Interesting, I didn’t know that Baker was paid by the corporation. American 501c3 non-profit law is deeply flawed and, though orgs aren’t allowed to generate profit per se, they can pay their staff salaries as high as they want. If the board consists of the staff’s friends, eventually the staff view their positions as a sinecure and put in the minimum effort necessary to keep their jobs. So, I assumed that what happened with Firefox's director was the same corrupt non-profit thing.
It doesn't seem to be the case that you can pay 501c3 execs exuberant salaries.
This site looks to have a more realistic view of those tax rules. [1]
If she's getting that salary she must be able to defend it as reasonable based on comparable salaries in the industry, the income she's able to secure for the company, etc. So if her pay seems like a lot, it's probably because the tech sector overall is paid too much in your opinion.
Is there any evidence that's a problem that actually happens often, as opposed to just being something you can easily imagine happening?
I've known quite a lot of CEOs, of small and big for-profits and charities too, and anecdotally they've all been some of the hardest working people I know. There's many complaints to make against many CEOs (including some of the ones I've known), often including taking obscene salaries while under-paying workers, or other problematic management decisions, but in my experience laziness just doesn't seem common - in exec levels generally as well as chief ones.
If you want to be lazy and paid well, there are easier jobs with less constant security than being a CEO!
It happens often enough. I don’t want to give exact names, as that would possibly dox me, but 1) as an idealistic young person I worked for a time in the central office of an org where both ordinary staff and management admitted that they had long since lost interest in the mission, but the position was comfortable and required little actual work, and since the board consisted of some pretty acquiescing and clueless people, they were able to ensure regular pay increases. 2) One 501c3 I have been active in, dedicated to a certain hobby, is currently riven by scandal because the board hired a new director who, according to tax filings, gets a big salary for only a few hours of work a week, and this is only one of several business ventures she has going on, and the others look like outright grifts.
