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The Story of the CEO Paying Everyone $70k Gets Complicated
ranton writes: Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, made news last April when he raised all employee salaries to at least $70,000. He claimed his motive was based on research that shows increased wages increase happiness up to about $75k per year. But according to a recent Bloomberg article this may have been a smoke screen. Karen Weise found Dan Price has been fighting with his co-founder Lucas Price over Dan's salary for years, and that his co-founder served him with a lawsuit weeks before the pay raises were announced. Apparently Dan had been paying himself nearly three times the salary of CEO's of similar sized companies in his industry, over the strong objection of his co-founder. The lawsuit was not officially filed until after the announcement, making it originally look like the pay rise caused the lawsuit. Now it appears to be the opposite. Since the lawsuit is trying to force the CEO to buy out his co-founder based on the CEO's prior greed, lowering the short term profitability of the company while boosting his positive PR seems to be a likely motive for the pay hike.
I liked it better when he was an idealistic hippie. The idea that one moronic but well meaning CEO was doing bullshit to help people, even if it had long term ruinous consequences, was pleasant.
Now it's just another greedy 0.1%er nomming up cash and playing a good game of sociopathic prisoner's dilemma. Boring. That's so ubiquitous in corporations that it's just a common stereotype in all the netflixes and youtubes. Hell, prolly the redtubes too.
"Since the lawsuit is trying to force the CEO to buy out his co-founder based on the CEO's prior greed, lowering the short term profitability of the company while boosting his positive PR seems to be a likely motive for the pay hike."
Except that short-term profitability has DOUBLED since wages increases commenced (source). Did his plan then backfire?
The motivation is that Dan doesn't want the company to show a profit so his brother's share is worthless.
This. Looks pretty cut and dry to me. I love how everyone gushed all over it when it was announced. Made no sense to me that a business owner would make a decision like that out of the goodness of his heart. I know. I sound like a Scrooge.
But that's how it is. Start your own business so you can be a shot-caller.
Who knows if Dan is a wife-beater or not? While he could well be the contemptible person that his wife claims, she could also be trying to ruin the guy now 9 years later (maybe she's dissatisfied with some aspect of their split). That's the problem with he-said she-said crap flinging: anyone can say anything at basically any time. Unless there's some corroborating evidence, I'll treat her story as exactly that: a story.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
No facts. Rampant speculation/innuendo/suspicion. Why do I read this page again?
In which case, it's backfired horribly, since all the coverage I've seen has said that it's actually been very good for business.
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Predate the lawsuit, not the dispute.
Now who is clinging to a narrative ?
Is that you, Mr. Cosby?
If it helps: I've a 4-digit ID, I went through a very nasty divorce about 15 years ago, and I concur with Thunderf00t.
I thought you were going to say, "I had a 4-digit ID, but I went through a very nasty divorce about 15 years ago, and my spouse received it in the settlement."
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!