malandrew parent
I'm really curious about the relationship of CEO compensation and employee satisfaction/morale in companies. I have lost count of the number of times I've heard about a CEO, COO or CFO getting 8 figure salaries while the rank and file employees had to forego their bonuses in a touch year. I cannot begin to imagine how devastating that knowledge is to employee morale.
The best I remember is that a Danish bank (I think it was "Nordea" or "Danske Bank", but I'm not sure and my search-karma seems to have gone for the day) had a CEO who got a huge bonus for meeting his goals in making a profit back in 2009 or 2010.
The way he did that, though, was to fire 30% of the staff (and branches) and living off the profit from the hard work those 30% did the previous years - the next years they had bigger and bigger deficits, because they couldn't keep living off previous years loans.
I went through it last year. Our company didn't make money so no bonuses for us while the CEO got a handsome package of some $25 million.
It's pretty terrible to go through. Even if you didn't think the CEO has done a terrible job (I officially have no comment on the matter), it was still terrible.