The size of the cuts in bonus feels low in absolute terms (800K AUD across all the execs in total), but it is better accountability than any organization in America when it comes to breaches.
guiambros · 3h ago
Indeed. This should be a standard set by every board: depending on the size of the data breach, the cut on executive salaries goes from 10 all the way to to 50% -- including bonus and stock comp.
I bet you we'd drastically reduce the number of companies get hacked overnight.
bigiain · 24m ago
Note too, if you read far enough onto the article, Hudson got a "short term bonus cut" of $250,000 - but in the same time period her base salary went up by $1.9 million dollars.
This is just bullshit media-spin.
> Qantas has slashed short-term bonuses for its senior leadership
> Group CEO Vanessa Hudson will see her pay slashed by A$250,000
> the annual report shows that Qantas’ senior leadership salaries were higher than the year-ago period, despite the bonus cuts. Hudson’s annual salary, for example, stood at around A$6.3 million, higher than the A$4.4 million in the previous financial year.
declan_roberts · 1h ago
The correct response is not to cut executive pay, it's to dramatically increase SWE/Secops/Devops pay and stop outsourcing everything.
layer8 · 31m ago
No, accountability is the correct way to incentivize a high level of diligence. Paying engineers more doesn’t by itself do that.
bigiain · 20m ago
Yep.
Don't cut executive pay. Put executives in jail.
I'll bet that if Qantas ever get fined for this data breach, the fine/penalties will cost the company less than the increase in senior leadership salaries for that year.
itake · 44m ago
I’m skeptical. Ive never seen a situation where tech workers intentionally created low quality work because they didn’t like they pay they agreed to work for…
Usually, it would be a skill issue that could only be solved by additional training or churning headcount.
adt · 25m ago
Indeed.
>One thing that programmers don’t care about. They don’t care about money, actually, unless you’re screwing up on the other things... You do have to pay competitively, but all said, of all the things that programmers look at in deciding where to work, as long as the salaries are basically fair, they will be surprisingly low on their list of considerations, and offering high salaries is a surprisingly ineffective tool in overcoming problems like the fact that programmers get 15″ monitors and salespeople yell at them all the time and the job involves making nuclear weapons out of baby seals.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d...
jiggawatts · 1h ago
No, the correct response is to use even cheaper outsourcers, but force them to jump through at least a dozen VPN, MFA, PIM, and PSM hoops before landing on a server that has half a dozen security agents slowing it down to a speed that can be best described as "cold molasses" with every packet in and out both triple encrypted and somehow magically "inspected" by an advanced firewall that runs on industrial quantities of snake oil.
anonymars · 1h ago
It was my day off man, why you gotta be like that <eye twitches>
gaanbal · 3h ago
when you're making 6 million a year, a 250k cut is inconsequential
my guess is they're doing this to make people feel like they're taking accountability
tgsovlerkhgsel · 2h ago
It's a lot more accountability than the usual hollow phrases with zero actual consequences, and could be sufficient to actually encourage taking this more seriously.
seb1204 · 2h ago
This is not Qantas first breach. A good step but too little too late in my opinion.
jiggawatts · 1h ago
The total executive pay cut is less than 10c per affected customer.
Their pay rise for the year is greater than the cut.
In other words, they gave themselves a smaller bonus increase this year.
Not "no bonus".
Not "no bonus increase"
A smaller increase in the bonus.
The French chopped their aristocrats' heads off in an era of smaller income inequality than we're seeing in western countries today.
sandworm101 · 3h ago
Incorrect title. Article states "the Australian carrier says it is cutting the executive bonuses by 15% for the fiscal year." That is not 15% of pay. That is 15% of bonuses, which do not represent all pay.
cadamsdotcom · 3h ago
Agreed. In the submitted title, the word “pay” should be swapped for “bonuses”.
I bet you we'd drastically reduce the number of companies get hacked overnight.
This is just bullshit media-spin.
> Qantas has slashed short-term bonuses for its senior leadership
> Group CEO Vanessa Hudson will see her pay slashed by A$250,000
> the annual report shows that Qantas’ senior leadership salaries were higher than the year-ago period, despite the bonus cuts. Hudson’s annual salary, for example, stood at around A$6.3 million, higher than the A$4.4 million in the previous financial year.
Don't cut executive pay. Put executives in jail.
I'll bet that if Qantas ever get fined for this data breach, the fine/penalties will cost the company less than the increase in senior leadership salaries for that year.
Usually, it would be a skill issue that could only be solved by additional training or churning headcount.
>One thing that programmers don’t care about. They don’t care about money, actually, unless you’re screwing up on the other things... You do have to pay competitively, but all said, of all the things that programmers look at in deciding where to work, as long as the salaries are basically fair, they will be surprisingly low on their list of considerations, and offering high salaries is a surprisingly ineffective tool in overcoming problems like the fact that programmers get 15″ monitors and salespeople yell at them all the time and the job involves making nuclear weapons out of baby seals. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d...
my guess is they're doing this to make people feel like they're taking accountability
Their pay rise for the year is greater than the cut.
In other words, they gave themselves a smaller bonus increase this year.
Not "no bonus".
Not "no bonus increase"
A smaller increase in the bonus.
The French chopped their aristocrats' heads off in an era of smaller income inequality than we're seeing in western countries today.