# Paying up for Public CEO's



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

In Vancouver and the lower mainland we are having a mail in vote to increase funding for Translink through a .5 percent sales tax increase. They say without it traffic costs will go higher over the next 10 years and we should hold our nose and vote for it.

They have two 30,000 dollar month CEO's and they want to add more to that. Really though how hard can the CEO job be at Translink when the engineers, lawyers and the accountants do most of the work for them. I talked to someone over lunch and we easily came up with many ideas to improve transit and all we would have to do is hand it over to the engineers, lawyers and accountants to go over it. I don't think the high pay is needed for this job unlike real competitive private sector CEO's would need.

I think many public sector CEO's are overpaid in the monopoly of the public sector across Canada and what we need is the people under them and not the idiot with a title and the so called education.


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## Davis (Nov 11, 2014)

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If you want someone running a public agency of the calibre of a private sector CEO, then you have to pay a competitive salary. If you pay less, you get a lower quality CEO in charge of an agency that is spending hundreds of millions of dollars of our tax money. That's a false economy. If CEOs don't create enough value to justify their high salaries, why does the private sector pay such high salaries? I'd do the job for $15,000 a month and you could save 50% of the salary cost, but I don't know anything about transit or building infrastructure, so I would recommend against hiring me.


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

^ Private sector CEOs are grossly overpaid. Most of them are not worth the obscene amounts thrown at them. Private companies overpay their CEOs because corporate governance model is broken. Board directors don't think like the company owners. Most of them don't own any shares that they bought with their own money. They collect their director's paycheck and are not willing to rock the boat. It's an old boys club. Small shareholders don't have any power to change the system. Large shareholders like pensions funds and index funds are very passive. They rarely fight corporate boards.

All in all, CEO compensation in the private sector is a bad yardstick for the public sector.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Davis we are top heavy and from what I understand our transit CEO's are paid much more then compared to everywhere else. This is why people are so mad at translink and don't want to just give them more money to waste. I think a lot of public people are appointed to jobs and know as little as we do about them so we waste money on them there.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

People want top-tier public servants but don't want to pay for them. Classic Canadian math skillz.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

^ And who are teaching these "Classic Canadian math skills", professor? :biggrin:


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

none said:


> People want top-tier public servants but don't want to pay for them. Classic Canadian math skillz.


"People want". Ha ha ha. It's as if every Canadian thinks the same. Classic lefty delusion.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

Beaver101 said:


> ^ And who are teaching these "Classic Canadian math skills", professor? :biggrin:


professor? I'm not a prof - I don't think you know what you're talking about.

I thinking it odd that all these right-ies think that government employees should make less than minimum wage, yet grease monkies in the tar sands EARN their 150K paychecks.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

none said:


> professor? *I'm not a prof - I don't think you know what you're talking about..*


* ... well, you claimed you were a "doctor" but not a medical one and that you got a PHD ... so 1+1 = 3 according to you here. So which is it?




I thinking it odd that all these right-ies think that government employees should make less than minimum wage, yet grease monkies in the tar sands EARN their 150K paychecks.

Click to expand...

... but would it hurt for a government employee to put in an honest day of work?*


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

You think that people who have PhDs are profs? If it were only do. There are more PhDs out there than faculty positions. Not that I care, I never really wanted to be an academic.

Government employees are actually one of the harder working groups I know and I've worked extensively in the private sector too.

The belief of the 'lazy government worker' I have found are usually from people who can't seem to land a government job and it's based on jealously more than anything else. It's juvenile and a bit pathetic really.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

None we are talking about CEO's earning $30,000 a month and up that is a little above minimum wage I think. I believe as I said above that the engineers, lawyers and accountants are doing the real work. I also said it doesn't take a lot to come up with good ideas for the transit system. Most people on the forum live in Ontario and I am pretty sure they could easily think of ideas over coffee for their transit system to put to the lawyers, engineers and accountants and don't need some overpaid overeducated CEO to come up with it. Of course you need someone in charge but not for such high pay for what they do.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

I agree with you - you're genuinely reasonable about such things. This forum has a big strong anti-government bend and it's frustrating. i had a co-worker who was almost in tears on Friday because she works TREMENDOUSLY hard but isn't able to be effective because working in government can be so frustrating. Anyway, it really pisses me off when idiots dismiss people who work tremendously hard and are extremely talented just b/c they happen to work for government..

I have a hard time imagining how a CEO can be worth anything about 100K really but that's because I don't really understand what they do. I could probably put myself on a trajectory to be making 200+ per year being a ADM or something but I think I'd have a much happer making what I make now (far less) and doing what that I think is actually interesting. I don't really understand how what I see as effectively chairing meetings makes a 200k-500k-10 million dollar salary justified..


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Very few are justified and get to where they are through education papers and being able to talk, use their charisma and bribe their way in some way to the top. Once there, they pay back those that helped them get to where they are which can cost companies, shareholders and us the public who pay for it.

Good effective people like you mention may not want to play the game so they are not worth as much to those looking for the paybacks. This is how the system works for many on the top and not the effective expertise some on the forum blindly think we find in overpaid CEO's.


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## donald (Apr 18, 2011)

Not that i am in the oil patch working or involved in that line of work but being in trades and knowing a few buddies who have or are working in the patch your comments are offensive None
These guys that you slam(obviously you think are over payed,are not)
Id love to watch your middle aged soft hands and soft *** go give it a try working on a rig none,your coddled educated *** would be beat and you be on your way back on the bus in 2 weeks
The Multi-national oil companies would not willingly over pay(these are shareholder controlled companies)
Are you really implying a driller or derrickhand on a rig working the group and elements 12 hrs a day for 3 weeks on in the elements of mother nature don't 'earn' their pay
Your a class A idiot-lazy and overpaid is not what i would think.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

*you're

I was using it for contrast. The knee jerk that government employees are overpaid with zero context of what they actually do is really annoying. I used to work on fishing boats and I know manual labour in isolating conditions can be difficult. I've worked on the oil patch before. Not my cup of tea but you are right it can pay amazingly well.

To be honest, I can't really evaluate whether they are over paid or not. Much like many here have zero data to evaluate whether most (or even all) government employees are overpaid. For some reason though that always gets a pass. (see Beaver's comment above)


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

none said:


> I agree with you - you're genuinely reasonable about such things. This forum has a big strong anti-government bend and it's frustrating.


That's where IMO - the talk of private versus public salaries is a red herring. 

AFACIT, the key question is whether two CEOs are needed. Only after that is determined should the next stage of compensation be considered.





none said:


> ... Anyway, it really pisses me off when idiots dismiss people who work tremendously hard and are extremely talented just b/c they happen to work for government..


 ... probably better in a separate thread but at the same time, when one overhears the same gov't programmer respond to their gov't manager "no work done on the project due to operational issues" and twenty minutes later "no work done for operations due to project work" - it is puzzling. The second puzzle is when instead of questioning this, the manager notes it for the status report and who moves one. It seems clear that neither one of them are providing much value.





none said:


> ... I have a hard time imagining how a CEO can be worth anything about 100K really but that's because I don't really understand what they do... I don't really understand how what I see as effectively chairing meetings makes a 200k-500k-10 million dollar salary justified..


It's far more than chairing meetings but at the same time, it seems reasonable to question private CEO compensation considering that a staunchly pro-business university prof who had previously always supported what private companies where paying questioned it. His conclusion was that the compensation was obscene and had exceeded the historical norms by a hundred fold.


Cheers


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