What Do People Think About Sam Palmisano’s $21m 2008 Compensation?
Executive compensation is always a matter of discussion from the board, to Wall Street and the ordinary worker. But Sam P.’s compensation is under particular scrutiny since he has laid thousand of US IBM employees off in the last few years.
Sam’s compensation includes a $1.8 million salary; $5.5 million performance-based bonus; stock options and awards worth an estimated $12.22 million at the time they were granted; and $1.44 million in perks and other compensation (personal use of a company aircraft).
What’s interesting is that the company saw bigger gains in 2008 than 2007: IBM reported revenue of $103.6 billion in 2008, up 5% from 2007’s $98.8 billion. Income for the year ended Dec. 31 came in at $12.3 billion compared with $10.4 billion in 2007, a jump of 18%.
So the justifications for the massive job layoffs have no merit in anything but greed of executives and Wall Street satisfaction.
What do people think about that, well several surveys and blogs had these responses to the question of Sam’s compensation package in 2008?
So what exactly did people have to say about Sam Palmisano’s compensation: in a collection of on-line surveys by Network World and other technology followers and Communication workers blogs.
1. Big Blue
The IBM consultants working 100+ hours per week, on a fixed salary, helped pay for fatty Palmisano’s big pay day. The 1000 pound gorilla only survives, with its massive overhead, by targeting the US government and Fortune 500. They’re the only groups who can afford the IBM price tag.
2. Pretty upsetting
It’s pretty awful to see Palmisano’s (and other CEOs) receiving increases in pay, benefits and deferred compensation when they make massive layoffs and continue to take away benefits for current employees.
Palmisano & company have gotten away with age discrimination in layoffs, had employees train their foreign replacements and taken money from state governments as incentive for creating local jobs, then reneging on their end of the agreement. For this, Palmisano will get a $10K per day pension package.
3. Profit by Lay-off Plan
What ever happened to the good ole’ days when companies made profits based on Sales and Productivity and not by staff reductions. What a shame to bring in a profit like that.
4. Some Nerve Sam
Palmisano has some nerve receiving $20+ million in 2008, when the company permanently cuts thousands of jobs. Not sure how the execs of this company can sleep at night. Then again, I am sure they have become used to sleeping without a conscience.
Sam, if you only knew how low moral was at IBM. Perhaps you would see just b beyond the mighty dollar. While you must answer to shareholders, perhaps you need to be reminded of the people who actually make IBM work…and it’s not upper management. You need to take a serious reality check one of these days.
5. Leech
Fat bastard Sam is sucking the life blood out of the company. All in the comfort of a company jet.
Seems like the general consensus is that the ordinary person does not see the need for excessive executive income at IBM. Think of the jobs that could have been saved if the executive staff were paid a fair wage. With profit and revenue numbers IBM can not be crying poor it’s like crying wolf.
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6 Comments
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I am a customer of IBM and have worked there also. The poor employees of IBM: all their benefits have been cut, including recent decisions not to pay overtime, halving then eliminating pager pay and teams being cut due to offshoring…this is all when the company is making billions – it is not as if they are like Ford and GM! The ridiculous things that go on inside IBM every quarter to make profits looks bigger: cutting contractor hours to force salaried workers to take the extra workload for free, every year asking contractors to take 10% rate cuts (and we know what IBM rates and pay are like).
As a customer: I am pleased with the IBM individuals who do work for us but they really do work like slaves it seems – even worse when I worked there 10 years ago.
Another reason why IBM execs are rich: there is no such thing as a cost of living raise in IBM. If you have a great year, your raise is in the 1-2% range. For a promotion you are looking at 3-4% at best.
IBM executives run IBM for their own personal financial gain and don’t give a crap about the long term and best interests of the company and clients.
IBM: Big name but nothing like the employer they used to be.
Sam Palmisano – “250,000 IBMers will be getting raises this year”…he didn’t mention that the raises were delayed from June till October….he also conveniently forgot to mention that most of these raises were for IBM India employees and that his idea of a raise is 1%.
1%!!..now that is a raise worth boasting about!
Other comments are Welcome.
Best wishes and regards
If IBMers had any balls they would drag that fat greedy Sam Palmisano out if his office and tar and feather the POS in the parking lot. But most IBMers are just scared sheep who keep working longer hours for less pay while Sam laughs at them.