By Anurag Kumar
Copyright timesnownews
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has revealed that during his tenure as chief executive he deliberately avoided taking additional compensation, including stock grants and bonuses, despite leading one of the world’s most valuable companies. Speaking at the 2024 New York Times DealBook Summit, Bezos said he asked Amazon’s board “not to give me any comp,” citing his already substantial ownership stake. “I already owned a significant amount of the company, and I just didn’t feel good about taking more… I just felt how could I possibly need more incentive?” he said. According to filings, Bezos drew an annual salary of roughly $80,000 as Amazon’s CEO. He told the audience, “I just would have felt icky about it. And I’m actually very proud of that decision.” Bezos framed his approach as typical of founder-led companies, where wealth comes from building enterprise value rather than from paychecks. “Founders grow their wealth by increasing the value of their existing equity and not by increasing their salary compensation,” he said. He also proposed a different way to measure success: by wealth created for others. “Somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they’ve created for other people,” Bezos argued. “Amazon’s market cap is $2.3 trillion today… I’ve created something like $2.1 trillion of wealth for other people.” He suggested such a ranking would be a “better list” than Forbes’s billionaires index. Bezos’s stance aligns with a broader ethos in Silicon Valley, where several iconic leaders have opted for symbolic or minimal pay. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has drawn only $1 in annual salary since 2013, following a precedent set by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has long taken a flat $100,000 salary with no stock-based bonuses.
