[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by bing

First of all, what do you do for a living sir? I'd like to know how hard you tried in life before you can say that these executives are paid unfairly.

I was a bit confused by his post too, but I think his main point was that Translink gets shitty leadership because the pay sucks (compared to more glorious jobs in the private sector) and the work sucks (after all, who wants to be scrutinized everyday by ill-informed citizens and politicians looking to take cheapshots in order to improve their political careers?)

All the executives I personally know are always busy.

You mean, they aren't all playing golf on the company dime?

The thing is that most people work for small to medium sized companies and organizations with shitty corporate cultures, shitty pay, and SOBs for bosses. It's hard for them to have any empathy for executives of large organizations who probably get to see their kids play hockey after a day in the office. In the mind of most people, if you're making 6-10 times the money they're making, then you better do a pretty close to perfect job.

On the other hand, family doctors also make hundreds of thousands of dollars and nobody usually bitches.

Doctors provide a valuable service that is tangible to the layperson. Transit executives' work is not tangible and all people see are late buses, higher fares, etc.

BUT BUT, its not okay to pay executives (many with professional degrees: CA, MBA, masters - which means their grades are usually good enough to get into medical school if they really wanted) at companies such as Translink who are responsible for running large companies in the salary range of 200-350k? Let me ask you, what's harder to manage, a clinic or a company with almost a billion dollar budget? Yes, doctors have some expenses, but there are even local family doctors that clear up to and slightly over 500k. Oh, and might I remind you that the majority of the taxes paid are from the high income earners. So that free health care you benefit from and your children's subsidized education, you can thank people like the Translink execs.

To be fair, educational credentials are not always commensurate with a person's intellect or his ability to perform a job well.

Again, the issue here is that most people will never manage anything beyond a household in their lives. They don't understand the hard work, the endless strategic thinking, the endless demands, and so on of executive work, particularly in large organizations. They only see something wrong and place the blame on the guys making the large salaries because it's easy.