Capitalism. Everyone wants to succeed and to succeed in many cases requires your company being better than the others or risk collapse. A cleaner in BP might be disgusted at his ‘boss’ getting $14m but if that was the best way to ensure his cleaning job remained secure and it cost him nothing (as new profits would dwarf it), I think he might think again.

Ive met a few very clever senior staff in O&G industry and its clear they are worth the money being paid (ive not met any millionaire level though) for what they are driving and steering the companies to achieve. I still dont think it appropriate to by paying multiple millions though, but its a world wide problem and its never going to go away as long as one company can get an edge over another.

Bring on the Star Trek moneyless society! 😆

People do leave the country. They also come into this country in certain sectors for the same reasons – how do you think we attract all of our super talented bankers?

It’s like footballers pay – completely rediculous, but then again the numbers your talking in the oil and gas industry are a whole number of levels higher, so proportionally to the size of the business it’s not completely out of kilter. The CEO costs millions, but the impact of his or her decisions is in the billions.

Also at that level the CEO’s themselves are taking a big risk – They’re only one decision away from the sack, and if they perform badly and their reputation suffers then their chances of getting another CEO role diminishes.

Having said that the numbers are hard to justify on a moral level – the by the same token it has been proven undeniably that on the working levels where most of us mere mortals operate, pay is a very poor incentive for productivity. The notion that you pay people more and you’ll get more out of them is actually false. So there is little incentive for businesses to increase pay other than to stay in touch with competitive salary levels to retain staff. Companies that have reputations for treating their staff well and motivating their staff do it via other means than just renumeration. Ultimately we’re all humans as actually crave respect and acknowledgement over pay and that’s where good ‘people companies’ do well.

On the news last night,

“The study found that more than 10% of men who graduated from Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics – considered among the best universities in the UK – were earning more than £100,000 a year 10 years after gaining their degrees, with former LSE students taking home the most.”

Doesn’t leave them much headroom for promotions before they’re 40 if you want to impose a cap at that sort of level.

I’m probably (still 2 years to go, but with the oil price circling the drain it’s not looking likely) not going to achieve that, but I don’t begrudge those who do get ahead.

“oh no, they’ve only paid me (millions) for one years work, and now they’ve gone an sacked me (golden handshake)” It’s still a job, no one likes being sacked whether they’re on £15k, £50k, £500k or £5million (and they’ll have a mortgage that accounts for 1/3rd of that, just like everyone else). Just that on CEOtrackworld they discuss which Bentley rather than Skoda Yeti’s.

Thats very magnanimous of you 😉

You saw nothing! (ducks into cubicle)

[could also be Fluor, ENI, AFW within a 25min commute, or 40min to Woking (KBR, Mustang, etc) or one of the smaller guys]

I’d like to think so.

I suspect the number working in Saudi, the Emirates etc is probably a similar percentage, so it’s more a normal-ish salary + living in a repressive desert hell hole bonus.

My facebook feed is like a more irritating version of “Rich kids of Instagram”.

600/day? What were they, the tea boy :-p

In this case what the shareholders say is irrelevant. According to the lady on Radio 4 this morning this is a retrospective vote and the company is under no obligation to change anything or take any notice of the vote and its outcome. The best they can hope is to put some pressure on the company to choose to change it. More to the point the majority of shareholders will approve the award

Never been to Aberdeen, but I’d be surprised if the day rates for engineers weren’t higher than that at their peak, £60/hour would have been an average mid-career engineer in the SE, I’d expect Aberdeen to be higher.

Why the vitriol for desk bound paper shufflers?

Working in engineering design is an entirely paper (well, computerized since the 80’s anyway) exercise.

Does someone who’s been made redundant from a steel mill on 30k deserve more sympathy than someone who’s been made redundant form the O&D sector on 60k? I don’t think it any different tbh however one would hope the person earning 60k would make some provision.

The shareholders own the company….

they approve the award……(or not, or agree a three year binding formula, or sit in the backsides mute?)

and the problem is?

Dahedd, wee eck used to spin a very different story about the industry’s impact on the Scottish (it’s our oil don’t you know) and local economy. Was he talking BS?

Because football (TM)THM

How can a ratio work when the lowest paid BP worker will almost certainly work in a different country, for example Nigeria ?

@Northwind fair to say many of the best execs will be working abroad and/or for US companies

@eden talk to the footballers, they play for the love of the game right ?

Are the hotshot directors on 6 or 7 figure salaries not paid these sums to help improve productivity?

That’s not true, though. CEOs don’t get capriciously binned.