Have you sold out?

I was never worried about selling out so its kinda ironic that actually I might be considered as someone who - working for a charity - hasn't.

yeah right.

otherwise, not so much. otherwise i'd be a highly paid lawyer by now.

Yeah I guess I've sold out in the sense that I'm doing something that I'm not enjoying just because it's comfortable (but then aren't most people in this situation?). Anyway I'm resigning in two months, so I'll soon be able to claim back my dignity...

sadly, this won't give them away, since that seems to be the trend in local councils.

(although the leader of ours is especially bad. he is a mean mean man that looks like a strange combination of a monkey and a pig!)

I am also really excited about making pots of cash - if I become a successful agent it could actually happen. Woohoo!

(p.s. I have been in this assistant's role for 4 weeks. I am getting ahead of myself somewhat)

When I was 20 and in college I put a referendum on the ballot to dissolve the Student Government Association and it nearly passed. (I also ran for SGA President every year I was there just so I could put up flyers making fun of campus life and make with the sarcasm during candidate debates).

Then I dropped out of school, joined the military, went to work in intelligence, finished up my four years and then got this job with a big defense contractor working in the J. Edgar Hoover building.

What do I win?

I have a friend who earns more. If you're in a company with a throughput of (say) a million, and you make it more efficient by 10%, how have you not earned a hundred thousand?

This is horseshit. Once you're at that level it's a close, cosy place, and ability no longer has anything to do with appointments. I am 'the best' at misleading the public, my old manager could say. We-ell.... It's a fact of capitalism, sure: but the idea that top NHS managers are by a ration of their income 'better at their jobs' than any of their staff is insane. Footballers is slightly different.

Anna OTM, anyway, not selling out can be shit.

Go on.

WTF has this to do with anything? They might have made the company 10% more efficient at turning dead African babies into Nes-Quik, it doesn't mean they haven't made a difference.

So are you that naive or can't you accept the realities of living in a capitalist society?

My first Dan Perry encounter was exactly like this. I'm going home to fill some Molotov cocktails you running dog fucs.

The fact that travelling salesmen refer to themselves as Road Warriors is an unending source of glee to me.

I don't know why I care, we've had this thread like 7 times before anyway

dingdingding!

Enrique & Ricardo (The latin sensations!) OTM about CEO salaries being a emperor's new clothes situation.

With all due respect, you are an imbecile.

I think I shall.

Mark, I am intrigued to know what makes you more qualified to pontificate on the free-market nature (or otherwise) of CEO salaries than anyone else on this thread.

Enrique, you seem to be treating the NHS as a business like any other. Why?

Cos it is a bit like that (being impressionistic -- I worked in it). It is *all* about importing business 'values' and especially personnel (hence the high salaries in the bureaucracy). It's like a giant, 1910s top down national firm. It could be changed of course.

I dunno why advocating democracy in public-owned utilities makes me an imbecile, btw.

a) Ten years ago I was saying stuff like I'd never learn to drive or own a car, coz of the environmental impact. I still can't drive.

b) I said stuff like I'd never work for a big private sector business, I still don't, and still won't. Or work long hours.

I guess they were my major two issues.

You, Andrew, are the imbecile because you have no substance whatsoever to your argument and seem to have some badly-formed "for the workers" mentality.

Enrique, I'm happy to admit I know nothing about the internal structures of the NHS and accept that my points may not be vaild in the circumstances. If they want to keep top chaps away from the private sector, however, they do need to pay competitive wages. It's a fact of life.

Has N. refrained from posting cos a) it's not his thread, b) he has not sold out, c) he has sold out, d) he never had owt to sell?

The Nipper, as it happens, has not sold out. I was thinking about that only yesterday.

Oddly, I haven't either. But I am possibly a failure, up to a point.

TS: Failure vs Selling Out.

DV: is Morketing what the Ulster SWP go in for?

People in Dublin who work in Marketing traditionally have an accent such that it sounds like "Morketing" when they say it.

With all due respect, you are an imbecile.

I feel that this kind of comment as a rejoinder to some opinion of another poster is as inappropriate for online forums as it would be in real life. Perhaps if Andrew was responding to some insult it would have a place, but he was not.

i've 'sold out' in that i produced work for somebody i didn't really like - needs must oh well (in any case this amounts to nothing more than petty disagreements on certain moral issues - for example if a Christian does business with a Muslim is that selling out? surely not), and cutting off your nose to spite your face on political grounds seems akin to absteining from voting (which i have also done in the past) when so many still lack that basic freedom of choice. i think you can sell out smarter these days. one example: Moby taking money from Toyota (for using 'Go' in their adverts) and then giving it to environmentalist groups, some of who may have been vehemently anti-car? i quite like the 'chaotic' aspect of that - rarely is the chain of power a one-way street, cause and effect etc. - i guess it didn't really change anything though (which somewhat ironically is why it's okay for you to do it, maybe)

I don't think I've sold out. I haven't read much of the ENRQ-Barry hoedown, and generally, executive pay isn't something that I get too worked up about, in the grand scheme of things, but I do think that from my experience of the stock market this:

Well, I spent three years being (for my sins) interested in stocks and shares, backing up my research and decisions with investments, so yes, I do feel I'm justified in talking about the effectiveness (and even more the perceived effectiveness) of the best business leaders.

is a but humbuggy. I don't think playing the stock market really gives you much of an insight into the effect that choice of leader has on the performance of companies. There are too many other variables.

When I was about 13 I said to my sister that I could never live with myself if I ended up working in advertising. It wasn't that I thought advertising was that evil, just that I couldn't look at myself and think 'my life's career is built around persuading people to buy more things' - it seems too empty, no matter how fun and creative the work was. Anyway, she told me I was being stupid.

On my last day at school, the new Birtite deputy head said, in what I think he didn't really mean to be a sneering way, how I'd be surprised how many arty kids end up being accountants 10 years down the line. I smiled wanly, and not a month goes by that I don't think, "I'm not giving up and proving him right", even though I've got nothing against accountancy really, and it's probably more interesting than the job I have now.

I like the way that JtN thought this was N's thread; N. did not post to it; and when he did, he posted TWICE and AT LENGTH.

I don't know why N. thinks that accountants have sold out. Perhaps I am missing something. Or perhaps he doesn't think that.

I am not sure that N's job is the antithesis of accountancy. But again, I am missing something: for instance, I have never understood what N. does all day.

SteveM's comments are kind of intelligent.

I like what the Vicar says also. In a way.

i like your point about working in advertising N, i think i've felt the same about that but a lot more recently than when i was 13! on the other hand advertising and artistry has proven to be a powerful marriage as demonstrated in countless advertisements on TV and in print, and it must be great to be involved in that, especially if the product itself is one without any real negative ties. that said i'm still not sure if i would consciously work in such a field for certain brands, products and organisations, but avoiding hypocrisy in that practice would be incredibly difficult i expect.

I'm also reminded of the advertising interview I sabotaged by telling the guy interviewing me that I thought he was scum (he'd said, as an introduction, "people ask what the rewards in advertising are like, and I say; look in the carpark").

Only to stupid fuckers, obviously. But there are so many of them.

(I liked your replies, thanks.)

You're a girl?

For a while in 1996 I had a high-paying temp job at Merrill Lynch designing investors reports, and at the end of my temp contract they offered me a permanent position, the promise of lots of foreign travel, career prospects and a very attractive salary. I ended up taking a big pay cut and going to work for the P*etry Society instead. I don't cite this out of any idealistic grandstanding - it seemed, like N. suggested earlier, a very pragmatic decision. The trade-off between pay and day-to-day happiness made the decision for me. None of the perks would make up for the fact that work seemed meaningless, the culture of the place was intolerable to me, and I woke up feeling sick every morning.

Crikey, this is getting exciting.

and if you did, do you only apply this to thinking about yourself?

But I was overstating things for effect, yes. If someone genuinely grows as a person (rather than just laughing at an old haircut or music taste of theirs) then I am impressed. Shedding skin as part of their own journey, unrelated to need for approval or the way the wind is blowing. Kind of rare, though.

Dan, most executives actually negotiate for their salaries and/or compensation for leaving a company with a board, so in a sense you could say that the "fault" does lie with them to an extent.

I am amused that disdain for me has united Mark and Enrique, but not on the whole bothered.

How I would feel if they decided to star making decisions which severely jeapordise our trading I am not sure - it has never happened. At the same time I get paid significantly less that I would imagine I would be in the private sector for my expertise. But then eventually, I only assume delegated responsibility - not actual responsibility. Should I get profit related pay if it would incentivize my decisions to increase profit for the charity? I am thinking about it (note - I, the person who does the books and hence knows how much money extra I would get, is thinking of it. Conflict of interest perhaps. But like I say, no-one else is going to do it for me).

The golden parachute is not really that important - it's just a part of virtually every CEO's package. That fact that ultimately they don't *suffer* financially through bad performance doesn't alter the fact that they do greatly influence performance. Obv if you or I had just a couple of years of these guys salaries and options we'd probably say 'hey great, I can pack it in now and do something I really like for the rest of my life'. What you have to realise is that they're brutally competitive and have such massive, massive egos that they'll do anything to try and stay in power, in the thick of it..

I'm not really sure that I understand 'selling out' from an external perspective - i.e. where you could say 'he's/she's sold out' and clearly understand what decisions that person has made abt the way they live. I earn pretty good money, doing something that I know damn well is worthless (corporate mktg)*in the big scheme of things* (ugh - sorry abt this cliche) and given that I live in a v. nice house in a very expensive area it would be very easy to say that I had sold out if you didn't know me better. But I used to earn BIG money doing a much more senior job at the same place and I jacked it in. Now *that* was selling out, by my definition (which is the only one that counts!). I had NO free time, lived out of a suitcase, never saw my family or friends and was permanently stressed and ill. I did it for 3 years until I was a mental and physical wreck. Several of my peers thrived on it and moved onward and upwards to stratospheric levels - I wouldn't want to be them for the world. Now, apart from the odd busy stretch, I can organize my work as I wish, do it at home if I like and I have time to take the kids to school, organize *fun* stuff around work and not the other way around. Tomorrow I'll leave early to get to a band rehearsal and no bugger will stop me! Or I might not go in.
I have had several offers to go back to the old type of job and I wouldn't even consider it. In fact I'd like to reduce the amount that I work, and maybe try and and do something *useful* for other people with the extra time saved. I do feel slightly guilty about the utter worthlessness of my job, you see.

Er, are you sure you're not confusing me with Enrique here? I'm taking the middle road between you: clearly one person can make enough difference that it is justifiable, but equally clearly that's not the only reason why CEO's are paid that much (your remark about percieved effectiveness admits as much). Further enquiries to Private Eye.

As regards Dan's point about the Golden Handshakes/Parachutes, I agree that it's neither that they're demanding them or that they're being offred them, but something in the middle. If boards across the country/the world decided tomorrow that thee going wage for CEOs should be half of what it is, the CEOs couldn't do much about it, but what is the average board composed of? CEOs.