Would you fire 10,000 people if someone gave you $500?
How about if someone gave you $100 million?
Layoffs are a reality of corporate life during tough economic times. They are painful for everyone involved — the people who lose their jobs and their families are obviously affected the most.
The people who are left behind at the company also affected. They cannot help but imagine “It could have been me”, and also feel sorry for their friends and co-workers who just lost their jobs.
How about the people in top management — the decision makers for such an event?
In face of economic downturn and layoffs, we regularly encounter news articles talking about how the CEO of a company that just announced layoffs will actually make more this year, to the tune of 100s of millions of dollars.
Scandal hit companies are another such place — news articles talking about how the execs are getting paid bonuses of 10s or 100s of millions of dollars when everything is seemingly falling apart get a lot of attention.
Would you stay with a scandal-hit company if they tripled your pay? Let’s get back to our original question — would you fire 10,000 people for a payment of $100 million?
Maybe you wouldn’t — maybe you would.
The CEO of the big company is also human, and I’m sure he/she hates this part of their job. However, they were hired to do whatever it takes to make the company successful, and if that means letting go of 10,000 people, then so be it. And the company’s shareholders are willing to pay $100 million for it!
The price is so high because it requires someone who has the capability to run a company so large and is willing to do a lot of dirty work.
So what can we learn from this? If a company is offering too much money for a role, maybe — just maybe consider the possibility that it is compensating for something that one might discover later. It could be the risk of a shaky business model, or broken culture, or the expectation to do some dirty work.