Gongol.com Archives: July 2013
Brian Gongol


July 16, 2013

Business and Finance CEO pay: A matter of fairness or a matter of efficiency?
It's widely argued that when the average CEO of a top-200 US corporation gets 200 times the yearly compensation of an average employee, there's a problem of fairness involved. That may or may not be true; fairness is a difficult thing to measure correctly (even if something does smell a little rotten about it). But from a capitalist perspective, it's well worth asking whether that kind of pay imbalance is efficient -- that is, whether it's likely to deliver the right set of results to the shareholders of the company. Since shareholders are the owners of the business, they should be acutely interested in how compensation is doled out. And if the CEO is getting 200 times the pay of an average employee, it's worth asking: Is that CEO delivering better ideas than a cadre of 200 smart employees would? There's a very, very good chance that the answer to that is a resounding "No" -- which tells us that many executives are more skilled at extracting really high salaries and bonuses than they are at making their shareholders wealthier.

News From phone-company office to apartment building
Recycling of a different sort

News "PC World" is done with publishing a print edition
It will remain a digital publication, but the market no longer sustains a printed edition

Computers and the Internet Pro tip: If your life's mantra is "Chive On", don't expect to get hired by a sensible employer
A lot of people bristle at the thought of sanitizing their Facebook and other social-media profiles in pursuit of employment. But there are a lot of people who also see fit to advertise that their objective is to skirt by with as little effort as possible in the workplace -- and if they're advertising that by wearing shirts and repeating slogans that mock actual labor and enthuse about wasting time on an entertainment site, then their potential (and actual) employers would be stupid to ignore that.

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