Executive compensation is even more puzzling and infuriating when you think of their packages as being in multiples of the average US worker's income. There was one case several years ago where a CEO was earning 30+ times the average US Worker's income, begging the question of exactly what was that CEO actually doing/contributing that was equivalent to 30+ time the efforts of the average worker? In my decades of work in a wide variety of businesses across several different fields, I have seen astonishing incompetency at the executive level rewarded while actual productiveness and innovation at the lower levels either ignored, under-compensated, or having the productive efforts of the lower levels attributed to the credit an executive who had little to do with the gains other than being in their office. I once made the suggestion at a company I where I was working on an HR project that it would be interesting to give the executives the same employment tests lower level employees had to take when seeking their positions (not required of executive levels), just to see if they could actually pass the same tests. Although the suggestion was made in half-jest, the reactions from the HR execs was near apoplectic, in itself an indicator of how even they knew how the results would probably go...
Sometimes, though, justice is served. There was one company I worked for where the executive in charge of operations was incompetent, but managed to keep it covered by the efforts of his administrative assistant, a young man who was creative, meticulous, and dedicated to the quality of his work. The executive did, eventually, commit a real bonehead error and an inquiry into the executive's activities starkly pointed out the real talent and effort was in the admin assistant. The top executives did something very impressive: they didn't fire the executive, they demoted him - to the position of admin assistant, and they promoted his admin assistant to the post of executive in charge of operations, effectively reversing their roles. I remember the newly appointed executive, a very decent young man, confiding to me he felt a bit awkward about now giving orders to the person who used to boss him; I told him the old exec got what he deserved and that he, the new exec exec, got what had long been overdue and to just go on being what he had always been: a good, valued employee who valued the worth of his work...
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