The CEO of the company I work at proudly tells us that his compensation is mostly stock, so if we’re not doing well as a company, he will not get paid.
He thinks this will sound like he’s got skin in the game and is making some kind of sacrifice.
What it actually tells me is that he is aligned to shareholders, not customers or staff. And that he cares about the stock price, which is not at all the same things as whether we are doing well as a company.
I wish I had understood this years ago. I probably would have found a better place to work.
Ehhhhh
Stock price is absolutely tied to the perceived performance and anticipated future performance of the company.
The problem is that most departments of a company are profit centers and therefore there is a huge incentive to squeeze the most return (product features, sales, etc) from that investment (your salary). They will abuse you just hard enough so you don’t quit. Or they will abuse you endlessly because the churn is factored into it.
The company doing well is only loosely tied to morale. Yes happier employees probably perform better but it’s not the best return on the investment.
You’re right that stock price is something.
Companies serve three groups:
- customers
- staff
- shareholders
Stock price measures #3. And one out of three is a pretty shitty overall score.
Before someone tells me that shareholders are everything, and that this is capitalism, I understand your point but if any of 1, 2, or 3 stop participating, the company stops functioning. All three must be served. You just waved aside staff as a bag of feelings, but they literally do everything at the company.
Companies don’t serve staff. Staff is a necessary evil to them.
Yeah yeah. You’re saying that corporate leaders don’t care about people, and we all know that. But the company has to offer staff something to come in and work, right? They get paid right? I’m not saying everyone needs to get desk massages and blow jobs. But there has to be something in it for the staff or there is no company. It sucks to work somewhere that the staff get bare minimum. But the best companies in the world offer a lot more than that, because talent is worth it.
Fuck spez
I mean, credit where it’s due. If not for him, I’d probably be browsing Reddit right now instead of Lemmy. So, there’s that.
It just got so bad. I can’t imagine how terrible it is now. I would love to see post pandemic stats.
I still surf both. Unpopular, I know, but Lemmy does not yet have the super niche communities that barely exist on reddit.
Imo, it’s about the same. Some subs have gotten worse, some have gotten better, but that’s how it’s always been.
I do Google search for specific beer questions.
Example: Reddit+Syracuse NY+best breweries
That’ll give me good info without having to get on Reddit.
Say what you want about Adolf Hitler, but he did kill Adolf Hitler.
Fuck spez
That depends, how much is he paying me to do so?
ew
Eh, for 190 million USD, I’d do it.
I’d do it for 200k, and not a penny less
Well if you need the money that badly, then I won’t stop you.
Yeah. You’d have to be an idiot to work for that guy for free at this point, unfortunately.
If only there were an alternative platform to Reddit that we could use instead.
It is not really an alternative. So many people here complaining about quality, and the constant desire for this not to become the new Reddit.
But that’s exactly what it needs to become. A place where mindless users can post the same silly crap every day, without getting shit for it. And without being rattled by entitled mods that feel they should be compensated for doing what they want to do.
Let communities talk and mods just be mods, not critics.
deleted by creator
It took a really long time for Reddit to reach a point to where it was decent and attracting new communities. I am hoping all the niche little places move over to Lemmy, or at least off Reddit.
If there is a niche community you miss, you could start it over here. I have no idea how to go about doing it, but it might be worth it for you. Start making this the better place.
The problem is defederation. It basically breaks the entire concept of the “fediverse” and will prevent critical mass. Each instance becomes a little fiefdom. There should instead be the ablility to create and share extremely configurable filters (ala ad block lists). People can say and do whatever whilst simultaneously choosing what they do and don’t want to see at the individual level. The benefit is everyone sees what they want while also not losing access to any communities simply due to an egotripping instance provider. Kind of like an urbit model that isn’t so esoteric and weird.
This and the duplication of communities and also the fact that my account is not just a generic, across the verse account, but specific to an instance that can shut down or disaaper and remove all my preferences and post history.
These things were what was confusing when I joined and what I still think are the biggest issues with this platform. The fact that I hypothetically look up reddit alternative, find Lemmy, join the first one that shows up in the results without knowing any better, look up communities and there’s like 5 of the same ones or none because it’s defederated from others, the instance blocks NSFW communities because they are prudes, is blocked by others for various reasons, and then they could shutdown a week later removing my account is just insane user experience tbh.
I was wondering why there was no NSFW communities.
So none of the places on the Lemmy I have joined are part of the larger Lemmiverse? Or only some of it is?
You can check blocked stuff here https://sopuli.xyz/instances. Your instance is not blocking NSFW so most probably you need to check your account settings. There is a “show NSFW” checkmark in there.
I didn’t know this, thank you for explaining.
Perhaps instead of pissing and moaning you could actually post something in a community here to start the process of growing new forums.
I was early to Reddit. I think my account was created around 2007. I can assure you that it was similar to Lemmy now. Building a community takes time.
The comic book strips on Lemmy seem to be depressing.
Possibly because many users coming to Lemmy are pissed off by something. It’s not a platform for fun users, but for grumpy old cats wanting their unachievable utopian discussion forum, where all behave the same as they do. ;)
Criticise lemmy and prepare for downvotes deluxe.
You gotta be dumb as fuck to work for free at a profit company
The mods are working ‘for their community’. It’s just that that’s happening on a profit companys platform.
deleted by creator
Nobody’s making them be mods. I’m not pro reddit at all, but a tool is a tool, do what you want with it.
Yeah, any company will take free work.
How are mods landed gentry? I spent my time as a Reddit mod with Nazis trying to dox me and threaten me, before Reddit banned me for making fun of Nazis.
It always amazed me how the literal Nazi accounts could tell me to off myself, that they would kill my family, and other such things, and they somehow don’t violate the TOS.
But me trying to delete my posts is an automatic prime directive rule breaker and my account gets banned.
Holy fuck that happened? That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry big shoots.
Because we made demands? Idk I spent my time being called slurs and having people try to assure me that I was the one that was an unlovable freak. Or trying to tell me I was going to hell. Or calling for my public execution. Shit like that
Ah yes or bring called basement dwelling edgelords.
Yeah that was weird because as a mod of only queer focused communities I got that one mostly as part of the freak category.
I still laugh at the person in modmail saying they were rich and just trolling us while out with friends and their hot partner as though that wouldn’t actually be even sadder if it was true
I wouldn’t say all were and, seeing your comments further down, loved your work. Beholdthemasterrace was hilarious. I’m sure it went down for legitimate reasons and not just because “all traffic is meaningful” and the money they generate from nazis spends just as well as everyone else’s, so they don’t want to upset them…
There are groups of mods who choose to promote themselves above the respectable digital janitor we all know to be necessary to more of a narrative and public opinion curator. Especially on the more news based subs. I don’t think they even try to hide it these days.
Re Behold, the subreddit owner Sedorner decided to leave it dark in protest permanently. It’s sad. It was so good to mock those pieces of shit out loud. Nazis don’t deserve any protection, but Reddit thinks otherwise.
Could you elaborate? There is more than one mod (previously) on Reddit who is infamous for assigning nasty labels like that to all their dissenters indiscriminately. So thanks to their actions, your use of the distinction of a vocal group as Nazis is uselessly ambiguous. What sub of degens?
I genuinely don’t understand how we, as a society, reached a point where delusional businessmen like this exist. What can he possible do, to justify earning this much money, while his company is literally failing in real time
Unfettered capitalism.
Time to tax the corporations and the wealthy for their fair share again.
Want to solve almost all our problems? Redistribute wealth from the 1% who spend it on yachts to the rest of us to spend on healthcare, wages, etc.
Small business owner making 6 figures a year? I am not talking about you.
Spez, making 9 figures? That is who I am talking about and where the problem lies.
End stage capitalism. The snake is eating its tail.
Yes, tax them! Failing to do so is one of the greatest failings of neoliberalism. And of course conservatives have always defaulted to giving corporations everything.
You know, in 1968, just 56 years ago, corporations were paying 52.8% tax rate! This allowed us to invest in our own people and fund so many wonderful programs for growth and prosperity. And these corporations paying over 50% of their profits in taxes were happy to do so! Because it meant they got to do business in the USA.
Now that they aren’t being taxed at even half that rate, what do they do? Buy politicians off for even lower taxes, purchase their own stock to artificially inflate its value, and pay dumbasses like spez 100s of millions of dollars yearly. And if those CEOs fuck up and tank the company? Golden parachute for you - multi-million dollar exit packages and easy access to new boards and leadership positions at other corporations. It’s sick.
All we are asking for is access to affordable healthcare, decent education to better ourselves and level up our skills, and the means to make a decent enough living to afford a roof over our heads and not have to panic about paying for it each month. This shouldn’t be too much to ask in a nation of such incredible excess.
The reality of his compensation package is a lot more nuanced. The 9 figure number is eye popping, but he’s being paid less than $2 million over 2023-2024, and almost all of the rest is contingent upon a successful IPO and then reaching a set of (incredibly unrealistic) stock valuation benchmarks. Reddit’s stock has to hit something like $45/share for him to see 8 figures and $90/share for him to realize the full amount.
I’m in no way defending this pay package or his shitty behavior, just pointing out that he’s not just getting handed $200 million outright
but he’s being paid less than $2 million over 2023-2024
Read that again. Someone making federal minimum wage would have to work 8 hours a day 5 days a week with no sick days and still wouldn’t make that much in like 130 years, which is well beyond even a generous human lifespan let alone the usable years of a lifespan.
That federal minimum wage is grossly below what is needed just to survive is a different argument, except that it’s people like Steve that are responsible for the disparity between income and subsistence level.
I read it when I wrote it, I’m comparing $2M to $200M here, not to minimum wage, and not defending anyone
That’s the problem though, you’re comparing two ridiculous numbers for one person to make in a year and trying to convince us that one is less bad for some reason. Their both psychotic. And yes, you are in fact defending it as evidenced by you replying to defend it. Come on, man.
$2 million over two years is actually a pretty reasonable salary for the founder and CEO of a major company by comparison to other major companies, and is two orders of magnitude less than $200 million. Two orders of magnitude less than $2 million is $20,000, that’s the scale of difference we’re talking about here
Already hit 45
Entitlement. He got better because he comes from a well to do family and all the privileges that brings. He believes he deserves it, plain and simple.
Someone tell those Reddit mods they could earn double on Lemmy.
Double of nothing is, let me do the math here, nothing into nothing, carry the nothin’…
That douche can go fuck himself
Why does he need to?
He’s made thousands of people work for him for free and contribute data for him to sell for free. By most business definitions he’s a legend that all other ceos wish they could copy.
Exactly. Reddit mods and Wikipedia admins both get to be kings of their little fiefdoms. The power/pride/whatever is payment enough, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. They are intrinsically motivated.
Being a mod for something you are passionate about is intoxicating. It is an awesome feeling to know you’ve contributed to the growth of something you care about.
Spez is such a fuckin tool
I mean i would do tht same thing if I were in his position. The mods are dumb as shit to do a job for free and the site has been astroturfed for over a decade. Just embrace the bullshit and get paid and laid and sail off into the sunset. Alternatively he’s probably going to suck it dry and then sail off.
The mods who stayed after the API desaster are lost.
That seems a little reductive. I’ve never moderated anything, but I bet if I spent years building up a community I would also find it hard to just walk away.
You don’t have to walk away, you can migrate. This is more an issue of building your house on the king’s land. The mods that stayed should serve as a warning to the rest of us that building a Reddit community means that Reddit owns the community you created, and that as a moderator Reddit owns you.
Anyone who’s ever tried to get a friend group to change chat apps knows this isn’t simple.
I imagine doing it with a few thousand people is even more difficult.
Oh geeze, so much. “Hey just grab Signal real quick, it’s super simple and private and SMS seems to get worse as time goes on anyway. Plus I can send you better pictures and videos!”
“Lol meh why you tryin to sell it to me.”
It’s weird, the things people really dig in their heels on. They’ll download apps for the silliest thing but “another chat app” is such an inconvenience.
It’s the only reason I think reddit dot com still resolves at all anymore. If the users weren’t the product, to both the company and other users, better alternatives would be the norm by now.
I tried to get my friend group to move to Signal from FB messenger because I did not want that nasty shit on my phone anymore. They were not interested at all and acted like it was the most inconvenient thing in the world. I ended up uninstalling FB messenger anyway and only check it on my desktop and rarely respond now unless it is a one on one conversation or directed at me in a group chat. I told them if they want/need to get in touch with me right away to use old school SMS or actually call me.
You don’t have to imagine it. The official piracy subreddit did it.
This is the truth that it hurts. Then again, they are non techy folks and use what mainstream uses
I don’t see why you need to bring everyone over with you. Even just a hundred is more than enough for a community
You don’t have to walk away, you can migrate.
We tried that with Lemmy and many great communities only have one or two people posting consistently.
Most people don’t care about behind the scenes
It depends, if mods were fully onboard and had a plan it definitely works. Just look at Piracy or Star Trek communities.
I just checked the Star Trek community on reddit and it’s still up with 753k members and 189 online. The Lemmy versions I can find are a fraction of that.
The idea of Lemmy is great but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking big communities actually migrated.
Depends on what your standard is, to me a community on here having 100+ daily users is already a huge success. I don’t think people expect the whole subreddit to migrate, just enough to have roughly the same amount of content/interaction.
Then its not a migration, which is what we’re talking about.
If you’re happy leaving a group of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in some communities for a group of 100 that’s cool, but don’t spin it as a successful migration.
The rest of the world didn’t even realize we left.
And look at the ttrpg.network community for a counterexample, they still have a pinned post on the dndmemes subreddit advertising Lemmy and ttrpgmemes gets like .1% of the traffic dndmemes does. And this is still after a months-long rebellion complete with allowing NSFW and restricting submissions to a single user account, both things that would normally kill a subreddit dead.
The best thing about his deeply fuckheaded comments is that it’s a perfect example of the sick way the ultra wealthy operate, presented in a way reddit users can absolutely understand.
The act of building early reddit was a group effort. I have no idea how much Spez contributed to the concept, but he did code it – a task that realistically millions of people also would have been able to do.
But a platform without users is nothing. It was the users creating content that truly built reddit and the unpaid moderators who stopped it collapsing under the weight of spam and extremism.
While that was happening, spez shit the bed over and over again. He sold out too early. He openly advocated platforming extremists. He got called out for the bigotry he tolerated in his company. He alienated his most important users so he could sell their content to AI companies.
And now here we are. He makes an absurd amount of money, despite being shit at his job, despite being a clearly bad person and despite his accomplishments being ordinary. Meanwhile, the people he needs, who are critical to his business, are paid nothing.
This is the same setup as Amazon, Walmart, Uber and a million other businesses, distilled down to its very essence.
Billionaires don’t earn their money. Nobody can earn that much because nobody is that valuable. The ultra wealthy only exist, because they stole from the people below them on the ladder. They stole their wages, benefits, pensions, unions, and pocketed the money. If you’re ultra rich, you did it by fucking over the people below you.
And it’s time we fuck them right back.
If we could, we would have already. We can’t really, and he is in a position to be as greedy as he can possibly imagine. $193M is in his pocket right? We all mad but who is gonna take it away? Appeals to decency are cute but a waste of time. He put himself in a position where he can sell things that he didn’t make nor that belong to him and it’s all legal and that’s reality.
Of course we could. We just don’t think it’s worth it because we’re not starving to death at large. We’re in the comfort zone still where it’s better to sit down and be mostly obedient.
oh god the 2nd graders are readin marx agin
Similarly, in the midst of historic layoffs in the tech industry, no one blames the CEO for horrible management leading to the over hiring or bad management that led to this. O one blames Zuckerberg for renaming his company and betting an an absurdity that is already being scraped off of PR releases. All because some growth number goes up. It’s insanity.
Employee wages are often the largest expense for a business and they’re always trying to have fewer employees, squeezed harder for more work and less pay.
It really undermines their whole “oh they’re just unskilled labor and drones, they don’t deserve a living wage” rhetoric. If Amazon didn’t need warehouse workers and delivery drivers, they wouldn’t have them. They could be working for $1 a day and they’d still be fired the instant that role was no longer needed.
They get away with it because they just need somebody doing the work and there’s no shortage of desperate, exploited people. Unions and collective bargining definitely help but ultimately the government needs to advocate for workers and simply say things like “If you use slaves at any step in your supply chain, you and everyone you report to is going to jail and your assets will be stripped to cover the pay you owe them”.
It’s such a low fucking bar. Almost every law we have boils down to “don’t be a piece of shit” but we don’t make them for rich people or use them to cover foreign workers.
I don’t understand why the mods continue to work. They literally keep the site alive so this guy can take all the credit and all the compensations.
Being able to contribute to a community can feel very rewarding even when you get little to no compensation for it. Many open source contributors know it all too well that their contributions can and will be used by big tech to make even more money.
he sold out too early
I’m actually kind of interested in this point. Going public for many people is about the growth in the company. No one wants to put money in apple because its stocks are expensive. Its because they forsee it going up.
But i thibk youre right he sold out too early. Peope are willing to invest because of the potential outcome of selling api data to ai companies. People are interested to hear the potential financial increase of api prices making more profit. People may be interested of the potential change of nfts or whatever to drive more money.
But all of that has already happened, hes sold out all those items before the ipo. So i feel like a lot of people are like “what growth left is there?” And infact “is that growth negative going forward as users turn away or are hungry to jump ship if possible”
Who knows though what will happen, maybe im entirely wrong.
He actually sold out early in a much more obvious, objective way.
Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million. Huffman remained with Reddit until 2009, when he left his role as acting CEO.
That’s a tiny fraction of his current compensation. He then spent a while backpacking around and started a mediocre company that’s since closed down.
He is neither a shrewd businessman, coding god, nor visionary genius. He’s just some guy that was in the right place at the right time.
The same is true of practically every executive pocketing grotesque compensation, with the only difference being “the right place at the right time” is more often “in a rich woman’s womb” or “at an extremely expensive school”.
He isn’t being paid $200 million a year for his talent. He’s being paid $200 million a year because instead of paying staff better wages, or not enshittifying the site, or paying moderators and content creators, he simply pocketed that money for himself.
It’s what this neoliberal utopia always is. Executives stealing workers wealth and claiming they earned it for stealing so much wealth.
Unfortunately, the fact that they understand it doesn’t mean they will do anything about it.
Since he took back over, Spez has been making reddit an objectively worse experience. Doesn’t deserve that pay.
