When the Yahoo sale to Verizon closes, pending shareholder approval, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, will make $186 million in cash and benefits. You may be thinking, “wow, she must have done something great to deserve that!” Well, not really.
In fact, Mayer pretty much failed as CEO of Yahoo in every way. Of course, in all fairness, Yahoo wasn’t in great shape when she was hired. But dwindling ad revenue, two major security breaches, and a number of failed goals later, Mayer gets a $168m reward. That is in addition to the $200 million in salary and bonuses she was paid over the last five years.
Now, most of us can’t even imagine earning that kind of money. In fact, I’m not sure “earn” is the right word. Does any CEO really do anything to truly earn a multiple of hundreds or thousands over smaller company CEO’s? Or have they helped the company that much more than a worker earning $15/hour?
Does it make you upset to see big golden parachutes for CEO’s? Now…remember that anger for just a moment.
Because guess what? If you are a Christian, you’re just like Mayer. You might not appreciate the analogy, but it is pretty fair anyway.
Let’s pretend that you are the CEO of YOU Inc., because you are. And imagine you are being judged for every mistake, every time you didn’t follow God’s rules, and all the consequences that come from those mistakes – because you will be. We call those sins.
But in a buy-out, God purchased you with the blood of Jesus, and you get a golden parachute of eternal proportions. Seem fair? Still angry? Do you see that we have received the greatest payout ever despite all our mistakes?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the golden parachutes major CEO’s get after wrecking companies any more than you do. But it is a great reminder. I ran company GREG into the ground; failed miserably to save myself through my efforts.
So you can try to get to heaven by your works, but I’ll gladly take the buy-out!
