Is it ethical to be overpaid and accept it?

This is a case of the company trying very hard to create perverse incentives: "gee guys, sell our product, but not too much of it, OK?" In my view, rewarding a salesman for making sales is WAY more legitimate than rewarding a CEO for pumping up a stock price. There is a very direct correlation between sales and profits.

Not only does this seem ethical to me. It seems unethical of the company to try to weasel out of its contract. It was these same company brass who approved the sales contract to the customer that resulted in this commission. If they couldn't meet the contract or there was some problem with the sale, it was the job of the management to squash the deal and not to OK it. Your buddy did his job exactly the way he was hired to do it. He should be paid exactly the way he was intended to be paid. If the deal put the company in bad straits somehow, it isn't your buddy's fault.

Dear Sherman Strong...

*for actual joke see the work of Ian Frazier.

High salaries don't bug me nearly as much as 'golden goodbyes' where a fuckup CEO gets paid zillions to GO AWAY.

As for people being paid millions to run failing corporations - some of them are being paid millions to turn said corproation around, and if they succeed the company at least, and its shareholders, couldn't begrudge them their compensation. As for those who get bonuses when the company is in the process of failing, redundancies are being made, etc etc, that sucks completely - though I'm sure in many cases the company is contractually obliged to pay them bonuses.

But what I'm really talking about is more in terms of salaried type of jobs, and not in the extremes of the Fortune 500 boardroom stuff.

I sold pharmaceuticals for a few years back in the glory days and the job was relatively easy. I'm a smart guy and all, but I always felt slightly overpaid given the workload. Plus the benefits were astounding. Ultimately the job proved to boring for my taste, but up until I quit I always rationalized that the compensation was worth the aggravation of boredom.

Obviously any guilt from overcompensation could be remedied to a degree with charity, but the dilemma I refer to is more concerned with ethics, not a sense of morality. If you think you are overpaid, then the company's resources are being misdirected. I would love to have an in-depth conversation with one of those CEOs who is pulling millions while the company's profitability and stock are shit.

I could only ever feel guilty if I didn't work hard or I was taking the credit and getting paid for work that others were doing.

I worked for two years as Commissions Administrator for a telecom company and it was absolute hell because (a) the sales people were earning twice as much as my annual salary in a single month which was somewhat demoralising especially when you were sitting crying over your keyboard at midnight on a fairly regular basis, (b) this being an American company, everything was calculated in USD which roundly pissed off the European sales team I was working with and they were the types to shoot the lowly admin messenger, (c) they spent a fortune on a really crappy Oracle Sales Compensation programme that couldn't be changed once they'd got it operational, then within a month changed the compensation plan completely so I ended up doing most of it in Excel anyway and (c) this being telecoms in the early 00s, some of the sales people were making hyuge deals with companies with names that rhymed with Fenr0n and F0rldcom, for example, getting massive amounts of compensation and then watching their commission go into serious minus figures the following month when we had to try and claw back their money (after they'd gone and spent it on Porsches and stuff) because the company they'd sold to had gone tits up or our company's service was so shite they refused to pay up.

That was my rant. I thank you.

(d) I mean.

I wish I could answer this out of experience Tracer. But you knew I was going to say that, didnt' ya!

Interestingly, it was at the NHS.

TOMBOT laughed last time I mentioned this; but now I see his point: I have no money, am facing a large tax bill, so am in no mood for moralism about taxation, etc.

Socialism is in part the recognition that in business there is no such thing as individual achievement: the whopper salaries are obviously outrageous. But taxing these heavily, the Toynbee/Lib Dem solution, isn't socialism, because the basic inequality, the failure to recognise that we exist only through cooperation, remains.

So: enjoy it fuckfaces, but you'll never impress me.

Okay, this is beginning to touch on the broader issue of why the "invisible hand" of the market sets the salary ranges for certain professions higher than for others.