I get annoyed reading article after article on how high CEO pay is… all these articles fail to mention they are only looking at the 100, 500, or 5,000 largest companies in the USA. Those businesses are so huge they boggle the mind to think of what those people have to handle, and I have no understanding on that level of management. CEOs of small to medium businesses make no where near this amount in my experience. And, a lot make less than their highest paid employees.

From October 2008 to August 2016 I was the CEO of a company that grew from ~25 people to ~130. For the first 5 years I made no salary, as everything was going back into the business and I was living off savings and living pretty frugally. When I did start taking a salary in 2013 I definitely wasn’t in the top 5 highest paid employees either. From my interactions with other business owners that is pretty common.

There are only 18,5000 businesses in the USA with 500 employees or more employees in the USA. Just keep that in mind next time you read one of these articles. It is only the top 500 CEOs in the country who make an average of 13 million dollars a year running billion dollar businesses :). A debate is probably needed for how compensation is given at these massive firms making hundreds of million dollars. I’d love to see stock given to them, but with a really long lock in period for when they can sell it to ensure they are aligned with what is good for the business long term.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts