Excellent piece on Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezo. The part that intrigued me was this –
Make no mistake, Amazon rewards its teams. It’s just that restricted stock that becomes valuable only over time — and more valuable only if the company succeeds — is the primary reward. For example, Jeff Wilke, who runs Amazon’s North American consumer business, one of its largest, earned a salary last year of $165,000. That reflected a $5,000 raise from the previous year. Save one peer with an ancient employment agreement, no one at Amazon makes more than Wilke. (That includes Bezos, whose annual salary is just under $82,000. Bezos receives no restricted stock awards either. Then again, his founder shares are worth about $19 billion.) For his part, Wilke held restricted stock worth more than $20 million earlier in the year. The stock performance clearly helps retention, but it isn’t the primary motivator for Amazon’s recruiting. “You go to Amazon because there’s something big going on,” says Dave Cotter, another recently departed executive who also is working on a startup of his own. “Other companies pay more.”
This makes our bloated non productive, non innovating, non customer focussed CEO’s looked like a bunch of overpaid hacks – which of course they are………..
