Uber CEO: CEOs are paid too much (UBER)

• Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi thinks his fellow C-suiters are overpaid, he told The New York Times. 
• He made around $12 million in 2020 and more than $42 million in 2019, when you include stock bonuses. 
• CEO pay rose sharply in 2020, with several executives raking in paydays in excess of $100 million.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Uber’s top dog Dara Khosrowshahi thinks his fellow CEOs are overpaid, he said in an interview with The New York Times. 

“I think if you define fairness by ‘fair market value,’ then CEOs are paid fairly,” he said. “I think if you define fairness by how you think society should value people, then I think CEOs are paid too much. You could put me in that group.”

The current system that determines executive compensation — leaning on compensation consultants — leads to inflated packages, he said. 

“Every single comp committee wants to pay their CEO at the 60th or 75th percentile, because no one ever wants an average CEO, God help us,” he added. 

Read more: It’s ‘bullsh—‘: A growing number of founders are furious over ‘exploding term sheets,’ where they have as little as 24 hours to accept a VC’s offer

Khosrowshahi, who took the reins in 2017 from embattled founder Travis Kalanick, raked in roughly $12.3 million in 2020, including a base salary of around $337,000, some $1.6 million in cash bonuses, $9.5 million in stock, and around $850,000 in other compensation. He waived part of his $1 million base salary amid pandemic-driven layoffs at Uber.

That’s a 72% cut from 2019, when he earned more than $42 million.

While high, his income doesn’t hold a candle to some of the tremendous paydays CEOs received in 2020. Eight titans of industry who lead public companies, including a handful of tech CEOs, earned packages worth more than $100 million in 2020, according to The Times. 

Alex Karp, who heads up Palantir, took home a staggering $1.1 billion. DoorDash founder Tony Xu made $414 million. OpenDoor’s Eric Wu banked $370 million. All three firms went public last year, showering their top executives with colossal stock awards. 

CEO pay at public companies jumped more than 14% in 2020 as stocks rallied, according to The Times. Chief executives took home $274 for every dollar a median employee at their companies was paid, an increase over 2019. Khosrowshahi earned 123 times the median Uber-employee pay.