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Facebook Details Executive Salaries, Bonuses
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has detailed the pay of 27-year-old Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as well as four other executives. These are people who are set to be billionaires at least on paper when the company goes public as part of its $5 billion initial public offering (IPO). All five individuals are in line for annual target bonuses of 45 percent of their salary plus other base wages. For Zuckerberg, the bonus could amount to roughly $225,000 this year, based on his annual salary of $500,000."
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FTFA "These salaries of course don’t take into account the executives’ stocks in the social networking giant. If you were worried their salaries are on the low side, don’t be."
Oh thank god! I can finally sleep easy tonight. Phew!
Specially designed to inspire shareholder confidence if you're a believer, or to lower his tax bracket if you're a cynic.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
It's a great free app that I can choose to use, or not to use. It has brought me in contact with people I haven't talked to for decades. I hope you become fabulously rich. I also hope that Facebook doesn't engineer itself into oblivion before an alternative comes along...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
FWIW, Jobs only got $1 annual salary, plus lots of stock options (at a "special" rate). Since he didn't get paid a salary that could be taxed, he "borrowed" against his stock and options, which is not taxable until the options are converted to stock, or the stock sold, and then it is "capital gains", and not simple income, at a much lower tax rate... So, in effect, he was paid million$, but had a tax burden much less, percentage-wise, than the rest of us working schlubs!
Those cynics are idiots. His dividend/capital gains are going to be the same whether he has a salary or not. So yeah, he'd have to pay more taxes if he made more money, but he'd... wait for it... make more money!
The cynics are right in cases where the employee takes a salary cut but is instead compensated in some other way which is taxed at a lower level.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Public education for him and his employees. Infrastructure to help him and his employees get around and provide them with the electricity needed for their work. Safety and stability so that he doesn't have to pay millions of dollars in protection money to organized crime. Safe, plentiful food and clean water, so that he didn't die as a child. Clean air, so that he doesn't have horrible respiratory illnesses. Social safety nets so that he could take risks without fear of dying in the gutter if he failed. And so on.
Nobody gets where they are alone. Everyone relies on the society they live in for support. That's why you don't see people like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg coming out of Somalia. Unfortunately, it's now become commonplace to deny this obvious truth, because "Greed is Good", at least in the minds of the greedy.
Those cynics are idiots. His dividend/capital gains are going to be the same whether he has a salary or not. So yeah, he'd have to pay more taxes if he made more money, but he'd... wait for it... make more money! The cynics are right in cases where the employee takes a salary cut but is instead compensated in some other way which is taxed at a lower level.
Bonuses in shares instead of salary are just such compensation taxed at a very low rate and the employee can borrow against the stocks and still come out ahead of paying taxes. The executive is happy. The bank is happy. The government and the people who expect taxation to be fair and just... screwed.
As far as my friends go, it usually takes some incidence of drama to get them to quit. Two of my friends quit as a result of bad breakups with ex-wives. I was smart enough to learn those lessons back in the MySpace days, when I was in a relationship living with my girlfriend:
" Ethanol, who is that bitch you added to your friends list? Are you cheating on me ?! "
" Uh, she's my sister. No, I am not cheating on you.
( 3 days later )
" Ethanol, who is that bitch you just added to your friend's list. Are you gonna cheat on me with her?! "
" No, she's my fucking grandma! "
That teacher, incidentally, moonlights as a consultant and encouraged us all to "network," because that's how people get jobs and succeed, he thinks.
He should tell that to my boss, an utterly unqualified asshole and idiot, who got his job due to networking because his buddy was his boss and friends with his boss' boss. After he utterly ruined our department, blaming his faults on us, and sent morale through the floor blaming and bullying, I led a revolt to overthrow him. Consultants were called in to see where the faults were and his buddy-boss was asked to leave the company. Now everybody involved in the idiot's hiring is getting a pistol-whipping from corporate, and he's on his way out. Meanwhile, the department (except for the boss, of course) got bonuses for showing self-sufficiency in the absense of real leadership.
In short, "networking" is another bullshit buzzword. Any decent employee can succeed by merit alone.
Jobs and Zuck will also own a large chunk of a different class of shares that the typical stock price. These special shares will have things like more voting rights, potentially pay a dividend or similar every year, they may (or may not, depending) be unlimited liability rather than traditional limited liability stocks and so on. I'm not quite sure how apple and facebook do (or will do) it, but this is pretty common for most big companies.
It's because of these different share classes that zuck will be able to give himself 60% of the voting power in the company, despite owning only about 25% of the value of the company.
Being the CEO of a company comes with a few perks too. That private jet the company owns? You're using it for business purposes, even if you're flying to florida for golfing, it's always part of your security/connectedness/etc. requirement, and because you're golfing with the CEO of another company it's business meeting, so it's not a taxable benefit since it is for work.
Over the years regulators have become less fond of the more archaic schemes, like rather than hiring you, they're contracting sir_sri management services, a wholly own subsidiary of Sri's Cayman Island management group, where Sri officially claims residence, so the housing, provided by the company, is a 'temporary residence' and for the use of any of Sir_Sri Management services employees who may be required to fulfill the terms of the contract (not disclosed), and they're families who may also have an expense account to deal with the temporary relocation from the Cayman islands. Oh and because you're only there temporarily, all your meals, and general housing services are also covered expenses*.
* a lot of this still happens a lot, justifiably so, on shorter term stuff.
Nobody gets where they are alone. Everyone relies on the society they live in for support. That's why you don't see people like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg coming out of Somalia.
No, no, no! Somalia's not like American because it doesn't have enough Jobses and Zuckerbergs! They're the job creators! If Somalians had more of that entrepeneurial spirit, they'd be rich too!
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
She earns $2 a year? Wow, her boss ist a bastard.
(+1, Disagree)
"Capitalism doesn't work without strong property rights and an equal rule of law. Somalia has neither."
It's only the Somalia *does* have equal rule of law, in fact a single law, "the one on the right side of the AK-47 commands" and *does* have the strongest of property rights, just try to take off the AK-47 from the hands that hold it from the right side.
It's only ridiculous to claim that Somalia doesn't enjoys the benefits of capitalism in its purest form.
I do wonder if the less visible Facebook execs have any plans to support the country that made them rich.
What line do you have to stand in to be made rich by your country? Because I want to stand in that line.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Shooting Zuckerberg and Murdoch? Murdoch is a scumbag that actively tries to have laws changed to hurt regular people, so I could understand some vitriol there.
But all Zuckerberg did was make a service that millions of people love. And he did it without selling anyone's personal information, buying draconian legislation, etc.
You might find facebook annoying, or be jealous of his site's success, but let's not get stupid.
When people make my entire retirement savings (me+wife working for 30 years) in a weekend, I wonder why I bothered doing science. Clearly, I was in the wrong line of work and the world changed out from under me.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Speak for yourself!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You'd have to be a weird sort of dude to give charity to the federal government.
I reduce my tax burden as much as is legal, so I don't think the rich are all that "different" on that particular score.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes, there are many tricks like that. I can't write-off the miles on my second car even though the only reason we have a second car is so that I can get to work. Yet my VP can drive around in a company car and the company can write it off.
But that's not the sort of thing we are talking about here. The man holds billions worth of Facebook stock... any dip (or rise) in stock price is of far more concern to him than all the incentive packages the board could possibly come up with. He already has motivation to work as hard as he is capable of for the company. Do I think he has a great accountant? I'm sure of it. Do I think that he took the $1 salary because it would be good for the stock price and not because it could save him a few hundred thousand (or even million) in taxes? Yes, I'm quite certain that was his rationale.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
useless tool makes a pile of money fucking everyone else in the world news at 11
Given the size of the company, and number of customers, $275k for a General Council or Head Engineer, $300k for a COO, and $500k for a CEO (plus potential 45% bonuses for all) is a pretty fair deal. Theses guys work long, hard hours, and have a lot of responsibility.
Wow! I didn't realize it was charity to pay taxes, given it's taxes that provide services oneself enjoys* but, if wealthy enough, services that others enjoy as well. Well, I guess it is charity in the sense that it means potentially paying more than you get out for the benefit of others. Personally, I'd just consider that a common duty of anyone with the means towards humanity. But, then, I take that from the idea that just because you're not a completely selfish dick and rose above doing the absolute minimum when it comes to contributing to the world doesn't make your actions charity.
When the tax laws are rewritten so that "reduce my tax burden as much as is legal" is pretty fluid on the word "legal" precisely because you money can more or less help buy what "legal" is, I think "that particular score" is very different. That's precisely why Warren Buffet bitched about the point that capital gains taxes are so ludicrously low, given it's precisely the rich that have the means to have so much of their assets tied up in stock and hence benefit from such an effectively low income tax rate. I mean, I don't know about you, but when companies require you to buy at least 1,000 shares of stock and stocks sell for at least $1, it's easy to see why the average person isn't going to buy much in the way of stock. Hell, when middle and upper middle class people started actually buying stocks directly (as day traders), their was an incredible amount of bitching and moaning from the rich (through a receptive media) precisely because their actions were causing disruptions in stock prices which represented a significant instability in expected returns. Of course, mutual funds were just as bitchy as they being the middlemen in stocks for the middle class didn't like missing the potential customers nor how it became clear just how illusionary stock prices really are when a relatively few can have significant disruptive effect on the stock market. But, I digress...
*Yes, I realize not everyone uses all services and plenty of people don't pay enough to cover their share of what they use. But, then short of every paying on a per-use basis, there's no way to be "fair" in that sense. Having said that, there's already the absurdity of people today who bitch they paid $X into social security and expect to get $X out, either to themselves or to their loved ones when they die, ignoring that plenty of people on social security get more than they ever paid in (the disabled, the elderly who live longer than average, etc) which makes that entirely unreasonable unless there's some expectation that the government either (a) take the $X and invest it into companies and use dividends or later sales or something to cover the difference (which wouldn't work, given the relatively low rate of return to the demand) or (b) take taxes from some other source to make up the difference (which makes social security not self-sustaining and rather misses the whole point of budgeting). Meanwhile, per-use services fall on their face for many obvious reasons (a person who is robbed of their money, is murdered, etc obviously can't pay) behind the whole injustice of such a system (not that people seem to think too much about that, but it's easy to not think about when you spend all your efforts painting government as the source of injustice). But, then, I digress again..
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Zuckerburg's salary of $500,000 is only effective through 2012. As of 2013, it will drop to $1. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/mark-zuckerberg-will-have-a-1-salary-starting-in-2013/
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That might make it a pretty dreary work environment. That office party you throw for every 10th/100th product you sell, that christmas party, that free lunch fridays are all unnecessary to the core function of the business. So they'd be taxable benefits, so who would do any of it? Treat your employees like drones, and you get drones. Germany up until relatively recently even let bribes be a deductible business expense, because well, that's the cost of doing business a lot of places. I think you lose a competitive edge if you can't wine and dine other guys, and there really is a lot to be said for having semi-casual business discussions.
Don't get me wrong, I mentioned it because it is abused, but there's probably a legitimate case for business expenses to include treating your people and customers like more than just drones.
I guarantee you they are not working more than thrice as many hours, and take less risk than I do.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Generally, it's the line where you get born to rich parents.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Nonsense. Gov't destroyed education, not improved it, made it much more expensive and destroyed the quality.
Gov't doesn't create infrastructure, in fact gov't can do absolutely nothing without the free enterprise providing the means for it. The wealth is FIRST created by the people who work for living and then gov't comes in and steals it, reduces the overall amount of wealth in the system, scatters it around among its preferred people and then this is called 'public good'.
I am happy to live in times when this is going to come to a crashing end, this is something to look forward to - the end of the system. Either it will turn completely dictatorial and it will be even a bigger disaster or there will be a huge swing back to the true free market and freedoms for individuals and socialist ideologues will simply be laughed out of town.
You can't handle the truth.
Facebook better start making some serious cash if they hope to pay out a 10 cent quarterly dividend.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
"Facebook Details Executive Salaries, Bonuses"
Why do Americans use this strange form of English? I mean using a comma to separate nouns and usually only towards the end of a sentence. The obvious way to write the same thing would surely be "Facebook details executive salaries and bonuses."
Not a criticism by the way. I would really like to know and Google has not helped me.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
I mean no offense to you or your line of work, I am in the same boat. I followed. I am happy where I am at. I know where I want to be and work to get there.
Just like there are superstars in sports there are superstars in business. Whether they bring new products or innovation matters not, their drive is wholly different.
Now I know some will write it off to luck and yes, there are many cases of luck. Guess what, you don't get lucky not doing. You get lucky by trying, in some cases over and over and over.
Look at it this way, I would rather live in a system where there are untold riches for those who succeed. He isn't some politician deciding from up on high the winner or losers. He is deciding for himself and there are hundreds, if not thousands along for the ride. He created something many people value.
Some need that mythical pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow, others just feel the need to do. Which is he? Hell if I know. I don't have the drive but am quite happy to be in their world.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
OH stfu. You've been reading to much Ayn Rand. As it's already been stated - no one reaches these levels of success on their own. Yes he had a good idea, yes he worked hard to make it happen but he didn't do it in a vacuum. He was in the right place - at the right time. He came from a background of privilege. He had opportunities in his life that 98% of Americans, let alone humanity do not have. Quit pretending that people who through ingenuity, hard work, and not a little bit of luck and fortune are somehow the salvation of humanity. It's f*%cking nauseating.
You are correct, but I imagine that what you do creates less value and is less unique than what they do. We're not paid by how long and hard we work, but rather by the combined perception of how much value we provide and how hard it would be to replace us. Is it always fair? No. Is it always unfair? Also no.
Absolutely. I purely take exception to the story that we're rewarding risk taking and hard work. We're not. We don't reward those things. We reward success in the marketplace, and that's it.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Actually, it is. He entered into a secret, probably illegal (still to be tested in court) agreement with my potential employers to hold down wages.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's like you don't understand what freedom means. I'm going to guess you've never spent much time living in a country without all the social services you take for granted and malign. There is no meaningful freedom without a strong, well run central government. Unless, again, you want to point to places like Somalia as "free".
Don't actually explore reality, though. Go back to theorizing that pure libertarianism would somehow miraculously play out differently than it has in every "free" area throughout all of human history.
For decades I've answered that question in exactly the same way - USA 1870-1913, Switzerland for the last 20 years, China today.
Good infrastructure means infrastructure that market requires.
Good education means education that market requires.
USA had no strong central government before the Fed and IRS basically, all of these abominations: Fed, IRS, FDA, EPA, FAA, FCC, FDIC, FBI, F&F, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, labour laws, dept's of education, energy, commerce, agriculture, interior, etc., all of this was created already after the economy of USA became strong due to the free market that preceded it and those are the instruments of destruction of the economy and society. I have plenty on these subjects in my journal.
I have tons of comments on this subject, here is something in infrastructure and taxes.
Central government is the end of the road, monopoly on government that is constantly putting more and more pressure on the freedoms of individuals will eventually be released in an explosion and it should.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm sure this will get modded down, but I believe the only "fair and just" way to implement a tax is to divide the federal budget by the number of citizens. Everyone pays their fair share and there is no way to dodge it.
That would be fair, but only if the world were fair to start with. That is to say 100% inheritance tax and everyone given an equal share of all wealth at birth. Of course that is impractical, so we try to create a somewhat fair and sustainable system by progressive taxation, where those that make more and have more pay more. This ostensibly prevents the wealth consolidation principal from kicking in so hard all the wealth is owned by a few aristocrats until the peasants revolt and we start the cycle again. Realistically these days the taxation has been shifted such that wealth is constantly consolidating into fewer and fewer hands and is leading towards an inevitable revolution unless corrected (military, political, or economic revolution: the new deal was a revolution of sorts).
You[sic] annual tax bill would be only $4,417.88.
Okay, put on your economist hat. 50% of the citizenry of the US has zero net wealth. Their assets and debts collectively balance out to nothing. Moreover, there is no realistic hope of this changing (as a group) over the course of their lifetimes. Those people pay an effective tax rate of about 5% now and make under $26K. So you just quadrupled their taxes. What do you think is going to happen? 50% of the US is now rapidly racking up debt and being denied loans since the banks know they have no hope of paying them.
What will happen is obvious. They'll pick up guns and knives and clubs and containers of gasoline. They'll murder you and take your stuff. They'll kill the rich and redistribute the wealth, probably in a very inequitable way while creating a new government, likely less stable and less just than the one we have now.
There are several variations that can be made on this tax scheme but it's the only way to ensure taxes are truly "fair and just".
Taxes can only be fair and just in a world that is relatively fair and just. That's not even close to this one. Your scheme is just a pie in the sky road to revolution, suffering, death, and instability.
Oh, I see, so just stealing from others, who do make it a goal then?
You can't handle the truth.