Slashdot Mirror
Lenovo CEO Shares $3 Million Bonus With Workers
hackingbear writes "Yang Yuanqing, founder and CEO of Chinese PC maker Lenovo, will share $3.25 million from his bonus with some 10,000 staff in China and 19 other countries. 'Most are hourly manufacturing workers,' Lenovo spokeswoman Angela Lee said. 'As you can imagine, an extra $300 in a manufacturing environment in China does make an impact, especially to employees supporting families.' In its annual review last year, Lenovo raised Yang's base pay to $1.2 million and awarded him a $4.2 million discretionary bonus and a $8.9 million long-term incentive award. Yang owns 7.12% of Lenovo's shares, equivalent to about $720 million in stock."
I believe that he did this last year as well.
Good on him, especially considering that Lenovo has been quite successful recently in a contracting PC market
It's easy to be a philanthropist when you're rich. Just sayin'
Its also easy to not share your wealth with your workers.
Thanks for the info. I will make it a point to buy / recommend Leveno products. I want to reward this behavior.
The workers feel appreciated and will be diligent.
You don't happen upon good employee morale and company stewardship.
It has to be grown. Quality and waste will decrease. When employees feel zero empathy for the company or it's future, a fall is sure to follow.
I'm betting that if he had sent the company into a tail spin and taken a $3billion parachute you'd be on here commenting about what a dick the guy was. Can he do anything to please you, or are you a serial whiner?
In before 1000 Libertarians explaining that nobody works unless they're paid money, because nothing is important except accumulation of material tat.
Libertarian here. His stock is worth $720M, and he only gave away 0.5% of that. If his generosity boosts morale enough to generate just 1% more profit, then he has doubled the money. He is publicizing this gift, so the workers are aware of the source, rather than giving anonymously, so he is at least partly motivated by greed. This looks like a smart investment.
$3,250,000 / 10,000 = $325 per employee.
Keep that math in your brain for the next "Overpaid CEO" argument.
If this is all about return on investment, why don't all CEs of multinationals do this?
Are they all that dumb? Are you saying they should all be sacked?
The 23rd curse of the Libertarian is to reduce everything to some meaningless effiiciency calculation which ignores any inconvenient factors. It's the kind of thing you do as a dorky 15 year old (or college freshman if you're remedial), but mostttttt people grow out of by college.
Actually all the empirical evidence seems to point to it being harder.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not rare at all. Most outcomes in a free market fit this description.
Clicked on comments to come and see all the folks who'd make negative comments about him for this. You, among others, didn't disappoint.
There is no indication he's motivated by greed whatsoever, and it's either ignorant or wilfully destructive to cast such aspersions without some concrete evidence.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Not as easy as you think. First you have to get over yourself. That's HUGE when you're rich because you tend to think you're better than those below you and your status and ability to rise to your level convinces you of it. So, no it's not as easy as you think. In reality, it's easy to imagine being generous when you don't have much to give.
Just sayin'
Say or say not. There is no just.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
This guy is the CEO. He could just as well have Lenovo give this bonus directly to its employees, which it will probably (have to) do anyway. Instead he's trying to make himself look good. Might be worth the trouble; the (apparently) kinder the CEO, the more loyal the employees. But this is not an act of charity; it's just a normal bonus with a well thought-out psychological plan behind it.
0x or or snor perron?!
He's giving part of his bonus to be distributed to his workers? That's the path to socialism!
I'm a Libertarian who thinks corporations should be outlawed in current societies and denied any form of special privileges like limited liability or any form of personhood in a utopian free society. What were you saying again about grossly overpaid CEOs? I agree that they are grossly overpaid. I suspect that most of them could be replaced with someone who makes less than 100k per year no problem.
Even if the company made a little bit less money it would be good for the morale of everyone else if one person were not so ridiculously overpaid.
I think you have to be blind to not see that a corporation represents an unhealthy concentration of power in the hands of a few. Power corrupts. Also the behavior of a corporation is indistinguishable from that of an individual sociopath. The last thing we need is more sociopaths in our or any society. We certainly should not be encouraging them as we do now.
Companies, as in groups of individuals working toward a common goal, which should not be to make a pile of money in any way they can, but to produce a product or service they can be proud of, while hopefully at the same time earning enough to live comfortably, are themselves necessary evils because when they grow large they grow powerful even without limited liability or legal personhood, but there is simply no alternative that actually works. Human beings have to work together in groups to produce useful things. Government owned corporations are no better than privately owned ones. In fact they are usually worse.
You know what else is a necessary evil? Governments. That's why we Libertarians like to keep them as small as possible. In general I'd also like to keep companies as small as possible, but large companies also have advantages in terms of more affordable goods and services for poor people. Human beings simply don't behave as well in groups, especially in large groups, but I don't think artificially limiting their size makes sense in the way it does for governments. The economic advantages for the poorest members of society are simply too great. Nevertheless I think it would have great non-monetary benefits on society as a whole if all companies or organized groups of any kind were limited to no more than 100 people.
Are you sure you weren't thinking of a Republican. Some of you pro-government types get us confused so easily but we actually have very little in common. Some very minor common ground in economic theory with a small minority of them, probably the ones who call themselves tea partiers, and that's all.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
It's an act of generosity which he didn't have to do, for a company that puts out a laptop where Linux runs great. Lenovo was already probably going to get my next purchase based on how well Linux is running on this laptop (T61 purchased used FWIW), and this only makes it easier.
No its not, you dont get rich by sharing to begin with.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
In reality, it's easy to imagine being generous when you don't have much to give.
Bingo. Being rich insulates you from understanding hardship, the most generous people are generally the ones who can least afford it because they experience some level of poverty on a daily basis.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The reason folks are making negative comments is at least partly that it's an accounting trick. If the company had directly given the workers $300 bonuses, it would have been the same as if the CEO had been given millions of dollars and he then divided it up among the employees as $300 bonuses. But it wouldn't have made the news.
There are a few really good reasons not to do business with me, but I've always had as many clients as I can handle. Most of my money (over a million dollars) has come from people who choose to do business with me BECAUSE of what kind of person I am.
When they see me being generous with my time and money, they know I'm the type of person they want to do a deal with.
Secondly, without a generous and grateful spirit, you can have $200 million and not be nearly as rich as someone with a spirit of gratitude and generosity who earns 1/10th as much.
Sure, it's POSSIBLE to get a lot of money by being obsessed with money. Some people do that. It's EASIER to get rich by being of service, solving people's problems. Who would you rather buy from, someone who is obsessed with getting your money, or the other guy who is trying to help you solve your problem? If you were really good at what you do, which of those people would you choose to work for?
You don't get rich spending money FOOLISHLY. Every rich person I know is generous, applying the same wisdom to their giving that they apply to their business. (Disclaimer - generous people are over represented in the list of people I know because I don't hang out with, or do business with, scumbags.)
It's the kind of thing you do as a dorky 15 year old (or college freshman if you're remedial)...
...or as a successful CEO. Sorry, I know you didn't want that pointed out but it needed to be said.
You sure about that? Huawei's status as an employee-owned company that it calls a "collective" is dubious; in theory it is owned by its employees, but its management structure is opaque and it is only rather recently that they even admitted who their board of directors were -- and its totally unclear how much real ability the employees have to accomplish anything.
The CEO of Huawei, the guy who founded it, is hugely secretive and has strong ties to the Communist Party. As do most of the other known bosses. Its politically useful (especially at the time it was founded) for the Party and the Chinese to think of Huawei as a collective, even though there's no real evidence its anything but. Doing so has allowed the state to support Huawei in circumstances it normally wouldn't be inclined to do politically.
Now, I don't buy into the Huawei conspiracy theories, but c'mon.... you're reading too much into "employee-owned".
Actually forget if it's Simpsons or Futurama but "It's the amount of money our scientists have calculated that poor people think is a lot of money!"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm guessing that you are a Republican. Am I right? You clearly do not have the first clue about what Libertarianism actually is. First you have to learn to think in terms of principles. Then learn what 'voluntarism' means. Then note that Libertarianism is not about class warfare. Corporations behave like sociopaths. That sort of behavior is not good for society. The government helps and encourages them in this with the special privileges it grants them. The thing I hate most about Republicans is their anti-intellectualism and their militant pragmatism. Ideas are important. This country was founded on them.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Note to Americans: this is a textbook example of socialism (workers own the means of production), not what you think socialism is.
thats nice that you barely notice 300$ extra dollars.
I'm happy that you are so successful.
but $300 is a pretty big bonus for most people.
300$ is a couple months of credit card payments.
a car payment.
a couple months of gas in the car.
or something nice for the wife.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
dont ignore the time difference.
the time difference is significant, as is the perception difference between lump sum and spread out.
an extra 8$ a week isnt much, your right. most people wouldnt notice it unless they already are financially smart enough to toss any extras like that into their savings (on top of their existing saving contributions). but most dont. and waiting a year for that extra to add up to something (300) decreases its worth substantially.
but if you give it to em lump sum instead of spread out, all sudden it has real immediate worth.
compare paying an extra 300$ on credit now, to paying an extra 300$ in a year. the credit interest alone after a year is probably (way) more than $300.
the time factor matters.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Mitt Romney gave $4 million to charity in one year - 1/3rd of his income.
Giving money to your own social clubs like the mormon church and its affiliates like Brigham Young University, or the George W Bush Library, or the private school where 5 of his kids attended isn't charity, it's tax-deductible self-interest. Naked quid pro quo.
Before I posted I went and read up on his tax returns, just to make sure that my assumption of self-interest was true. That he hadn't made a liar out of me and my cynicism by really giving the bulk of his donations to organizations that would not benefit himself in one way or another. In the process I found out some interesting "character" related points:
1) His 2010 tax return showed only 11% of his income went to non-profit deductions. The mormon church directly gets 10% straight off the bat as tithing, leaving 1% for everything else. In fact, his own 20-year summary shows he averaged less than 12.6% until the 30% spike in 2011 brought the average up to just under 13.5%. Why such an outlier in 2011 when he had roughly half the income that he did in 2010? Seems to me that once he won the party primary his donations went up.
2) In 2011 he did not claim the maximum allowed tax deductions for his donations. He only claimed a deduction for $2.25 of the $4 million that was eligible. Why would he do that? Well, the guy who runs Romney's family trust said it helped to keep his campaign promise of paying at least 13% in income tax every year. Here's my question, now that he lost the election, did he go back and file an amended return to claim the entire $4M? We will probably never know, maybe a real man of character would not. A real republican would be happy to over-pay his taxes without a complaint, right?
My source for those two points is this article at The Blaze - I figured I'd go with a conservative news source to give Romney the benefit of the doubt in the reporting.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.