Sony Boss Howard Stringer Sees Pay Cut

COMMENTS (10)

• Performance based compensation…what a novel concept. Too bad the rest of the corporate landscape doesn’t follow the Japanese ideology of only rewarding CEO’s and top executives based on what they accomplish.

  Howard probably can’t even be in the same room anymore with Phillipe and Les as they make 70 million and 55 million respectively for Viacom and CBS.

  Comment by tom — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 9:31am PDT  Reply to this post

  • Agree.

    Yet, so many performance based compensation “specialists” tend to have it both ways. Taking credit when the product/service/entertainment is naturally a marketplace winner, yet, strangely claiming that their vast skills and savvy have no effect — positive, or negative — when the product/service/entertainment is not a natural marketplace “winner”.

    It’s easy to attach yourself to the back end of hundreds of other people’s “efforts”, but when you get something a little “lesser” than a winner, you punt and say “oh, well, what could I do?”

    The proper attitude is to apply yourself to both the good products/services/entertainments AND bad, with equal measure. To do any less than this is to leave money on the table.

    Unless of course, your compensation is such that leaving money on the table is acceptable in your corporate environment.

    Not such a novel concept, unfortunately.

    Comment by Klytus, I'm bored — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 10:45am PDT  Reply to this post

• i would love someone to explain to me how their can be such massive pay disparity between rival studios for the same job. do phillipe and les make viacom shareholders 10 times more money? do they work ten times harder?

  Comment by Anonymous — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 10:33am PDT  Reply to this post

• A more important question is why doesn’t the latest generation Sony PSP play simple video files such as .flv or .mp4? It seems kind of ridiculous to have to buy a third party converter just to be able to watch free podcasts downloaded from iTunes. Is it too expensive to include that codec in the device or provide that functionality? It’s just another example of Sony products not doing simple things that are totally possible and which would make them so much more popular (and useful) to consumers.

  Comment by Dale — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 10:47am PDT  Reply to this post

• they are all overpaid. 4.3 mil to screw up a company is too much salary for one year.

  Comment by j — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 11:01am PDT  Reply to this post

• It’s like studio accounting…no one can explain it.

  In fairness, however, Stringer is CEO of Sony and the studio group is only a fraction of the mother company which has fallen on hard times. Sony is no longer the brand name and market leader it once was. A good example was losing the Walkman market to Apple and iPOD. Combine this with the tsunami, Playstation and other issues which have also impacted Sony’s bottom line.

  This makes the comparison even harder…but, the vast disparity in compensation is indeed…vast…and, mostly, the big paydays are for US based company CEO’s.

  For that matter, look at the Wall Street bonuses before, during and after the financial crisis…still in the BILLIONS.

  There is no logical explanation…just greed.

  Comment by tom — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 11:10am PDT  Reply to this post

• I’ts America baby!

  Comment by pixelmixer — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 11:24am PDT  Reply to this post

• Time for Sony to fire more productive employees and replace them with H1-B Indians. The execs have Porsche payments and yachts to fuel. Can’t expect them to lower their standard of living.

  Comment by Sony Pictures = Little Mumbai — Tuesday June 28, 2011 @ 4:34pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I hope they take this as a sign to cut all the fat out of the senior management levels at Sony Pictures. Replace all the wannabees coming from electronics with entertainment professionals. Sony is just rotten from the top.

  Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday June 29, 2011 @ 7:15am PDT  Reply to this post

• I like and respect Sir Howard. He was on a plane from New York to Japan less than a week after having BACK SURGERY after the tsunami hit to help his employees and his company. Show me a studio head who would do that!

  While he’s had to deal with Acts of God and outside attacks on Sony, American CEOs and multi-millionaire stockholders are SUCKING their OWN companies dry leaving their employees earning pennies and then firing them so their bottom-line isn’t affected!

  I’m glad Sir Howard is at the head of Sony.

  Comment by a Sony employee — Wednesday June 29, 2011 @ 3:22pm PDT  Reply to this post