Financial industry and Technology Industry
Today, newspapers and TV media are full of stories about companies lost hundreds of million dollars, laid-off thousands of workers, but their managers are still giving themselves raises that worth hundred million dollars. Bank presidents, Financial executives, stock market traders all gave themselves big salaries and bonus every year amount to billion dollars despite the financial crisis and bad economy. That is why people are angry and begin to “Occupy Wall street”.
Maybe the financial industry can learn something from the technology industry. Several of their executives only accept an annual salary of $1 as they wants to make a sacrifice for their company. Of course, some of them have a large shares of stock from the company but those stock values depend on the company’s success. If the company does not do well, the value of stock does not worth much.
The person who sets the example for other high tech executives is Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. From 1997 until his death, Steve Jobs took home just $1 a year in salary, and he collected no bonus. Just one simple dollar. He said: “I cannot take money with me when I am dead, I just want to do something that I enjoy.” Of course, he does not need the money because his net worth is valued at $7 billion. Most of that wealth come from Pixar, the animated company that he sold to Walt Disney company. Since returned to work at Apple, He devoted all his energy to create innovation products such as the Mac-book, iPods, iPhone, iPads etc. for almost nothing.
Following Steve Jobs’ example, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, all three top executives of Google also agreed to made just a $1 salary a year since 2005. Of course, they are very rich based on their stock shares at the company that they founded. Other is Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and now president of HP. She also accepts a salary of just $ 1 a year. She told the newspaper that if she is fired before the end of next year, she will take home $1.50, since her severance is 1.5 times her annual salary. Of course, she does not need the money because she is already a billionaire but she wants the job because it is a challenge whether she can steer HP in the right direction.
Contradict to Bankers, Financial executives who live luxuriously like movies stars, most technology executives live very simple. They live in houses that are no different from houses of regular software engineers who work in Silicon Valley. They drive cars that most engineers can afford. Steve Jobs has a Honda Accord, Both Page and Brin have a BMW 325. None of them wear any expensive clothes or have anything out of the ordinary. They are among the richest people on earth but they never act like they are special.
The richest of them, Bill Gates gives most of his wealth to charity and ask others to follow his example. He said that during a visit to Carnegie Mellon, he came to Andrew Carnegie’s grave and felt very strongly by the sentence marked on Mr. Carnegie’s grave “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced”. Andrew Carnegie is one of the richest people in the U.S as the owner of many steel factories. People called him “King of Steel” and he was often compared with John Rockefeller or the “King of Oil”. Before his death, he gave all his wealth away to charity, mostly for education purposes. He and another billionaire friend, Andrew Mellon established CarnegieMellonUniversity as one of the top schools in the U.S.
There is one interesting fact: Most executives who received highest salary are doing very poorly, their companies often lost a lot of money and laid-off thousands of workers. Most executives who only receive $1 salary are doing much better, their companies make a lot of money and hire thousands of workers. When Steve Jobs went back to Apple in 2000, the company was almost bankrupt due to the mismanagement there. Under his management, it recovered and became the largest, most successful technology company. Today, technology industry is doing very well, hiring a lot of people and even experiencing a shortage of workers. At the same time, the financial industry is doing poorly, facing bankrupt, laying off a lot of workers and keep asking government to help them with more “stimulus” money.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
