If it were the case that employees need to put in capital into the business before being employees, then it would be a different story. In fact, those schemes exist - they're called MLM, or multi-level-marketing schemes, where you pay the company upfront to buy the product, and try to sell it at a profit (like herbalife), and try to recruit on behalf of the company!
But that is his stock he kept from founding the company. Not today.
He should of course still be CEO of Nvidia and get the money(stock awards), because unlike others, Nvidia execution is excellent (see market cap) and has been for decades, but that is not really any risk for him personally.
I say give him the 30 million dollar package because he's the only guy I can think of that has hope of turning NVDA into a a 10 trillion dollar company in a few years and I can't think of any other CEO that would do better than him.
And sure, maybe at that point his comp will be 300 million, that's fine, my NVDA stock will 10X as well and I'll be more than happy.
Agreed it is not about the risk
According to Wikipedia:
As of 2024, Huang has been Nvidia's chief executive for over three decades, a tenure described by The Wall Street Journal as "almost unheard of in fast-moving Silicon Valley".[14] He owns 3.6% of Nvidia's stock, which went public in 1999.[5] He earned US$24.6 million as CEO in 2007, ranking him as the 61st highest paid U.S. CEO by Forbes.[5]
This should tell you all you need to know.
With 20/20 hindsight which seems like the better path now?
>This should tell you all you need to know.
>hindsight grants better insight into decision making
That may be true but that's not the point.
You can't compare a company started when Nvidia did, against anything recent without involving a fair bit of hindsight.
And you can only see how it really turns out by waiting until now :)
Outside hiring can be what makes a CEO more like a "ceremonial" position or something, where if the "best of the best" is truly needed, there's still a lingering flavor that it's like hiring the very best interior decorator or landscaping gardener. It may be the best, and appearances have never been more outstanding, but tastes can change so there's an inherent perception of a temporary era stemming from this kind of thing.
A company like Boeing is going to be at its best when the top person has truly known how to build aircraft their entire life.
OTOH, a candidate CEO from a completely different industry, especially an experienced financial manipulator, could have already reached such a stratospheric salary history that it dwarfs anything achieved by anyone technically qualified. It costs a lot more than reasonable to recruit this kind of inflated ego or CV, and it wasn't always supposed to be forever. With the kind of multiple they are paying the hired CEO compared to the technically qualified leader, they expect that same multiple of financial performance to be achieved starting from that point forward, probably when they need it most or many wouldn't do it. With a bonanza like that they can justify paying the CEO exorbitantly, and they can be expected to retire in only a few years when things can be re-evaluated. When people blindly think it's actually worth it, that's where their thinking goes wrong. This can be very persuasive to shareholders who don't know anything about building aircraft themselves. Once all the Jack Welch wannabes pounced on this it's never been the same.
Hence an employee-owned company that builds aircraft, if they do decide to hire a non-aircraft-experienced CEO (even just for the expected short-term), at least that decision is being made exclusively by "aircraft-building" shareholders.
That may be even more confusing, I've been watching this dumpster fire unfold for decades due to some kind of underlying senselessness, and this is one of the things least sensible that's not well recognized any more. I'm not surprised Boeing was brought up but I wasn't expecting it when I pulled this article out of its coffin without a comment, where it had been immediately buried before it had a chance to trigger anybody else, capitalist or not.
I didn't submit the article but it's interesting to see how much it blew up and where it went. I figured if I did comment I would be adding something about an employee-owned company founded by a wizard scientist whom I had met before he founded it. It was iffy at first but now they can't be stopped, he's long retired but the company is now stronger than alternatives even though they have always had the disadvantage of competing when they are mere entrepreneurs in a capitalist-dominated market which they can never be expected to realistically dominate, just participate in.
I really don't even think every company should be employee-owned, for one thing there might not be as much of a thriving capitalist market to participate in. As that would be approached though, a worthwhile substitute might be a market where capital does not dominate, but I wouldn't be holding my breath on that.
I'm with you 100% on retiring after the first quarter too :)
If I had a strong point to make I probably would have made the initial comment, but I guess I felt it was enough to just vouch for the naked submission and let it stand on its own. And within an hour it went through the roof, sheesh, who knew?
Once again, nobody's fault but mine ;)
For example I didn’t advocate anything about retiring
Sorry, it was freilanzer whose idea it was to retire after the first quarter of a 30 million pay scale :/
> Loosing job before that wealth threshold means homelessness and poverty.
No, it doesn't. Maybe don't borrow money and buy a fancy car and vacations you can't afford? Buy a normal car with cash and go on normal middle-class vacations?
If you work in an mid-level engineer capacity at a FAANG or Nvidia in the Bay Area you can easily live on 1/3 of your take-home compensation (that's including a normal car, a couple economy-class vacations a year, and a modest apartment) and invest the rest in index funds. Within a few years of working, you would have banked enough to have a decade worth of expenses saved before you'll be homeless, and I'm sure you can find another job in that decade.
I work at a big tech company, my (very normal) car cost me 1/10 of my annual take-home salary, I've never flown anything but economy class, and I save 60-75% of my take home pay and invest it. I can't afford rental properties or any of that, but I do have enough funds to last me several years at my current lifestyle.
Back when I was at startups (including co-founding one), I was never able to save more than a few months' worth of emergency fund, and that was not good for my mental health. That's one of the reason I joined a big tech company for now -- to de-risk myself financially.
Startups are financially FAR higher risk. You'll get 1/4 the pay that Nvidia gives you, the equity may end up being worth $0, and if it does end up being worth $0, you'll have missed out on the opportunity cost of being hired at any of the FAANG companies for whatever time you spent there.
I'm not discouraging anyone from doing a startup, but it IS higher financial risk in every way.
> I can't afford rental properties or any of that
Back in the days when I didn't have money to buy a car with cash, I just didn't buy a car and used a bike and public transit to get everywhere.
I mean, maybe that's why I have a high savings rate.
I can quit my job with full peace of mind, that's what this whole thread is about.
If and when I have money to buy a house, I'll just buy one. It's not that different from buying a fancy meal or a plane ticket. If I have the money I might buy it. If I don't, I don't think about it. I'm simple like that, and as a result, I have very few financial worries.
If you're an engineer at Nvidia you'd have to do some braindead stupid things with your money to end up homeless.
Also, if you have technical skills at a level that Nvidia would hire you, you can easily get a job at probably a thousand other companies. Layoffs are a non-issue. Recruiters will be scrambling to hire ex-Nvidia folks in the event of a mass layoff, barring a major global financial collapse (in which case you're still better off than 95% of the population).
People start businesses and actually risk everything they have on them. If you only look at someone who owns and runs the biggest company in the world, you're just using the apex fallacy[0] to justify your perspective, and hoping nobody notices.
This is an important point that is often ignored.
Within the past week there was a thread about "How to get paid FAANG money at non-FAANG companies", and someone mentioned starting your own business -- which folks (correctly) pointed out involved risks and time that most folks don't want to take.
(Also, it's always funny on HN when someone sarcastically talks about a CEO "only" being paid an absurd amount of money, when almost all of us are getting paid multiples of the median salary, plus whatever annual bonuses and stock.)
26.6M of that was stock. In percentage terms it's just equity that he effectively handed out before as a founder and is getting back in return for growing the company even more. I don't see a problem with it, considering that the median employee takes almost zero risks and can leave whenever they want.