I don't get why we decided at some point you need someone anointed with CEO Fairy Dust to be CEO. I 100% guarantee the job is not so damn hard, subtle, or complex that practically no-one on Earth can do it. There are probably 20 people at Mozilla right now (haha, OK, maybe not anymore) who could step into the role and would gladly do so at $500,000/yr. Unless the responsibilities, procedures, and state of things at that level is so poorly understood and documented that someone else coming in would have to start from scratch, which seems like a massive organizational failure if that's the case.

It's. Just. A. Job.

I suspect this is yet another manifestation of the crippling, organizationally-irrational-but-individually-rational levels of risk avoidance we're operating under now.

The elevation of CSuite as magical makers of wealth, when most of that value is created by the organization, needs to stop. Good leadership is important, but CEO comp is completely atrocious and unsustainable. Especially if the alternative is to lay off a ton of employees just to maintain operations.

We can see it right here how it’s killing a value generation vehicle. The CEO won’t accept a pay cut, but is willing to shut down entire product lines. A similar story has played out across America.

The market rate for CE* jobs is set by ... other people who have CE* jobs.

I have a suspicion the supply side of this market equation is artificially constrained by people who have an interest (social and financial) in keeping it so, and that is part of why we've seen CEO pay go up so much in the last few decades.

There are plenty of people who could do well in the CEO job at most companies—no worse than the average we're getting now, anyway. There are far fewer "CEO types".

Apparently [0] the EFF pay their CEO $257,500.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24132195

The EFF is also about 1/50th the size of Mozilla.

Is CEO pay a function of the number of employees? Then a 25% cut would be justified.