January 17th, 2000

[Message] The Press Starts Noticing (And Commenting On) Jobs' Staggering Compensation by Bryan Chaffin We commented in our coverage of Steve Jobs' new compensation package that it might take a few days for the press to really catch on to the staggering proportions of that package. It seems it has already started. The LA Times has a great report (picked up by Arkansas Online as well) titled "Apple's turnaround nets chief $290 million reward" in which they note that Mr. Jobs' stock options alone have earned the iCEO some US$200 million in a week. It's actually more than that as the stock options have increased some US$260 million, not US$200 million. This article puts that compensation in perspective with other CEO compensation packages. For instant, Lou Gerstner Jr., the CEO of IBM, earned a little less than US$10 million in cash and stock option value last year. He's near the top of the list of well paid execs. Steve Jobs earned that in about 6 and half hours last week. :-) That's not really accurate of course, as one really needs to look at the package in terms of the last 2 and half years, and not the last week. It's fun to think of Apple's CEO as making some US$1.5 million per hour though. If our assessment at The Mac Observer is correct, Mr. Jobs is going to make far more than US$260 million this year with those stock options. Some may think it excessive, but so is the job that Mr. Jobs is doing. Since there is no cash involved, and considering the fact that Mr. Jobs was paid only US$2 for his first two years on the job, it is really not that far out. Mr. Jobs is the exception, not the rule. It will be interesting to see if other CEOs are able to leverage this deal in relation to their own compensation. While some may be successful in this to some degree, most will not. There have been complaints for years about the fact that execs are getting paid more and more money, and I see the Apple/Jobs deal as adding fuel to that fire. Watch, we will start to see some elements of our society apply words like absurd and preposterous to Mr. Jobs' deal. I personally think that the vast majority of the people who do the complaining are people who couldn't do the job themselves. It's always easier for the unable to resent the able. It takes a rare individual to run a Fortune 500 company successfully, and a still more rare individual to turn a company like Apple around in the manner Mr. Jobs did. To repeat myself, Mr. Jobs is the exception, not the rule, and this compensation package is not likely to be repeated any time soon. In the meanwhile, he has earned those shares in our opinion. Did we mention the jet too? :-) Read that article at the LA Times [corrected link], it's very interesting. Bryan Chaffin Editor-in-Chief The Mac Observer