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Out of curiosity, if you make $X/year, could you please provide estimates of what your boss, boss's boss, etc. make? I mean in the sense of $X, $1.2X, $1.5X, 2X, … all the way to the CEO.
In my field – aerospace engineering – it is routine for engineers with a MSE and ~10 years of experience to make $100K – even in the Heartland. I mean places like Huntsville, Alabama; Hampton, Virginia; Tullahoma, Tennessee; and Dayton, Ohio. This is "bench level" engineers, who supervise nobody and who don't personally answer for the health of any particular project. The senior-scientist type, with say a PhD and 20 years of experience, can easily reach $150K – and again, this is in the Heartland, where $150K buys a 4-bedroom house on a half-acre lot.
However, there is evidence that in going to the next level of responsibility/seniority, there's considerable salary-compression… until, that is, we reach the CEO. It is this compression that's inimical to morale amongst already senior people, who are already making good money (by median standards) and who already might be worth several million dollars over a lifetime of assiduous savings.
So the irony is that blue-collar Americans decry the injustice of the PhD scientist earning $150K, while the latter is just as irritated by the fact that he, his boss and his boss's boss are all bunched-up in the $150K-$200K range, while the CEO is making $10M.
It's hard to say because I have 5 years under my belt, many of my bosses have 10-20 years, but a rough estimate of what I have seen from the levels remaining I could theoretically move to.
Senior Manager II: 15% more
Director: 35%-50%
Senior Director : 75%
Senior Director 2: 100-150%
VP: 200-300%
SVP: 500-750%
EVP: 1-3k%
CEO: 10-12k%
Yup, I am in a college town about the size of Dayton, Ohio
It's hard to say because I have 5 years under my belt, many of my bosses have 10-20 years, but a rough estimate of what I have seen from the levels remaining I could theoretically move to.
Senior Manager II: 15% more
Director: 35%-50%
Senior Director : 75%
Senior Director 2: 100-150%
VP: 200-300%
SVP: 500-750%
EVP: 1-3k%
CEO: 10-12k%
Yup, I am in a college town about the size of Dayton, Ohio
Well, I was in a New England town, and as having a direct sample size of about 1500, and another over 5,000 indirectly... I can give you my opinion (based upon fact, as I was responsible for their salaries, and at $32M/year for just some of them, I was held quite responsible).
(And Dayton is a city that is more than 10 times the population that I ever lived in).
First, I couldn't get a decent engineer (software or hardware) for anything South of $100K. If you are an engineer worth your grain of salt, (in my opinion), I couldn't touch you for less than $150K a year. Of course it depends on your experience, and expertise, but the only thing that makes me successful is to make my employees successful, and I stick by the philosophy of 'hire your replacement'. Simple enough.
Personally (and this is my opinion), your numbers are vastly over-inflated. I'm an algorithmic number-puncher, if you can't tell ;-) Not that I am overpaid, as it takes a hard toll on me (well it used to).
Given your ranking criteria, it sounds like a military contractor operation (or supplier to such). Correct me if I am wrong. Such a narrow view on the world is very myopic.
Yac, be gentle.
'Theoretically' is a relatively non-descriptive term, as it does not provide absoluteness... Wanting to be a manager (or exec), and being a really good one, are two different things. As one who went through the school of hard knocks to become one, I can tell you in a DM.
Last edited by Axton Cross; 11-23-2016 at 02:45 PM..
'Theoretically' is a relatively non-descriptive term, as it does not provide absoluteness... Wanting to be a manager (or exec), and being a really good one, are two different things. As one who went through the school of hard knocks to become one, I can tell you in a DM.
The question was what do people above me make, I was saying theoretically these are the levels I could move to, I have no intention of actually doing so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Axton Cross
Personally (and this is my opinion), your numbers are vastly over-inflated. I'm an algorithmic number-puncher, if you can't tell ;-) Not that I am overpaid, as it takes a hard toll on me (well it used to).
I'm not sure what this really means. Those levels all exist. Each one comes with a 10% increase in pay minimum along with a larger % bonus and a much larger RSU compensation. I factored all of those in when discussing the levels. I know my previous Senior Director II made ~ 175-200k base, with a 30-40% bonus depending on company performance and another $35k in RSUs. At VP the base is higher than that with an 80-90% bonus and 50-75k/yr in RSUs. My most recent promotion came with a 15% pay increase a 5% increase in bonus potential and double my RSUs.
So if you have a VP with a $200k base with an 80% bonus and $50k in RSUs what does that total compensation come to?
Well, I was in a New England town, and as having a direct sample size of about 1500, and another over 5,000 indirectly... I can give you my opinion (based upon fact, as I was responsible for their salaries, and at $32M/year for just some of them, I was held quite responsible).
(And Dayton is a city that is more than 10 times the population that I ever lived in).
First, I couldn't get a decent engineer (software or hardware) for anything South of $100K. If you are an engineer worth your grain of salt, (in my opinion), I couldn't touch you for less than $150K a year. Of course it depends on your experience, and expertise, but the only thing that makes me successful is to make my employees successful, and I stick by the philosophy of 'hire your replacement'. Simple enough.
Personally (and this is my opinion), your numbers are vastly over-inflated. I'm an algorithmic number-puncher, if you can't tell ;-) Not that I am overpaid, as it takes a hard toll on me (well it used to).
Given your ranking criteria, it sounds like a military contractor operation (or supplier to such). Correct me if I am wrong. Such a narrow view on the world is very myopic.
Yac, be gentle.
'Theoretically' is a relatively non-descriptive term, as it does not provide absoluteness... Wanting to be a manager (or exec), and being a really good one, are two different things. As one who went through the school of hard knocks to become one, I can tell you in a DM.
While I'm not an engineer I have worked for several engineering companies. In general most of the engineers (Mechanical and Electrical) have been paid somewhere between 70-120K. You can look at the various salary websites and government data to see it. That said right now certain specialty engineers can make well north of that but not on average even in high cost areas (I'm in southern New England). Pay steps of management can vary widely from company to company in my experience. I have a relative who moved from one insurance company to another, he had been in charge of a staff of 20 at the first and 5 at the next and the title seemed lower but somehow it paid 20% more. When you add in small companies it can get even weirder.
There are some fundamental problems with vast accumulations of wealth. It's no accident that the US Constitution forbids patents of nobility, and huge financial dynasties are destructive to personal liberties. Several times the US Government has moved to dismantle financial empires, when they became destructive to society.
One way of dealing with excessive profits is a high tax rate. The mantra you hear today is, "Don't tax the job creators," but in fact the way to create jobs is to tax them at 90%. They don't want to pay those massive taxes, so they invest the money back into their companies. The economy grows, jobs flourish, the middle class thrives, and they can feel virtuous about building wealth while actually doing something constructive with their money. Modern "investing" means playing the stock market, and the stock market has evolved into a total failure when it comes to funding new businesses.
The way to put a leash on vast accumulations of wealth and the rising aristocracy is high inheritance taxes. You hear a lot of whining about "double taxation" but the fact is that most large accumulations of wealth have never been taxed at all. If it was earned by growing a business it was 100% tax-free. If it came from capital gains it was not earned at all, and returns on assets are not taxed until they are sold.
Let's stipulate mizzourah2006's numbers as a point of discussion. They may or may not be accurate. But suppose that they are. Well then, what do we make of this?
I would opine that in middle-management there is remarkable salary compression. People with much more responsibility than their subordinates, who presumably are more talented and more hard-working and more experienced and so forth, who produce substantially more for the company - are compensated only marginally more. On the other hand, there's a huge leap from the executive vice president to the CEO. Does the CEO do vastly more than the EVP? Is he/she enormously more productive, talented etc.? I would aver to the contrary.
What we have at the top of the pay-scale is a tournament system, where slightly more "worthy" people command enormously more compensation. This is the difference between say the first-chair violin at the local community orchestra, and a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. Their violin-playing is only slightly different, but their prestige and compensation as professional musicians differs enormously.
I return to my earlier point: (1) for the general public, the gnawing envy and irritation of inequality, is about the difference between the burger-flipper and our $150K engineer. To the burger-flipper, it's the engineer who's the "elite" and the parasitic beneficiary of the New Economy. However, (2) the real inequality isn't between the high-school dropout and the eminent PhD scientist; it's between the Vice Presidents and the CEO.
Let's stipulate mizzourah2006's numbers as a point of discussion. They may or may not be accurate. But suppose that they are. Well then, what do we make of this?
I would opine that in middle-management there is remarkable salary compression. People with much more responsibility than their subordinates, who presumably are more talented and more hard-working and more experienced and so forth, who produce substantially more for the company - are compensated only marginally more. On the other hand, there's a huge leap from the executive vice president to the CEO. Does the CEO do vastly more than the EVP? Is he/she enormously more productive, talented etc.? I would aver to the contrary.
What we have at the top of the pay-scale is a tournament system, where slightly more "worthy" people command enormously more compensation. This is the difference between say the first-chair violin at the local community orchestra, and a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. Their violin-playing is only slightly different, but their prestige and compensation as professional musicians differs enormously.
I return to my earlier point: (1) for the general public, the gnawing envy and irritation of inequality, is about the difference between the burger-flipper and our $150K engineer. To the burger-flipper, it's the engineer who's the "elite" and the parasitic beneficiary of the New Economy. However, (2) the real inequality isn't between the high-school dropout and the eminent PhD scientist; it's between the Vice Presidents and the CEO.
Well, just to comment on the "New Economy", it's more than 3 decades old (before I could even work). Tell me how the burger-flipper and (at the low end of compensation for their career, a $150K engineer)... spent their time during their twenties...
Ask the burger-flipper what he did do to better himself? I will not be judgmental, but I do question his loss of direction (unless he inherits his daddy's company)...
I was mowing lawns at 14, worked in a fleece mill, and a high-end restaurant before I even graduated high school. My parents only could afford to put me through the first four years of college, but I managed to do the next decade in school on my own.
My daughter is cut from the same mold as me; another MD/PhD on its way.
Perhaps my scope is rather limited, but I had piles of PHD's and docs working for me. All I learned, was that for the proper problem, no one could solve it better. My utmost respect. I am awed to this day how they could derive things I could never do. I could design it for feasibility, and cost to marketplace, but the derivations were so far out of my league it wasn't even funny, at least at this level. (though I can show you how to derive the square root of two in the fewest calculations, given the processor architecture).
So, to respond to your (highly biased) comments, sh*t flows uphill; If my projects fail, I fail... and is recognized all the way to the top. A company, in terms of management, is a pyramid. Clean sweeps of upper management is a common occurrence. There is a reason why compensation is so extreme, because if the captain steering the boat fails, the company may fail. I rejoice that Carly F was given the ax twice, before she could do any more damage. DM me, and I will tell you how she destroyed BL/ATT and HP... I was there and saw both of the wreckage. But then again, I don't need to explain the carnage to anyone.
People act like CEO's are professional athletes. A middling NBA/NFL/MLB player has physical abilities that 98% of people on Earth can only dream of. They get paid a ton for being average because there aren't many that can replace them.
A middling CEO, outside of some technical skills or a gift of gab, has skills that can be replicated by far more people....yet they often receive ridiculous salaries relative to average workers. Great CEO's are worth their weight in gold and should probably be paid as such.
Corporate America hasn't learned to properly evaluate a CEO's worth. They're self-limiting, showing an unwillingness to consider how large their talent pool is. They inflate the value of executives under the guise that only a few people can do the job...when there's probably 3x, 5x or 10x as many people that could at some point carry on that role if given the opportunity and seasoning.
No they get paid a ton because of the players union that plays a big part in those high salaries. They know the club owners are making a fortune off the backs of them so it's only fair to pay them a small fortune. You're not going to make millions off me and pay me $100k nope.
People act like CEO's are professional athletes. A middling NBA/NFL/MLB player has physical abilities that 98% of people on Earth can only dream of. They get paid a ton for being average because there aren't many that can replace them.
A middling CEO, outside of some technical skills or a gift of gab, has skills that can be replicated by far more people....yet they often receive ridiculous salaries relative to average workers. Great CEO's are worth their weight in gold and should probably be paid as such.
Corporate America hasn't learned to properly evaluate a CEO's worth. They're self-limiting, showing an unwillingness to consider how large their talent pool is. They inflate the value of executives under the guise that only a few people can do the job...when there's probably 3x, 5x or 10x as many people that could at some point carry on that role if given the opportunity and seasoning.
Very true....a CEO doesn't RULE the company after all - many others are responsible for each part of the business. Think of it like this, if Trump is qualified to be POTUS, what skills are really required to be CEO at most companies?! And what would you pay Trump to be CEO of YOUR company?
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