I heard a good description of what might be a factor in exec compensation.
Boards are made up of execs from other companies… so they have a vested interest in seeing exec pay go up, overall.
Plus there’s the ego thing. They do these compensation surveys that shows median and average exec comp for similar companies. They will never pay LESS than average because it stands to reason that *their* exec is exceptional… why else would they have hired them. So, that drives the median/average up since all companies want to pay extra for their exceptional execs. To pay less would be to admit that their execs are just average, and not exceptional.
Too bad that doesn’t work for engineering salaries.
