Conference 7.286::digital

    
    	;-)  :-)  ;-)  :-)  and a :-}
    
    			Cute!

>    	ELECTRICIANS - $45,000. 
sounds fair, it is dangoures work.
>	BASEBALL PLAYERS - They will be allowed to make twice as much as 
>an electrician.
 what !! i dont beleive it, all ball games players should make zero money
 it is a waste , dont produce anything to socity, all ball players
 should go back to school, and study math, science, and engineering and
 do something usefull (for a change) to the socity instead of throwing ball 
    around all day.
>    	UNITED WAY DIRECTORS - he shouldn't earn more than two-thirds the 
>salary of an electrician. 
 too much, it is an easy job.
>    	WHITE CASTLE EMPLOYEES - We'll tie their salaries to the salary 
>of the United Way president's.
 no, they should make more. it is hard job, and people need hamburgers too.
>    	OWNERS OF COMPANIES - They should make as much as the market can
>    bear. This is America.
 iam afraid to comment.
>    	CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS - A CEO should make no more than four
>    times the average salary of the company's employees. 
see the above.
>    	TEACHERS - Their salaries will be tied to baseball players', as
>    long as their students earn B+ grades.
 what ? not fair , teachers very important people, they should make
 as much or more that electricians, i cant beleive it , they make ball player
    as important as a teacher !
>    	UNION LEADERS - Whatever the membership of the union makes.
 they should not make more than twice the average member salary.
>    	LAWYERS - Attorneys who work in the criminal court - in other
>    words, essential attorneys - will be allowed to make as much as an
>    electrician. Non-essential attorneys will be allowed to make one-half
>    as much as electricians.
 sounds ok, a little high, but on the ball park.
>    	SALESPEOPLE - How would you like to be rejected all the time? 
not fun really.
>They will be allowed to make twice as much as a United Way Director.
sales people very important people, we need them to sell our products
and software, so pay them as much or more than electricicans.
>    	VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES - Minimum wage.
too much. 
>    	SECRETARIES - They should make one and a half times whatever their 
>bosses make.
too low. it should be more. the companies will collaps without them.    
>    	HOMELY FIGURE SKATERS - They should make fourtimes what an electrician
> makes.
 why? what do a figure skater do to deserve it? if they want to skate
 let them do it for the fun of it, and for free. 
>    	RADIO TALK-SHOW HOSTS - Their salaries will be tied to electricians'.
too much, all they do is brag all day, most of them dont know what they
talk about, pay them minum wage.
>    	DENTISTS AND NEWSPAPER COLUMNISTS - Whatever the market will bear.
if we bruch our teeths every day, they'll run out of busness any way, the
newspapaer columinsts should be paid 1/2 of electricican.
>	LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR - Minimum wage.
what a lietuenant governor?   
>    	CHILE-CARE WORKERS - We'll tie their salaries to baseball players'.
child-care workers are more important than ball players ! they raise our
futur generations, pay them well.

they missed computer programmers, they should be paid the most, because
we are the very smartest people in the world, and the world cant live
without our computers and our software that we write.  

    thank you very much,
    /nasser
    

    IMO, POLITICIANS and UNITED WAY DIRECTORS should have their salaries
    tied to those of BASEBALL PLAYERS.  They all have to throw curve balls
    to keep their jobs and for the previous reasons already mentioned about
    BASEBALL PLAYERS ...
    
    Steve

Ahhh Gi'day...�

    There was  a  thing  on  Financial  Times TV the other day on executive
    salaries.  It seems that corporations in Japan make 20 times the lowest
    worker, in the US it's about 85 (survey of top 100 companies ?).

    My Toyoda,  of  Toyota,  makes  about  $800,000.   This  is  considered
    excessive, most are in the 475K -> 600K range.

    And then  you  have  Stempel (head of GM) saying that he would swap his
    wage for a Japanese car company prez. Whatta joke!

    The story went basically that performance of companies across countries
    is  INVERSELY proportional to renumeration of execs.  US highest, worst
    results.

    Wouldn't be nice!  The ones that rake in the big salary, also can
    afford the best tax consultants and find out how to invest or hide
    their money and pay the least taxes. The less fortunates just pay the
    taxes. What I could do with one of these "Executive" salaries!
    Keep on working it won't change !!
    	Greetings from the other side of the pond - Ruth
    

    Hmm,
    WHAT has this got to do with the way digital works?
    Mr Moderator, this is a subject for SOAPBOX.
    

Please keep this discussion limited to how .0 relates to the way we work at
Digital.  Discussions on executive salaries in general do not belong in this
conference.

Thanks,

Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL

    Be warned:  When politicians say they are going to tax the rich and
    give relief to the poor, ask by what standard they judge "poor".
    
    Prime Minster Harold Wilson tried that one and got away with it.  A great 
    many people never knew how rich they really were until he elevated them 
    from "poor" into the ranks of the "rich" and taxed the **** out of them.
    And all without an extra penny in their pay packets.
    

    Harold Wilson also made the important discovery that if you tax the
    really rich too much they move to Zurich and pay not a penny in tax to
    the UK. In the end your revenue goes down.

    Jamie.

    Fantastic .0.....why don't you run for prez??  Two comments...
    
         - Baseball players and other "athletes" should get minimum wage,
           and should have to prove their ability to read, write and cypher
           to get that.  No exceptions for those with degrees from Big Ten
           schools either.
    
         - Corporate executives who pay themselves a bonus when their
           companies are losing money should be imprisoned for the duration
           of their contracts.  This includes DECies too, although I
           hestitate to call them "executives".

    re: .2
    
    You are joking right????????
    
    BTW, tink is spelled think.  You should.

    
    I have read .2 again and can not find "tink".
    
    It is not exactly clear why he wants to drop Teachers' Salaries to that
    of Electricians as the original proposal was going to pay them more
    anyway.
    
    It is probably because Ballplayers are going to get eliminated, and so
    will not be available for comparison purposes.
    
    It also means we are going to have to get a new expression to replace
    "It's in the Ball-Park"
    
    Regarding Computer Programmers, the world got along not too bad without
    them until about 50 Years ago.
    
    :-)

    re .12
    
    In a reply to a different note, Mr. Abassi used the word tink three
    times when he really meant think.  
    
    Since this is a digital notesfile...
    
    The attitude of the statement in .2 that programmers are the most
    important people in the world is exactly what the Japanese are
    talking about....arrogance.  Programmers are not important, as least
    no more so than marketing people, sales people, sales support people
    and (arrg) managers.  Programmers are merely necessary, just as every
    other posistion in this company is necessary for DEC to be successful.
     

re: .13

>    In a reply to a different note, Mr. Abassi used the word tink three
>    times when he really meant think.  
    
Yeah, so? he also spelled society as socity...

    Since this is a digital notesfile...
    
They all are, aren't they?

>    The attitude of the statement in .2 that programmers are the most
>    important people in the world is exactly what the Japanese are
>    talking about....arrogance.  Programmers are not important, as least
>    no more so than marketing people, sales people, sales support people
>    and (arrg) managers.  Programmers are merely necessary, just as every
>    other posistion in this company is necessary for DEC to be successful.
     
Come now... Please re-read .2, do you really think any of that is serious?

You obviously do not know of Mr. Abassi's noting technique.
He must be rolling on the floor by now. After each reply that he makes
people start debating why he misspells so many words. 

I tink that he is doing it on purpose, in fact I dont think he is a
programmer at all. I think he works as a writer in some documentation group..
But, I agree with him when he says that programmers should be paid the most.

- george

    
    	To all:
    
    	Before responding to Mr. Abassi's notes, please have a large salt 
    	shaker close at hand..take each of his replies with a large grain
    	of salt, and try to picture his cheek bulging out where his tongue
    	is obviously most firmly planted. ;)
    
    	The man is hilarious (intentionally, I'm sure), if you take the
    	time to read between the lines.
    
    	John
    

I think the type of system that .0 refers to was tried, and I seem to recall 
that the USSR was not very successful.  Good companies succeed, bad companies 
fail.  There are a lot of ways to make a bad company, and quite a few to make
good companies.  

The car companies are learning, albeit slowly, that they must change, hopefully
we in the electronics industry will not be forced to learn the same way.  
Unfortunately I do not see any signs we are going to do any better.  The 
complaints of IC dumping, high barriers, strength of MITI, government support,
all these sound like the complaints I heard about Japan when I lived in Detroit.
Mandating micromanagement issues like relative salary will not cause managers to 
make better decisions.  

I happen to think the people running DEC are vastly overpaid, and based on the 
decisions they are making, anything over $20,000/yr would be over pay.  IBM, 
DEC, CDC, UNISYS, WANG, DG, are all being run rather poorly now.  Intel, 
National (recently), Sun, Apple, and HP are doing much better, perhaps the bonus 
plan does work.  All the managers for these companies are well paid, but some 
are better than others.  Currently we are saddled with poor performers.  HP is 
not.  I don't care what the top guys are paid as long as they make good 
decisions.  HP is being used as case study by those talking about changing the 
way executives are paid as it is almost imposible to determine the top 25 
salaries in HP.  There are more than 15 cross references in the annual report.  
Personally, I don't care.  When a company performs poorly, the stock drops.  
I trust the market over the long term.

If somebody would awaken Ken and Jack, we wouldn't be talking about this in the
Digital notes conference, we would be talking about how to invest the profits 
we are all making from our stock purchase plan.

Matt

P.S. To all who have found spelling errors, I apologize in advance.  Instead of
correcting them here why don't you spend the effort to make grammar and spelling
checking easy from inside Notes.

    This topic is being discussed in
    
    PEAR::SOAPBOX topic 283.  SOAPBOX is a general discussion conference,
    (mostly current events and popular culture)
    
    SUBWAY::CORPORATE_MANAGEMENT topic 10 "Are American executives
    overpaid?" CORPORATE_MANAGEMENT was established to discuss how other
    companies are run, their strategies, etc.

    This topic is write-locked as it doesn't seem possible to keep the
    discussion related to the way we work at Digital.
    
    Bob - Co-moderator DIGITAL