Illustration credited to 2000 Herblock Cartoon, copyright by The Herb Block Foundation
Seriously, I am so sick and tired of stories like this one, that of a fired Yahoo hot shot taking home millions in severance even though he only worked there a little over a year. It reminds me of the CEO hiring and firing that is like that of baseball managers and football coaches. Work for Team A, get fired, go to work for Team B, get fired, and then work for Team C, and so often the salary just gets higher and higher.
Company executives are wooed with gigantic perks to go along with the big bucks. It’s reached the level of insanity and it’s time to stop the bleeding.
Decades back, baseball’s Charlie Finley was known to be one very stingy owner. He fought against his players getting ridiculous raises. He watched, though, as things spun out of control. Sadly, it was his own failure to meet a contractual obligation with pitcher Jim Hunter that really launched baseball’s free agency into the hemisphere and started a progression of million-dollar salaries. The sport has not been the same since. Finley may have been stingy, but my view of him has softened a great deal over the years. While he ruined my favorite baseball team by refusing to pay what was becoming reasonable salaries of the day, he also visualized where it would lead, to a world where players like Mark McGwire and Jose Conseco never really appreciated the sport, not the way like Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, and other veteran Oakland A’s players did before them. Instead, they just wanted to be pampered, take steroids, and bring home those greenbacks. It’s sad.
Charlie Finley with the 1974 Oakland A’s (clockwise from the top): Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, Vida Blue, Gene Tenace, Bert Campaneris, Jim Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, and Reggie Jackson (Neil Leifer/SI)
I find myself more and more thinking that corporations should just hire the business school graduates. Give the new kid a shot and for just a few hundred thousand dollars a year. Any graduate would jump at that. No perks. They don’t need the private jet like Anthem’s CEO does, for example. They don’t need a home supplied for them like some university presidents do. Just pay them what is, to them at that point, a wonderful salary and see what they come up with. I don’t think they’ll do poorly at all.
In NASCAR, commentators often remark about the rookie drivers when they do something amazing. Darrell Waltrip will make a comment to the effect of, “Don’t they know they can’t do that?” only they do it, successfully. Why? They’re hungry for the win, and they don’t know yet that they aren’t supposed to be able to run high on Turn 3 or go three-wide on Turn 4. All they know is that they want to win, and so they go for it, and sometimes, they succeed.
Corporations need to start giving the real new blood, the college kids or maybe the out-of-work executive who will just love being employed again a chance and in the process, save millions of dollars.
The business world is out of control with these salaries and severance packages. The sad part is that it is ultimately consumers, you and me, paying for it, via higher priced consumables and services.
Get a grip. Give the kids a chance. Really, how much worse can it get over the disasters that have come out of some companies in recent years? Think about it! Support the youth of America. I’m betting on the college graduates, that they would give it their all and often win in the game of executive wars.
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