I work for a company where the CEO admitted to earning LESS than the top earner. The CEO is still worth more because of other assets, but the VP of Sales earns the most annual take-home in the company.
That's pretty typical for enterprise software. Sales people get zero equity--their comp is purely a percentage of sales on top of a relatively low base.
This seems economically rational. You want your sales people focused on selling.
You have to look out for this one, because sometimes (eg. if the CEO is also the owner of the company) it can be very misleading. I worked at an ISP back in university where everyone, including the managing director, was paid roughly minimum wage. Any time anyone asked for a raise, the answer was "Bob the MD only gets paid $X per hour, are you asking for more than Bob?" ignoring the fact that every dollar on the company's value was a dollar in Bob's pocket.
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That's not always true.
I work for a company where the CEO admitted to earning LESS than the top earner. The CEO is still worth more because of other assets, but the VP of Sales earns the most annual take-home in the company.
That's pretty typical for enterprise software. Sales people get zero equity--their comp is purely a percentage of sales on top of a relatively low base.
This seems economically rational. You want your sales people focused on selling.
You have to look out for this one, because sometimes (eg. if the CEO is also the owner of the company) it can be very misleading. I worked at an ISP back in university where everyone, including the managing director, was paid roughly minimum wage. Any time anyone asked for a raise, the answer was "Bob the MD only gets paid $X per hour, are you asking for more than Bob?" ignoring the fact that every dollar on the company's value was a dollar in Bob's pocket.