Steve Jobs is practically an example of WHY top CEOs get paid so much. Apple was basically in its death throes when he came back. A few years later they had the iPod. A few years after that the iPhone. When he died in 2011 they were well on their way to being the worlds most valuable publicly listed company.
I do think a lot of CEOs are way overpaid. That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.
> That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.
Now do the example of packages that cost millions of dollars and the CEOs wrecked the companies, like Boeing, or Enron, or WorldCom. Or Jack Welch's financial shenanigans at GE.
I do think a lot of CEOs are way overpaid. That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.