Item — HN Reader

CEO's and managers get a lot of shit on HN, but there is a reason they make more money (in general, obviously there are exceptions, especially at tech companies). The main reason is that what they do is more valuable.

At most companies the coding required is easy and doesn't require much thought, low-skill = low-pay. The job of allocating capital and people to the highest ROI areas is much more significant to most companies' success than having the best programmers.

2 comments

"The main reason is that what they do is more valuable."

Personally I would have said a big part of it is that they control payroll.

Yeah, I probably should't have said more valuable. It's more accurate to say that there a lots of people who can program poorly and for most jobs that's all that's needed. Far fewer people can manage others well or effectively allocate resources.

but that's not the whole story - a CEO is highly paid, but that's more likely that they've "proven" track-record of doing well in another company, and in order to poach them, a high salary is needed. But, _is_ the CEO responsible for their so-called record? or do they just have really talented employees and the credit for doing well is being rubbed off into the CEO?

Think steven jobs - he is credited with apple's success. May be that's true - he could have ruthless quality requirements. But it couldn't have happened without the engineers that _actually_ created the product. Why is it that the CEO gets exponentially more returns than the soldiers that fight in the trenches, doing the _actual_ work?