Executives also have to hold lots of stock that tanks when the company does poorly. Should workers also be forced to hold 100% of their RSUs as long as they work there and be paid 80% in RSUs? Even senior SWEs make 50% tops in RSUs and can sell their stock as soon as it vests with no restrictions. They get top ups to make up for poor stock performance. Their personal exposure to the company (risk!) is way lower than any executive. The CEO has effectively made negative salary due to their stock tanking.
Should companies be forced to keep unproductive or no longer useful workers? Clearly there is not enough customer demand for Robinhood to continue employing their ops/content/etc. workers. What are those workers going to do then, if they keep working?
If it’s so risky, why do CEO’s end up making 350x the typical employee? Those poor CEO’s taking all that risk to be compensated at a rate equivalent to 351 employees.
> taking all that risk to be compensated at a rate equivalent to 351 employees
Do you understand how risk works? If you take on more risk, you should be compensated for that risk, else it doesn't make sense for you to take so much risk if you can get the same reward by taking less risk.
Executives as a whole (CEOs, VPs, even directors!) take a lot more risk - career and financial risk - than your typical line engineers. Their success depends on the success of the initiatives they lead, which can be subject to macro or competitive factors entirely outside their control. Those initiatives are generally longer timeline, meaning they have less chances at bat (and thus higher variance in outcome) than an IC. And a shitty IC can always be rehired pretty much trivially. If your company fails with you at the helm, you're not getting another CEO job. For example, Carly Fiorina has never held another management role in a large multinational corporation after her failure at HP.
On top of that, executives have to hold a large portion of their compensation as stock which they are barred from selling as long as they work at the company. If the company tanks, they take a retroactive paycut, often times upwards of 50%. They don't get refreshers to boost their comp back to original levels like ICs either.
Yeah CEOs nowadays have quite excessive compensation. But they will never have compensation at a single digit multiple of the average employee. The risk they take is too big for that to sufficiently compensate them.
Should companies be forced to keep unproductive or no longer useful workers? Clearly there is not enough customer demand for Robinhood to continue employing their ops/content/etc. workers. What are those workers going to do then, if they keep working?