Revealing the highest-paid CEOs in the country. CEO of Charter Communications, Thomas Rutledge, tops the list, earning $98M a year. (The average Charter employee makes $40,000 annually.) Many people are left wondering: Are CEOs being paid too much?
Most CEOs see their large paychecks as a fair trade for the excessive amount of work they put into their company. As a CEO who traveled 150 days a year and spent most of my waking hours obsessively growing my company, a big paycheck felt like my solace for all the things I missed—the kids’ softball games, the family dinners, etc. But, after a few years, I began to realize that my paycheck wasn’t making up for that stuff, and additionally, it wasn’t helping my company to grow. I was trying to do everything myself, and I was burning out quickly.
I finally found that I needed to change the way I approached my salary.
I realized that I could take home $500K every year and not have a personal life, or I could take home $200K and hire a strong second in command for $300K. Doing so not only dramatically reduced my traveling and allowed me to be more available to my kids, but it also meant that I had more brainpower and more innovation on my team. I wasn’t trying to do it all. I had a co-pilot who could help me build my company and offer unique insights that I might have missed.
Ultimately, I advise my clients that a company's growth is limited by the leadership it can attract. For example, let’s look at Charter. They could have hired another four top executives for 500K per year who could each lead $30M business units. This would drive a lot more shareholder value than paying one CEO an additional $2M on top of the 90+ million they already paid.
I strongly believe that until companies change their approach to salaries and stop thinking that the
CEO should be the highest paid person in the room that their growth will stagnate.
In my own experience as CEO, I made a fundamental shift in my thinking. Rather than paying myself more, I used those funds to hire people who could give me work/life balance. I went from traveling 150 days per year to traveling 3-4 days per month, and I was home by 6pm nearly every day.
And here is the amazing thing: During that 5-year period the company doubled in size (creating between $30M - 60M in shareholder value), and we won 5 consecutive Top Workplace awards…and all the while, I was working 30% fewer hours than I did in the 5 years before!
If you want to live a balanced life, then you should be willing to sacrifice a higher paycheck for that gift…even if it means you might make less than your employees. After all, if you have high-performing people who are hitting their performance goals every year, then it stands to reason that they may be earning more than the CEO, especially once you add in bonuses.
What do you think? Should the boss earn more than everyone else?