It sounds like their biggest complaint is that the compensation vests too quickly, which means Tim Cook doesn't have an incentive to set Apple up for long term success. They want the vesting to be longer to incentivize him.<p>But given that his net worth is already $2B, most of which is Apple stock, it seems like he's already incentivized to set Apple up for long term success, one because he has so much stock, and two because he's clearly not working for the comp, but for the love of the game.
The idea that Cook quits because he doesn’t get a raise somewhat relies on the notion that he can do better elsewhere. Is that true? He’s already at the nation’s wealthiest company.
I think it would be more impressive if investors gave fewer shits about the headline comp packages of a few executives, and instead advocated that Apple pay more attention to how it's no longer creating a place that people want to develop their careers at.<p>Maybe this is just an endemic problem, but it seems to me that big companies have lost the ability/desire to cultivate their own people. Nowadays it's "let people's salaries and career growth stagnate if they choose to stay internal", yet complain when they jump ship to another company that's willing to pay more with a promotion. And at the same time contribute to the problem by being very willing to hire external candidates at salary multiples compared to people from inside, while putting up unreasonable bars for promotion from within.<p>I have yet to see any large company get this formula right. Not to say that I long for the days when you could make a career out of working for GE or something, but you imagine that some respected company (Apple?) could make it so that people wanted to grow and stay with them. Give people responsibility, roles, develop them for a career rather than trying to shortcut it with an external person who looks good but ends up being just talk.<p>Maybe that's impossible nowadays with the pressure to move on to a new product every 3 years.
Apple has made cook a billionaire. The appropriate salary for him is $1. The appropriate additional capital grant is $0. He's a major shareholder, he has wealth at risk both up and down with his and the fate of the company.<p>If he thinks they can't replace him and go as well he has financial incentive to stay. If he thinks they can replace him and go better he only has financial incentive to stay if they pay him ever more every year.
It sounds like the issue is that the stocks aren’t locked up for some period of years, leading to a situation where Tim Cook could take the money and run.
> <i>Chief Executive Tim Cook's pay in 2021 was 1,447 times that of the average Apple employee, a company filing on Jan. 7 showed, fuelled by stock awards that helped him earn a total of $98.7 million.</i><p>They measure the average salary for such a large company? This number seems absolutely pointless to me.
I don't think you get good leaders if financial compensation is all they care about to stay. I will bet Tim Cook loves what he does at Apple and would likely stay even for $1. He has more than enough money already.<p>A good example is this: Greece and Italy paid their politicians best in all of Europe, while Norway pays their politicians worst. Yet it seems Greece and Italy got stuck with the worst politicians.<p>I don't think that is an accident. With too much focus on compensation, you just attract greedy and corrupt people rather than people who want to make a difference.<p>I do think CEOs should get properly compensated, but the idea that at CEO magically performs 10x better because you pay him $10 million instead of $1 million is so absurd that you have to be a libertarian to believe it ;-)<p>Human motivation cannot be reduced to a simple question of monetary compensation. Research into this suggest that human motivation in relation to compensation works more in terms of inflection points. If your pay is so low you feel underappriciated, you will not perform well. Once salary gets high enough that you feel appreciated, further increases is not going to increase performance.<p>People don't hold back performance until they get paid a billion. There is a threshold at which point people will perform as well as you can expect from compensation alone. Beyond that other facts will matter: Joy of working with your co-workers, belief in the mission, interesting tasks etc.