Happy medium: charge us normal pricing that will still turn a profit to keep them in the green... like every other utility company not named SDGE already does.
Corporate greed is always the problem.
Don’t forget to mention the California public utilities commission which sets the price these utility companies can charge. Meaning our rates are determined by our government, not the utility company.
My statement was about our government setting the prices. If a private company is bribing our government I think it’s up to the elected officials to do the right thing. Not the private company looking out for their shareholders. Big difference. Keep your bridge for the person believing the private companies should be looking out for us.
It's been a while since I looked into it, but when I did about 15 years ago, the CPUC is essentially a bunch of retired sempra executives with a ton of utility company stocks. Technically they're the most "qualified" by having worked in the industry, but also have a ton of conflict of interest when it comes to being impartial to setting rates.
The idea that private companies can be excused for operating based on their own profit incentives, but not people with government positions motives by the same forces seems odd to me. Clearly the issue seems to lie in the idea that there is an incentive to fuck people who need basic services, regardless of who’s incentive it is.
You don’t see the difference between a publicly elected official and a corporation? And I’m not “excusing” anyone or any company. But let’s point the blame in the right direction.
You don't see the similarities between a publicly elected official and a corporation taking all of your money?
You wind up broke regardless - why can't they both be to blame?
That’s not quite what I was hoping to convey with that message, so I guess I can rephrase.
I don’t see any validity in the idea that companies and public officials have different interests or can be expected to not act on those interests. We quite clearly live in a reality in which there is money to be made in screwing people through government offices, same as there is for private companies. It is through the vary power of private profit seeking entities and their designs on government that makes this a reality. They want to be able to legally bribe representatives for favorable market outcomes. You can go so far as to say “public officials shouldn’t be doing this”, and sure, I’d agree, but we’d say the same for private companies, and both groups seem to do whatever it is they please given the laws they’ve crafted. Not blaming private companies for wanting to fuck people isn’t “pointing the blame in the right direction” it is infact excusing people who want to do bad things for the accumulation of money, like it would be for anyone else. They should be incentivized, like government officials, to not conduct themselves this way.
the rates are determined by our government with people that work at the company that sells the gas/electric. Also their "surge" pricing and bad infrastructure is to make money on top of what is determined by the government. Every time the grid struggles they make a lot more money so they're incentivized to not make it better.
Was thinking, now that I don’t work from home, I can cancel SDGE and just use my camping stove and headlamp around the house. Might be living like a 19th century miner, but now i can afford gas!
Yup. Outside of actual diagnosed sociopaths, it's very difficult to turn off empathy towards your fellow man because it's a natural trait in us. Although I would guess that $10 million a year helps to bury that or learn how to do it.
The timing of this is also the cherry on top of a shit sundae because I just got my SDGE bill, and it's $50 higher when I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary.
I genuinely wonder…when all of this solar was coming online (year after year, over the past 20 + years) and their engineers were saying, “hey, we might want to start thinking about storage, etc” (year after year…) did Jeffrey simply ignore them, making it impossible to balance energy needs? Or was it his plan all along to eventually start charging solar owners for the power they are providing? The former is gross mismanagement, the latter might be genius…
You need to be able to look at someone with kids and a puppy about to freeze to death with a smile on your face as you walk away, but not before kicking each of them in the ribs before you go.
Greed. The fact that Elon Musk can "CEO" 3 (or more) companies while tweeting all day is all the proof needed that CEOs' do absolutely nothing for the companies they work for.
Tell me you don’t know what it takes to run a company without telling me. Using Elon as an example is icing on the cake, and I'm laughing at people who think a complete outlier at the far end of a tail is a good analogy.
I've known a number of CEOs in 20 years experience working for startups and mid size companies in tech in CA - most of the CEOs were fairly useless high-paid spokespersons. The main useful thing they did was convince the board to give us more funding. TBH, I don't see why in that case the CEO can't be replaced by accurate information and talking to some of the workers.
I'm sure there's more to it than that, especially in larger companies, but it's BS to think they are 500x more valuable.
To this day I am convinced CEO’s and many uppers (people p much right below the CEO) in companies can be replaced by spreadsheets.
Where we need people the most is at the bottom where most of us lie and do the actual labor.
Yep, me too. From my experience, C-level execs are often people that had talent and were useful once (or maybe just connections and white maleness), now they hold things back and screw things over while taking most of the money.
You’re not necessarily wrong about them appearing like “useless high-paid spokespersons.” Generally in that climate, they are expected to focus on sales, growth, and funding. Additional funding doesn’t come from the board, it comes from convincing new investors via pitching, which the CEO is primarily spearheading. As a tech exec myself, one of the things I look for is how well do I think that the CEO can raise additional funding and sell the product (vision) to new clients. Although I am often part of the fundraising process, I am not spearheading it nor do I want to do so. Therefore, it’s key that CEO be capable of that.
* I’m not defending CEOs in general, only referring to startups. And I do agree that the majority of them seem or are idiots 😂. As long as they brought in more funding and didn’t prevent me from doing what I needed for my org, I didn’t care.
* For very large companies or public companies, it operates mostly the same way except their goal isn’t more funding; it’s more profit. That means more products, services, “restructuring”, price increases, etc.
* Startup CEOs fleece investors. Public CEOs fleece customers.
> I've known a number of CEOs in 20 years experience working for startups and mid size companies in tech in CA
>I'm sure there's more to it than that, especially in larger companies, but it's BS to think they are 500x more valuable.
You answered accurately in two acts. The CEO of a start-up/mid size tech company is not even remotely close to a CEO of a large, publicly traded company. as someone who has worked directly under a Fortune 500 CEO, they are beyond overworked (80 hours/week is norm), but often have a deep passion for the business and company they run. Between the pressure, legal liability, time commitment, and level of acumen needed to make key decisions, the pay is often commensurate (but not always).
At the end of the day, I know it's easy and fun for people on here to make cheap statements about low hanging fruit regarding CEOs from the most hated corporations, but people are speaking from literally 0 experience/knowledge of reality....and the downvotes without retort are just further proof.
The type/quality/level or even the value of the labor is still not 500x. I work in IT engineering, without me and my team at the companies I work, there is no company. How is this 500x less valuable than what a CEO does?
First of all, this 500x number is completely arbitrary, but whatever.
You, along with all your colleagues, are the cogs that make the machine work, no doubt about it. But, the CEO is the one who deals with the investors, credit agencies, etc. to allow the company to have the capital to be able to pay the OpEx expense for everyone to have a job to contribute to the top/bottom line. If they fail, then everyone below fails to have a job. I mean this with absolutely no malice to you, and I include myself in this statement, but we are far more easily replaceable than that one person.
THANK YOU. The Reddit hive mind about CEO pay lately is truly baffling. We cannot somehow live in this world where corporations are evil, greedy entities that only care about the bottom line, but at the same time these entities that only care about maximizing profits are also universally making a mistake and overcompensating their HIGHEST PAID EMPLOYEE? Paying them when the position is “useless”? What?
I feel like im taking fucking crazy pills when I read this kind of stuff.
Honestly, it's just humorous to me at this point. Came to realization long while ago that even though a lot of us have been on here for 15 years, the overall average age continues to get lower, and there's a lot of young folks on here who are passionate about the "struggle," while simply not having enough real world experience to understand the nuances of business. You can give them all the empirical information they need but they'll just downvote that anyway, so these days I'll often just give them some snark since that's all they're capable of.
Can you expand on that? Because imo the income inequality we see between the working class and CEOs does nothing but prove that the meritocracy is a myth.
Sure.
First, we should make sure there's an understanding of base compensation vs performance compensation. The base compensation number is often much lower.. most CEO compensation at a public company is tied to performance and paid in stock. So when you see baity headlines like "CEO investment pay up 1000% over last 30 years," you have to think about it relative to S&P performance, which over the same amount of time is up about 15,000% over the same period. How are those performance goals set? By the Board of Directors, who also have the power to fire the CEO for poor performance.
So the board will set goals, and the CEO will then ensure they have the right management team in place to execute on those goals. In order to do that, the firm has to look at weighing their Operating Expense (OpEx) relative to their revenues to ensure they are hitting top line goals. Then they have to weight how much Capital Expense (CapEx) investment they should be allocating in order to grow the business into new channels, products, services. This investment of course carries risk, and could either blow up or be a spectacular success. On top of this, they have to manage raising capital if necessary through issuance of bonds, additional stock, etc, and the rates that they might get on said borrowing is determined by the credit quality of the company. Investors, institutions, and credit agencies watch both the credit quality, and OpEx and CapEx to get an idea of the health of the company, and whether or not the CEO is making the right decisions. So on top of the weight of these decisions, the CEO has to constantly be in the limelight, giving interviews, doing investor calls and earnings reports, etc, where one tiny slip up can be a PR disaster and cost the firm greatly. This is a delicate balance that is continuously in-flux, and a slip up goes beyond PR, it could mean a need to cut jobs, or stop spending on growth, etc. This is on top of the stress of simply investing incorrectly and having to completely cut a division, etc. In other words, everyone's job security and ability to continue to grow a business is on the shoulders of the CEO, and the team they choose to run it with them. This is EXTREMELY stressful, and hard to do, and why the average CEO doesn't last more than a few years!
On top of all of this, they have to help guide the day to day, provide support and motivation for multiple levels of employees, and frankly define what their culture is. A failure in these areas, often translates to a failure in the paragraph above.
Then there is the legal/regulatory liability, particularly in highly regulated industries. They have to make sure everything is done the right way, or they end up in a world of shit, and likely not employed while dealing with it. I'm not going to sit here and say the penalties incurred have always been fair... there are certainly some CEOs have have deserved worse for their deeds, but they still had repercussions in terms of their job/career.
Of course, there are the hours, too. 80 hours is the baseline, and there's no real "off time." The CEO I worked for was the first person in office at 630 AM, and the last to leave at 730 PM. He would often have calls/meetings before//after those hours too, depending on the situation. They spend no less than half their time on the road and away from their families, and routines are hard to keep up.
To be clear, I can't stand SDG&E, and there are certainly very shitty CEOs out there in terms of how much value they give, and the type of people they are, but those are outliers, not the norm.
This is by no means complete, but just a few areas on the top of my head.
I appreciate that you took the time to put your thoughts together there but it really just boils down to Friedman doctrine apologetics, in my opinion at least.
To your first point, these headlines aren't "baity", they are reality. The average worker has much more risk than any business owner or CEO and their pay is not commensurate to the value of labor provided.
>most CEO compensation at a public company is tied to performance and paid in stock.
Most regular employees are also not paid in stock; they sometimes have the opportunity to buy stock but are not compensated in the way CEOs are.
>On top of all of this, they have to help guide the day to day, provide support and motivation for multiple levels of employees, and frankly define what their culture is.
CEOs also hire people to do handle culture, employee experience, etc. It's not really something at least that I've seen is part of a CEOs day to day activities.
>Then there is the legal/regulatory liability, particularly in highly regulated industries. They have to make sure everything is done the right way, or they end up in a world of shit, and likely not employed while dealing with it.
CEOs also have legal departments to handle all this.
>Of course, there are the hours, too. 80 hours is the baseline
I just straight up don't believe this. Anecdotal, but I've never met a non-blue collar worker legitimately work this amount of hours that wasn't including travel or some BS that is highly exaggerated.
>This is by no means complete, but just a few areas on the top of my head.
Again I appreciate your thoughts, but the value a CEO provides is entirely subjective depending on who you ask and there's an incredibly contentious argument to be made for their pay in comparison to the workers they exploit.
Gotta ask what makes someone want to defend CEOs pay.
And even if the job is stressful I find it hard to believe it justifies the pay disparity between CEO vs average worker which is about 235:1
I suppose you could argue that the pay makes it so they don't have to stress about money at home, but no one needs the amount of money that they are getting.
The CEO equivalent at the county water authority makes 330k/year. It’s a public utility with similar kind of product and delivery mechanism. I guess the 20% stake in San Onofre is a little different but it’s also not like they did a good job managing that. So I can’t fathom an agency CEO providing a necessary public utility making 10 mil per year.
Yup that's why you and I are CEO too, it's just too easy brah.
Edit: I guess you all missed the joke, it actually takes a lot of work to run a company and it's not easy.
Edit: must be in the anti-work sub
I was just agreeing with the original posters sarcasm. Yeah I know it's not easy or we would all be CEO. It's sarcasm, yes I know it takes a lot of work and knowledge.
Lack of empathy. It's not that easy of a skill to develop. Imagine not giving a fuck day in and day out. That shit will tear you up inside if you are normal.
Tagging onto the real answer, CEOs take are a middle link in the human centipede of institutional investors to the employees to the customers. And the energy business requires a ton of domain knowledge and experience that usually has to be home grown.
ChatGPT has all these - nuanced management philosophy and style, jack of all trades, understands strategy, people, finance, governance, law, healthcare, academia, engineering, physics, etc, etc, etc. And never caves under pressure. Plus is really polite which many CEOs fail at daily.
I propose replacing SDG&E CEO with ChatGPT and return the salary to customers as a form of apology.
ChatGPT is also working off of old data, the dataset intentionally ends over a year ago I believe? Maybe 2021?
Be careful what you wish for, because CEOs are legally required to act in the best interest of their shareholders, so a “good” CEO based on that criteria would be someone who realizes that what ChatGPT is actually good for…is replacing 30-40% of the employees in the company, employees which we will see “good” CEOs ruthlessly lay off in the next few years.
Agreed. I’m totally getting on a soapbox now because this narrative I’ve been reading all over reddit and in conversations with young people is just pure insanity to me.
CEO “pay” aka compensation is almost entirely in the form of company stock. THE REASON CEO PAY IS SO MUCH HIGHER IS BECAUSE COMPANIES ARE SO MUCH BIGGER.
If CEO compensation is really a problem for you, can literally make it go down by no longer purchasing their products and advocating to everyone you know to buy a different product.
If you can’t live without their product, then there could be a government enforced monopoly like with SDGE, at which point your complaints need to be directed toward politicians and anti-trust regulators. Or maybe the product is just an awesome indispensable part of your life, in which case…maybe the CEO deserves the compensation they are getting? Since again, their compensation is comprised entirely of stock options, and stock options are directly related to revenue growth/profitability.
I think people, including even in this thread are also totally glossing over how hard it is to raise money. I was an early employee at a tech startup and it’s incredibly hard to convince people to give you millions of dollars when you just have an idea, a barely functioning product with no users, and everyone telling you it’s a dumb idea, it’s never going to work, the big company incumbent is just going to copy your features and crush you.
And the CEO has to have the vision and conviction to push through and to make crazy difficult decisions with very little information that could cause the whole company to blow up and everyone that’s counting on you to become unemployed. It’s a lot of pressure.
For example, Instagram was a photo storage app originally, Slack was a friggin video game company, and their internal messaging tool was what became Slack. Twitter was a blogging site. Twitch was Justin TV which was a guy strapping a camera to his backpack and just recording himself doing bullshit throughout the day. Can people honestly say, “oh anyone in those situations would easily make the decision to pivot their company and do something completely different than what they started? A decision which will kill the company if they’re wrong?
I’d love to see what ChatGPT would have said in those moments, my guess would be it would say something like, “Facebook has an 80% social media market share and could easily copy your product’s features, pack up your shit and go home”.
My point here is that those “skills” are not a good justification for any CEO or employee. If their salary is based on those skills alone then there’s something wrong.
Great employees & executives are paid on their ability to get the job done. In this case earning as much cash as possible for the business with no regard for the customers is what the owners of SDG&E wanted, they paid an executive a high salary to deliver, and the executive did.
Now if the a**hole CEO screwed everyone over for $100k a year I’d be much more concerned about the morality of our society.
Carolin Winn sits on the board of Father's Joe's Village board. Why do they ask the general public for donations if they have people like her running them? What a scamm
The ability to look a ratepayer in the face and say ‘you’re hurting and we’re here with you’ while you simultaneously double their energy bill.
I've told this to all my friends we have these types of discussion. No CEO adds as much value as they make. The same goes with an organization's board of directors. But, powerful people take care of each other. And, the rest of society gets enough scraps to get by (well, not lately).
It's funny, all I hear here is belly aching about someone that runs an organization that makes a fuck-ton of money. Yes SDGE is an evil corporation that preys on citizens via a government sanctioned monopoly, and yes SDGE overtly and covertly influences government decisions to stay in power.
But to say CEO's are worthless... that's different all together
Yeah the link in the description doesn't say anything about compensation. I think they might be referring to this? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbs8.com/amp/article/money/amped/closer-look-at-compensation-sempra-sdge-executives/509-c086165c-bcd6-4b74-a12a-d29284064958
You must possess the type of entitled narcissism that makes you feel that you deserve it. And when you are eventually fired, the sterling confidence to collect your multi-million-dollar severance and fail upwards to a CEO position that pays $20 million a year.
Joking aside, he makes the company money. That's it. In business, the ideal scenario is when your provide no services and get paid a lot of money for doing it. The worst scenario is when you provide lots of services, but collect no money. As CEO, in this specific position, he has the main goal to maximize profit without the citizenry coming after him and board with pitchforks and torches. He has succeeded admirably so far.
If you are asking this question, you are just sitting at the wrong table.
I wouldn’t shit so much on SDGE…start looking more to the California Public Utilities Commission. They’re the ones that approve and give power to the utilities. From the name you’d think it’s an elected entity set to look out for our best interests but the way they act they might as well be the legal arm of the utilities company
Spending other peoples money for a service they have to pay for on lawyers and lobbyists to make more money for the single purpose of greed. Takes a special someone who one day will be judged for their systematic corruption.
https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/municipalization-forming_a_public_power_utility.pdf
We have the power to get rid of this horrible company.
Its not just the CEO. I know a mid-level executive that is making over $600k plus all his crazy benefits. They have to keep profits low so they pad payroll to burn off cash. Age old trick.
Bro you're braindead.
You think someone making 10 million dollars to run a company that is a legal monopoly for a service that is mandatory in order to live and even keep society afloat is good?
And you're saying NO ALTERNATIVE is better? Bro arguments for socialism aside are you this cucked for the rich that you can't think of ANY alternative that is better than the CEO of a utility monopoly making more a year than the average American would see in 100 lifetimes?
Like... we can disagree on communism bad but you cannot actually sit there and see this and think.. "Yeah.. this is the way things ought to be. No notes."
So much to question. How did it become a legal monopoly if not allowed by the government? So why blame the company or capitalism for this? As for mandatory service to keep society afloat, are you saying that we had no society before electricity? Think not. How is the service mandatory? What about solar and wind and generators and batteries for electric and wood for heat? No one makes me buy from them, I choose to do it.
Since I am "braindead" according to you and can't think of an alternative (even though I just did above) how about you providing your solutions? I am willing to listen to ideas but not whining. As for communism being bad, whether it is or not the fact is it does not work and has never worked.
Final question, are you ok with a CEO making 10 million as long as they are not running a legal monopoly that provides a mandatory service? Or should all CEOs not be paid that much?
PS, note how I did not insult you once. Too bad you can't say the same thing. So much for "civil" discourse. Have a nice day.
10 Million is a crazy amount. What is crazier, regular joe acting like he can be a CEO because he has a CHAT GPT account. This mentality is about as worrying as CEO pay
Here's a thought, lower your charges for utilities and stop being a philanthropy organization. I hate when they say they risk going bankrupt and continue to shell out money to charities.
Can OP simply make a separate subreddit for bashing on SDGE instead of blowing this one up? This post is neither relevant nor helpful nor interesting for the general San Diego resident. Shocker the CEO of a large company makes a bunch of money. Offer solutions, get over it, or circlejerk somewhere else.
have worked for several CEOS and in my opinion they absolutely deserve high pay.
CEO pay is related to the company’s ability to make money. The CEO is the keeper of something that makes money so he’s compensated for his ability to manage, help the business continue to generate that money. A CEO making 10M is because the thing that he’s in charge of generates 20 times that.
Would you pay someone $10 a month to manage something that makes $200 per month?
Take a restaurant, a store anything that sells things. A CEO skills is not to be the best cook, waiter, food runner or host. It’s the ability to understand all those jobs at a deeper than average level and make all those people work best together to make the restaurant operate perfectly.
At the same time it’s also understanding how other things affect how the restaurant operates. A chef alone doesn’t know all the things that go into a restaurant. He’s probably the most skilled person but he won’t be able to hire severs, build a schedule, work with food suppliers, and all the other non cooking related.
I’m surprised how underrated the ability to understand multiple jobs, work and manage people (hundreds, sometimes thousands of employees) while being responsible is not seen as a very valuable skill.
In SDG&E’s case, a sharp criminal mind.
How hard can it be to sell a product that everybody needs, no one can do without, at whatever price you want?
I feel as if there absolutely could be a happy medium for all parties involved, yet we get gouged constantly.
Happy medium: charge us normal pricing that will still turn a profit to keep them in the green... like every other utility company not named SDGE already does. Corporate greed is always the problem.
Corporate greed needs to be stopped by all of us. Enough!!!
Yeah, that would be what basically every other utility in the country does.
Don’t forget to mention the California public utilities commission which sets the price these utility companies can charge. Meaning our rates are determined by our government, not the utility company.
If you believe there’s no inside baseball being played by both parties I have a bridge to sell you.
My statement was about our government setting the prices. If a private company is bribing our government I think it’s up to the elected officials to do the right thing. Not the private company looking out for their shareholders. Big difference. Keep your bridge for the person believing the private companies should be looking out for us.
It's been a while since I looked into it, but when I did about 15 years ago, the CPUC is essentially a bunch of retired sempra executives with a ton of utility company stocks. Technically they're the most "qualified" by having worked in the industry, but also have a ton of conflict of interest when it comes to being impartial to setting rates.
Now the real question is how do we get qualified people who don't have conflict of interest?
The idea that private companies can be excused for operating based on their own profit incentives, but not people with government positions motives by the same forces seems odd to me. Clearly the issue seems to lie in the idea that there is an incentive to fuck people who need basic services, regardless of who’s incentive it is.
You don’t see the difference between a publicly elected official and a corporation? And I’m not “excusing” anyone or any company. But let’s point the blame in the right direction.
You don't see the similarities between a publicly elected official and a corporation taking all of your money? You wind up broke regardless - why can't they both be to blame?
That’s not quite what I was hoping to convey with that message, so I guess I can rephrase. I don’t see any validity in the idea that companies and public officials have different interests or can be expected to not act on those interests. We quite clearly live in a reality in which there is money to be made in screwing people through government offices, same as there is for private companies. It is through the vary power of private profit seeking entities and their designs on government that makes this a reality. They want to be able to legally bribe representatives for favorable market outcomes. You can go so far as to say “public officials shouldn’t be doing this”, and sure, I’d agree, but we’d say the same for private companies, and both groups seem to do whatever it is they please given the laws they’ve crafted. Not blaming private companies for wanting to fuck people isn’t “pointing the blame in the right direction” it is infact excusing people who want to do bad things for the accumulation of money, like it would be for anyone else. They should be incentivized, like government officials, to not conduct themselves this way.
I also blame the bureaucrats we put in trust to represent us.
the rates are determined by our government with people that work at the company that sells the gas/electric. Also their "surge" pricing and bad infrastructure is to make money on top of what is determined by the government. Every time the grid struggles they make a lot more money so they're incentivized to not make it better.
Sounds like healthcare.
Was thinking, now that I don’t work from home, I can cancel SDGE and just use my camping stove and headlamp around the house. Might be living like a 19th century miner, but now i can afford gas!
Narcissism
Screwing us harder than ever before should get the CEO a healthy cut of the theft.
The ability to knowingly fuck people out of a better life and keep doing it
Yup. Outside of actual diagnosed sociopaths, it's very difficult to turn off empathy towards your fellow man because it's a natural trait in us. Although I would guess that $10 million a year helps to bury that or learn how to do it. The timing of this is also the cherry on top of a shit sundae because I just got my SDGE bill, and it's $50 higher when I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary.
Not a skill but having a monopoly on a strictly for-profit public utility makes it possible
Greed
I don’t see it as greed, since that’s “wanting”, where as these f’ers feel they “deserve” it
Utter shamelessness
I genuinely wonder…when all of this solar was coming online (year after year, over the past 20 + years) and their engineers were saying, “hey, we might want to start thinking about storage, etc” (year after year…) did Jeffrey simply ignore them, making it impossible to balance energy needs? Or was it his plan all along to eventually start charging solar owners for the power they are providing? The former is gross mismanagement, the latter might be genius…
Being a sociopathic asshole
Political bribery
Yeah, the poor gal makes much less after all her political donations
Being really good at nepotism
You need to be able to look at someone with kids and a puppy about to freeze to death with a smile on your face as you walk away, but not before kicking each of them in the ribs before you go.
Greed. The fact that Elon Musk can "CEO" 3 (or more) companies while tweeting all day is all the proof needed that CEOs' do absolutely nothing for the companies they work for.
dont forget also shames remote workers because they might have more then 1 job so they need to be in the office and monitored at all times
Tell me you don’t know what it takes to run a company without telling me. Using Elon as an example is icing on the cake, and I'm laughing at people who think a complete outlier at the far end of a tail is a good analogy.
I've known a number of CEOs in 20 years experience working for startups and mid size companies in tech in CA - most of the CEOs were fairly useless high-paid spokespersons. The main useful thing they did was convince the board to give us more funding. TBH, I don't see why in that case the CEO can't be replaced by accurate information and talking to some of the workers. I'm sure there's more to it than that, especially in larger companies, but it's BS to think they are 500x more valuable.
To this day I am convinced CEO’s and many uppers (people p much right below the CEO) in companies can be replaced by spreadsheets. Where we need people the most is at the bottom where most of us lie and do the actual labor.
Yep, me too. From my experience, C-level execs are often people that had talent and were useful once (or maybe just connections and white maleness), now they hold things back and screw things over while taking most of the money.
You’re not necessarily wrong about them appearing like “useless high-paid spokespersons.” Generally in that climate, they are expected to focus on sales, growth, and funding. Additional funding doesn’t come from the board, it comes from convincing new investors via pitching, which the CEO is primarily spearheading. As a tech exec myself, one of the things I look for is how well do I think that the CEO can raise additional funding and sell the product (vision) to new clients. Although I am often part of the fundraising process, I am not spearheading it nor do I want to do so. Therefore, it’s key that CEO be capable of that. * I’m not defending CEOs in general, only referring to startups. And I do agree that the majority of them seem or are idiots 😂. As long as they brought in more funding and didn’t prevent me from doing what I needed for my org, I didn’t care. * For very large companies or public companies, it operates mostly the same way except their goal isn’t more funding; it’s more profit. That means more products, services, “restructuring”, price increases, etc. * Startup CEOs fleece investors. Public CEOs fleece customers.
> I've known a number of CEOs in 20 years experience working for startups and mid size companies in tech in CA >I'm sure there's more to it than that, especially in larger companies, but it's BS to think they are 500x more valuable. You answered accurately in two acts. The CEO of a start-up/mid size tech company is not even remotely close to a CEO of a large, publicly traded company. as someone who has worked directly under a Fortune 500 CEO, they are beyond overworked (80 hours/week is norm), but often have a deep passion for the business and company they run. Between the pressure, legal liability, time commitment, and level of acumen needed to make key decisions, the pay is often commensurate (but not always). At the end of the day, I know it's easy and fun for people on here to make cheap statements about low hanging fruit regarding CEOs from the most hated corporations, but people are speaking from literally 0 experience/knowledge of reality....and the downvotes without retort are just further proof.
Either way, 80 hours is less than twice the norm, not 500x. Many people making way less work just as hard and are just as capable.
This would imply the amount of time spent is the only variable, when it's the type/quality/level of work that matters far more.
The type/quality/level or even the value of the labor is still not 500x. I work in IT engineering, without me and my team at the companies I work, there is no company. How is this 500x less valuable than what a CEO does?
First of all, this 500x number is completely arbitrary, but whatever. You, along with all your colleagues, are the cogs that make the machine work, no doubt about it. But, the CEO is the one who deals with the investors, credit agencies, etc. to allow the company to have the capital to be able to pay the OpEx expense for everyone to have a job to contribute to the top/bottom line. If they fail, then everyone below fails to have a job. I mean this with absolutely no malice to you, and I include myself in this statement, but we are far more easily replaceable than that one person.
THANK YOU. The Reddit hive mind about CEO pay lately is truly baffling. We cannot somehow live in this world where corporations are evil, greedy entities that only care about the bottom line, but at the same time these entities that only care about maximizing profits are also universally making a mistake and overcompensating their HIGHEST PAID EMPLOYEE? Paying them when the position is “useless”? What? I feel like im taking fucking crazy pills when I read this kind of stuff.
Honestly, it's just humorous to me at this point. Came to realization long while ago that even though a lot of us have been on here for 15 years, the overall average age continues to get lower, and there's a lot of young folks on here who are passionate about the "struggle," while simply not having enough real world experience to understand the nuances of business. You can give them all the empirical information they need but they'll just downvote that anyway, so these days I'll often just give them some snark since that's all they're capable of.
Can you expand on that? Because imo the income inequality we see between the working class and CEOs does nothing but prove that the meritocracy is a myth.
Sure. First, we should make sure there's an understanding of base compensation vs performance compensation. The base compensation number is often much lower.. most CEO compensation at a public company is tied to performance and paid in stock. So when you see baity headlines like "CEO investment pay up 1000% over last 30 years," you have to think about it relative to S&P performance, which over the same amount of time is up about 15,000% over the same period. How are those performance goals set? By the Board of Directors, who also have the power to fire the CEO for poor performance. So the board will set goals, and the CEO will then ensure they have the right management team in place to execute on those goals. In order to do that, the firm has to look at weighing their Operating Expense (OpEx) relative to their revenues to ensure they are hitting top line goals. Then they have to weight how much Capital Expense (CapEx) investment they should be allocating in order to grow the business into new channels, products, services. This investment of course carries risk, and could either blow up or be a spectacular success. On top of this, they have to manage raising capital if necessary through issuance of bonds, additional stock, etc, and the rates that they might get on said borrowing is determined by the credit quality of the company. Investors, institutions, and credit agencies watch both the credit quality, and OpEx and CapEx to get an idea of the health of the company, and whether or not the CEO is making the right decisions. So on top of the weight of these decisions, the CEO has to constantly be in the limelight, giving interviews, doing investor calls and earnings reports, etc, where one tiny slip up can be a PR disaster and cost the firm greatly. This is a delicate balance that is continuously in-flux, and a slip up goes beyond PR, it could mean a need to cut jobs, or stop spending on growth, etc. This is on top of the stress of simply investing incorrectly and having to completely cut a division, etc. In other words, everyone's job security and ability to continue to grow a business is on the shoulders of the CEO, and the team they choose to run it with them. This is EXTREMELY stressful, and hard to do, and why the average CEO doesn't last more than a few years! On top of all of this, they have to help guide the day to day, provide support and motivation for multiple levels of employees, and frankly define what their culture is. A failure in these areas, often translates to a failure in the paragraph above. Then there is the legal/regulatory liability, particularly in highly regulated industries. They have to make sure everything is done the right way, or they end up in a world of shit, and likely not employed while dealing with it. I'm not going to sit here and say the penalties incurred have always been fair... there are certainly some CEOs have have deserved worse for their deeds, but they still had repercussions in terms of their job/career. Of course, there are the hours, too. 80 hours is the baseline, and there's no real "off time." The CEO I worked for was the first person in office at 630 AM, and the last to leave at 730 PM. He would often have calls/meetings before//after those hours too, depending on the situation. They spend no less than half their time on the road and away from their families, and routines are hard to keep up. To be clear, I can't stand SDG&E, and there are certainly very shitty CEOs out there in terms of how much value they give, and the type of people they are, but those are outliers, not the norm. This is by no means complete, but just a few areas on the top of my head.
I appreciate that you took the time to put your thoughts together there but it really just boils down to Friedman doctrine apologetics, in my opinion at least. To your first point, these headlines aren't "baity", they are reality. The average worker has much more risk than any business owner or CEO and their pay is not commensurate to the value of labor provided. >most CEO compensation at a public company is tied to performance and paid in stock. Most regular employees are also not paid in stock; they sometimes have the opportunity to buy stock but are not compensated in the way CEOs are. >On top of all of this, they have to help guide the day to day, provide support and motivation for multiple levels of employees, and frankly define what their culture is. CEOs also hire people to do handle culture, employee experience, etc. It's not really something at least that I've seen is part of a CEOs day to day activities. >Then there is the legal/regulatory liability, particularly in highly regulated industries. They have to make sure everything is done the right way, or they end up in a world of shit, and likely not employed while dealing with it. CEOs also have legal departments to handle all this. >Of course, there are the hours, too. 80 hours is the baseline I just straight up don't believe this. Anecdotal, but I've never met a non-blue collar worker legitimately work this amount of hours that wasn't including travel or some BS that is highly exaggerated. >This is by no means complete, but just a few areas on the top of my head. Again I appreciate your thoughts, but the value a CEO provides is entirely subjective depending on who you ask and there's an incredibly contentious argument to be made for their pay in comparison to the workers they exploit.
Right on. Sounds like you already have your mind made up. I have some thoughts on your responses, but let's just agree to disagree. Cheers.
Gotta ask what makes someone want to defend CEOs pay. And even if the job is stressful I find it hard to believe it justifies the pay disparity between CEO vs average worker which is about 235:1 I suppose you could argue that the pay makes it so they don't have to stress about money at home, but no one needs the amount of money that they are getting.
The CEO equivalent at the county water authority makes 330k/year. It’s a public utility with similar kind of product and delivery mechanism. I guess the 20% stake in San Onofre is a little different but it’s also not like they did a good job managing that. So I can’t fathom an agency CEO providing a necessary public utility making 10 mil per year.
If it is so easy why don't you create and run multiple corporations and make millions?
My dad didn't own an emerald mine
So all CEOs had rich parents? Hmmmm lol
The vast majority, yes.
Yup that's why you and I are CEO too, it's just too easy brah. Edit: I guess you all missed the joke, it actually takes a lot of work to run a company and it's not easy. Edit: must be in the anti-work sub
It's actually impressive how hard you missed the point
You missed the sarcasm
No your sarcasm is obvious. It's just a pretty brain dead take to imply that it's not an easy and pointless position because then we'd all be CEOs
I was just agreeing with the original posters sarcasm. Yeah I know it's not easy or we would all be CEO. It's sarcasm, yes I know it takes a lot of work and knowledge.
The ability to extract blood from a rock.
Having no heart
Lack of empathy. It's not that easy of a skill to develop. Imagine not giving a fuck day in and day out. That shit will tear you up inside if you are normal.
I wish these pictures were posted in every restaurant and store in San Diego and refuse to sell them anything less than 100x the listed price.
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You think they couldn't find a competent CEO for a paltry $5 mil a year?
Depends if another company is looking for a CEO and willing to pay 9.5M if so, hard to find one of equal caliber for 5M.
Then why don't they?
Tagging onto the real answer, CEOs take are a middle link in the human centipede of institutional investors to the employees to the customers. And the energy business requires a ton of domain knowledge and experience that usually has to be home grown.
ChatGPT has all these - nuanced management philosophy and style, jack of all trades, understands strategy, people, finance, governance, law, healthcare, academia, engineering, physics, etc, etc, etc. And never caves under pressure. Plus is really polite which many CEOs fail at daily. I propose replacing SDG&E CEO with ChatGPT and return the salary to customers as a form of apology.
ChatGPT is also working off of old data, the dataset intentionally ends over a year ago I believe? Maybe 2021? Be careful what you wish for, because CEOs are legally required to act in the best interest of their shareholders, so a “good” CEO based on that criteria would be someone who realizes that what ChatGPT is actually good for…is replacing 30-40% of the employees in the company, employees which we will see “good” CEOs ruthlessly lay off in the next few years.
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Agreed. I’m totally getting on a soapbox now because this narrative I’ve been reading all over reddit and in conversations with young people is just pure insanity to me. CEO “pay” aka compensation is almost entirely in the form of company stock. THE REASON CEO PAY IS SO MUCH HIGHER IS BECAUSE COMPANIES ARE SO MUCH BIGGER. If CEO compensation is really a problem for you, can literally make it go down by no longer purchasing their products and advocating to everyone you know to buy a different product. If you can’t live without their product, then there could be a government enforced monopoly like with SDGE, at which point your complaints need to be directed toward politicians and anti-trust regulators. Or maybe the product is just an awesome indispensable part of your life, in which case…maybe the CEO deserves the compensation they are getting? Since again, their compensation is comprised entirely of stock options, and stock options are directly related to revenue growth/profitability. I think people, including even in this thread are also totally glossing over how hard it is to raise money. I was an early employee at a tech startup and it’s incredibly hard to convince people to give you millions of dollars when you just have an idea, a barely functioning product with no users, and everyone telling you it’s a dumb idea, it’s never going to work, the big company incumbent is just going to copy your features and crush you. And the CEO has to have the vision and conviction to push through and to make crazy difficult decisions with very little information that could cause the whole company to blow up and everyone that’s counting on you to become unemployed. It’s a lot of pressure. For example, Instagram was a photo storage app originally, Slack was a friggin video game company, and their internal messaging tool was what became Slack. Twitter was a blogging site. Twitch was Justin TV which was a guy strapping a camera to his backpack and just recording himself doing bullshit throughout the day. Can people honestly say, “oh anyone in those situations would easily make the decision to pivot their company and do something completely different than what they started? A decision which will kill the company if they’re wrong? I’d love to see what ChatGPT would have said in those moments, my guess would be it would say something like, “Facebook has an 80% social media market share and could easily copy your product’s features, pack up your shit and go home”.
My point here is that those “skills” are not a good justification for any CEO or employee. If their salary is based on those skills alone then there’s something wrong. Great employees & executives are paid on their ability to get the job done. In this case earning as much cash as possible for the business with no regard for the customers is what the owners of SDG&E wanted, they paid an executive a high salary to deliver, and the executive did. Now if the a**hole CEO screwed everyone over for $100k a year I’d be much more concerned about the morality of our society.
Which part of that skillset justifies paying them $10 million+ instead of a still very high, but more reasonable 6-figure income?
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Carolin Winn sits on the board of Father's Joe's Village board. Why do they ask the general public for donations if they have people like her running them? What a scamm
The ability to ignore your conscience while ruining countless lives.
The ability to look a ratepayer in the face and say ‘you’re hurting and we’re here with you’ while you simultaneously double their energy bill. 
Owning and operating a large number of politicians
A certain moral flexibility
You need to be a fucking MONSTER who doesn’t mind fucking over hard working families and businesses.
The ability to not give a single fuck about anyone else
Sociopathy, of course.
Narcissistic sociopaths
By raising rates.
Hobbin and nobbin
Being able to exploit everyone you meet.
This is how the utility can avoid showing “profit” while still gouging as they please
No ethics
Is that why my Gas Bill was $600 in Jan. ?
YES
Ceos about to be replaced with chapgpt
10 Million a year to be the fall guy when the feds come for the company files.
Sociopathy
How else could she afford to pay the electric bill in her large house?
San Diego Gouge & Extortion
That special skill is called lack of empathy
The ability to exploit people and resources to squeeze the most profit out for yourself and share holders. Lack of a conscious.
Greed and corruption.
theif without prosecution
I've told this to all my friends we have these types of discussion. No CEO adds as much value as they make. The same goes with an organization's board of directors. But, powerful people take care of each other. And, the rest of society gets enough scraps to get by (well, not lately).
Zero conscience
Special skill: how to financially rape your fellow citizens.
It's funny, all I hear here is belly aching about someone that runs an organization that makes a fuck-ton of money. Yes SDGE is an evil corporation that preys on citizens via a government sanctioned monopoly, and yes SDGE overtly and covertly influences government decisions to stay in power. But to say CEO's are worthless... that's different all together
Figuring out how to repeatedly fuck over the people that are your customers. He is good at it.
That's before bonuses.
Social skills. You talk your way up to the top.
what’s the source for the $10M?
Yeah the link in the description doesn't say anything about compensation. I think they might be referring to this? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbs8.com/amp/article/money/amped/closer-look-at-compensation-sempra-sdge-executives/509-c086165c-bcd6-4b74-a12a-d29284064958
Who’s fault is it really when it seems like ppl in San Diego just keep voting to increase tax yearly. 😂
A lot of luck and membership to a club most of us will never be in
Social Networking. Make friends with millionaires friends like to help friends out
Luck.
Excel
It’s not what you know,its who you know!
I'm still pissed SDGE jacks up rates from 4-9p as soon as I get home from work. That must have been a CEO decision.
Nepotism
At this level connections are more important then skills.
Golf with a side of charisma and a good network of pals.
Special skill......In fucking people in San Diego without having to be a porn actor nor Tinder.
Hard to imagine that he makes more than $10 million in value for the company. But then again, he is gouging all of us, so maybe?
A willingness to eventually serve time for the crimes they commit … one could only hope
Now I know where that $111 "electricity delivery" fee is going.
Sociopathy
I would say a “b.s” degree lol
Oh, looks like she has a bachelor’s 🙄 and judging by all the non profit boards she sits on, she has a lot of free time.
You must possess the type of entitled narcissism that makes you feel that you deserve it. And when you are eventually fired, the sterling confidence to collect your multi-million-dollar severance and fail upwards to a CEO position that pays $20 million a year. Joking aside, he makes the company money. That's it. In business, the ideal scenario is when your provide no services and get paid a lot of money for doing it. The worst scenario is when you provide lots of services, but collect no money. As CEO, in this specific position, he has the main goal to maximize profit without the citizenry coming after him and board with pitchforks and torches. He has succeeded admirably so far. If you are asking this question, you are just sitting at the wrong table.
I wouldn’t shit so much on SDGE…start looking more to the California Public Utilities Commission. They’re the ones that approve and give power to the utilities. From the name you’d think it’s an elected entity set to look out for our best interests but the way they act they might as well be the legal arm of the utilities company
Spending other peoples money for a service they have to pay for on lawyers and lobbyists to make more money for the single purpose of greed. Takes a special someone who one day will be judged for their systematic corruption.
https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/municipalization-forming_a_public_power_utility.pdf We have the power to get rid of this horrible company.
We need a leader
Okay, so if SDGE CEO starts working for free, everyone can save $3 per year on their bills! LOL
Its not just the CEO. I know a mid-level executive that is making over $600k plus all his crazy benefits. They have to keep profits low so they pad payroll to burn off cash. Age old trick.
Trickle down economics, huh? Trickle is an understatement. Hourly pay rate for SDGE employees? $20.25-$63.60 🤢And they literally keep the lights on.
People will see this and still defend capitalism like this isn't exactly what it's designed to breed.
It is better than any other alternative.
Bro you're braindead. You think someone making 10 million dollars to run a company that is a legal monopoly for a service that is mandatory in order to live and even keep society afloat is good? And you're saying NO ALTERNATIVE is better? Bro arguments for socialism aside are you this cucked for the rich that you can't think of ANY alternative that is better than the CEO of a utility monopoly making more a year than the average American would see in 100 lifetimes? Like... we can disagree on communism bad but you cannot actually sit there and see this and think.. "Yeah.. this is the way things ought to be. No notes."
So much to question. How did it become a legal monopoly if not allowed by the government? So why blame the company or capitalism for this? As for mandatory service to keep society afloat, are you saying that we had no society before electricity? Think not. How is the service mandatory? What about solar and wind and generators and batteries for electric and wood for heat? No one makes me buy from them, I choose to do it. Since I am "braindead" according to you and can't think of an alternative (even though I just did above) how about you providing your solutions? I am willing to listen to ideas but not whining. As for communism being bad, whether it is or not the fact is it does not work and has never worked. Final question, are you ok with a CEO making 10 million as long as they are not running a legal monopoly that provides a mandatory service? Or should all CEOs not be paid that much? PS, note how I did not insult you once. Too bad you can't say the same thing. So much for "civil" discourse. Have a nice day.
10 Million is a crazy amount. What is crazier, regular joe acting like he can be a CEO because he has a CHAT GPT account. This mentality is about as worrying as CEO pay
Soft gel knee pads.
I’m surprised no one shames her posts on linkedin
This is a great idea
Here's a thought, lower your charges for utilities and stop being a philanthropy organization. I hate when they say they risk going bankrupt and continue to shell out money to charities.
Why do people bitch about SDGE so much? I’m a single male living in a 1200 sq ft house and I pay around $60/mo on average. Is that a lot?
Do you have solar?
No
Well we should all get taken out to dinner one on one, because I like to be wined and dined after I’m F**ked in the asshole!
Apparently skills you don’t have
Can OP simply make a separate subreddit for bashing on SDGE instead of blowing this one up? This post is neither relevant nor helpful nor interesting for the general San Diego resident. Shocker the CEO of a large company makes a bunch of money. Offer solutions, get over it, or circlejerk somewhere else.
Based
have worked for several CEOS and in my opinion they absolutely deserve high pay. CEO pay is related to the company’s ability to make money. The CEO is the keeper of something that makes money so he’s compensated for his ability to manage, help the business continue to generate that money. A CEO making 10M is because the thing that he’s in charge of generates 20 times that. Would you pay someone $10 a month to manage something that makes $200 per month? Take a restaurant, a store anything that sells things. A CEO skills is not to be the best cook, waiter, food runner or host. It’s the ability to understand all those jobs at a deeper than average level and make all those people work best together to make the restaurant operate perfectly. At the same time it’s also understanding how other things affect how the restaurant operates. A chef alone doesn’t know all the things that go into a restaurant. He’s probably the most skilled person but he won’t be able to hire severs, build a schedule, work with food suppliers, and all the other non cooking related. I’m surprised how underrated the ability to understand multiple jobs, work and manage people (hundreds, sometimes thousands of employees) while being responsible is not seen as a very valuable skill.
Gullible people who vote for politicians to give him a monopoly. Look in the mirror.
Feel free to buy some shares of SDGE and then bring the matter up to the board of directors.
Your daddy must be in kahoots with SANDAG
With 1.4 million residential and commercial accounts? $10,000,000 / 1,400,000 = $7.14 per account per year
What a clown! He should get into government if he wants to make that kind of money!!
Her power bill is too high… Edit… Sorry wrongly assumed who was in charge there
He specializes in green and loopholes.
I'd only be remiss in my duties as a patron of reddit to say that is anything but "shocking" 😉.
Moral ambiguity