Get fired, get rich!

It's time to hand out a new Golden Boot Award, an idea I came up with at Upside magazine to acknowledge outrageous severance packages given to fired CEOs. It was supposed to be an annual award, but, alas, Upside folded.

This trend is fascinating and growing faster than a baseball player on steroids. CEOs screw up their companies and treat them like private bank accounts, then are rewarded  again for getting the boot. Man, that's great work if you can get it.

It should be a great trend this year, as more CEOs are fired for back-dating stock options.

I'm thinking of writing a book advising would-be CEOs how to cash in on the trend. How about "Finding Wealth Through Failure," or perhaps "It Is a Good Day To Be Fired!"?

The rules are simple. First, when you're hired, demand your god-given right to outrageous pay. After all, you're corporate royalty, with as much right to the riches of your company as Prince Charles is to the wealth of England. These days, CEOs are chosen by god. They just have to choose their corporate domain.

How else can anyone explain the fact that average CEO compensation for large U.S. companies in 2005 was 369 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, compared to only 36 times the average worker's pay in 1976? Obviously, commoners can't handle the job, or there would be more competition for it.

Then put together a back-slapping board of directors who are paid a couple hundred grand annually for meeting four times a year to rubber-stamp your decisions. Be sure to tell them that the company is in such danger that you're putting your reputation on the line by taking on the task. You need a severance package that will allow you to live like Aladdin after he found his genie.

Any board member who lacks genie-like qualities needs to be fired. Give him a good compensation package. A couple million ought to do it.

Then fire as many employees as you can under the theory that your slave ship ought to run faster with fewer slaves rowing it, thus lessening its weight. Screw customer service and R&D. They're just cost centers. And don't forget to back-date some options for the friends you hired to help you run the company into the ground.

Then act like a king, dammit. Be demanding and demeaning. Rule through belittlement. Piss off employees. And wait for your cost-cutting measures to damage the company's ability to biuld products or offer decent services. Viola! The stock drops, you're out of the company and in the money.

And so, my award goes to the man who best followed these rules to spectacular success, Bob Nardelli, who pocketed $210 million for destroying Home Depot! It took him just six years to do it.

Maybe I should apply for that job.

Comments

[susan mills]

Where does it end??? Another industry greatly affected is the student loan industry where unscrupulous corporate greed is ruining the lives of millions of innocent people who are driven into absurd amounts of debt, literally over night. One such example is Sallie Mae's CEO who has extorted enough money to build his own private golf course. It is sickening.