Delaware. Not sure why he's fighting that battle against Delaware when it seems pretty clear that Tesla's shareholders are willing to bend over and spread them as wide as Musk wants.
"Twice rejected by courts, now we’ll see what Trump does about that."
The judge did comment on the excessive amount of the bonus, but was mostly concerned that shareholders were not given all of the information needed to make a proper decision and the board wasn't acting in the best interest of the shareholder in putting forward the package that Elon wrote for himself. The way it was done was very atypical. It's usually a board that formulates a compensation plan to negotiate with executives via a "compensation committee". When all but one or two board members have to recuse themselves, it's hard to see how that would work.
Posting anon because.....
CEOs and other Exec get paid the ludicrous money they get paid because of market rates. Just like you me and everyone else. The difference is they get to set the market rate based on all CxOs believing they are special snowflakes who bring some fantastic unique skill or ability the role. It's in their own interest to not only set or advocate for their own pay but to point at others and say see, that's what "good" leadership pays so my paltry 18% pay rise, RFUs, options etc. etc. are quite reasonable.
Most CEOs got to where they are, whether competent or not, by being very good at reading a room, positioning themselves and their ideas in the most advantageous way possible and having no qualms about using and disposing anyone or anything to further their career. Most worked their way up the career ladder by being that person.
But they are enabled too by the shareholders, the pension funds, insurance etc. that invest in that company. Never quite understood how that passed a smell test.
If a single person can turn up and push through decisions that make a lot of money for a company then they are worth a chunk of that extra money that their input generated.
If they create a dismal failure then they are worth nothing. But few supposed talent are going to take on a job where it might cost them personally. The start up entrepreneurs who actually take risks are the exception.
Ok, so where I work we bought 35+ Mac Pros 6 years ago.
They were the wine cooler ones - remember them?
They produced vast amounts of heat even at rest which meant that at maximum performance they produced some quite impressive heat; the air handling system (lame) struggled to keep the temp in the main teaching area - university - below 23°c.
Those machines were retired in the summer of '23 because they couldn't run Sonoma, ergo they were not going to receive further security updates which means they're unusable.
These were replaced with M2 Studios.
USB connectivity has proved to be a nightmare with these; mice go awol. Epson Scanners won't function properly but then work ok when the USB cable is removed and reconnected. The mouse fails again. WTF?
Only x2 USB ports which with x2 Eizo displays are required for calibration - another testicular ache with Mac OS.
Meanwhile 6 year old Dell Alienware PCs still work and will upgrade to W11.
Go figure why people still pay a premium for Macs.
BTW our Mac guy is awesome.
It takes a brave person to mention any faults with Apple kit. But they're computers, they have faults, like all computers. So, not for me, but if you prefer Apple, for any reason, that's cool, too. The only thing I hate about the market in general and Apple in particular is all the very many people who get tribal about it. Make your choice, and let me make my choice. You want to discuss the pros and cons over a beer? I'm right there. You want to tell me your choice is all pros and no cons and I'm wrong in my choice? Yeah, you can FRO.
GJC
"Those machines were retired in the summer of '23 because they couldn't run Sonoma, ergo they were not going to receive further security updates which means they're unusable."
Those MacPros can run the latest MacOS, just not officially. My cheesegrater is currently running Big Sur only because it's my production machine and it's a chore to back 'everything' up and update it some more. My late 2014 iMac is running Ventura and I think I can go further, but there's no point.
The down side of the Studio is the storage is soldered on. Louis Rossman has shown that if a NAND chip fails, it often fails shorted so the whole machine is borked at that point. If a drive goes Tango Uniform in my 2012 MacMini, I can extract it and fit a new one, restore from backup and be going in a day or so. I think the only recourse with the newer soldered storage models is to send them to Apple at considerable expense until they sunset the support. I haven't had occasion to find out if the chips can be sourced, replaced and the computer revived by anybody outside of Apple.
I like lots of ports and I like many different flavors so there isn't a need for the computer to figure out that I'm using one USB-C with an ethernet adapter to connect to the network. It might be handy that it can, but it's one that can be dedicated just like a monitor connection, audio I/O, etc. I also like having PCI expansion slots since it means that 3rd parties can extend functionality that isn't built in. If Apple gets rid of that sort of thing, many creatives are going to move to Windows for audio and video work that needs that sort of expansion. Lose that market and consumers are likely to shift to disposable Chrome boxes for their desktop computer.
Something that’s always baffled me - what do you do with that amount of income pa??
OK you can have a very luxurious lifestyle and not worry about how you’re going to pay for your next meal but - just what do you do with it? Tim Cook has no kids so it’s not as if he has put money away for them so where does it all go??
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