I do find this frustrating as an IC. I'm lucky to get a COL raise every year, much less 10-15% in a down year. Not to mention the absolute ridiculous explosion of C-Suite pay in comparison to workers. Something has to change if these companies want to continue to be successful long term.

The article mentions a one time tax charge which resulted in the reduction in profits but doesn't explain the context of the tax charge. Likely because it doesn't fit the narrative the author tried to create. Qualcomm chose to take a one time non-cash tax charge of $5.7 billion to take advantage of changes in the tax code which were part of the Big Beautiful Bill enacted last year. By taxing the charge their effective tax rate and cash tax payments moving forward will be reduced. In other words they traded short term profits for increased long term profits. Meta similarly took a $15.9 billion charge for the same reason. Many other companies have already done the same or are expected to. Especially those which have large R&D investments.

>The bump came in a year when Qualcomm reported full-year revenue of $44.3 billion, up 14 percent, but net income plunged 45 percent to $5.5 billion after the company booked a hefty non-cash tax charge tied to changes in US tax law. In other words, sales were up, profits went backwards, and executive pay kept climbing anyway.

> By contrast, Qualcomm calculated the annual total compensation of its median employee at $101,639, putting Amon's pay at roughly 292 times that figure.

For those who missed that in today's brand of capitalism in some countries, employees are very much peasants and serfs.

America is just it's usual stupid self again. C Level pay and any other position pay has nothing in common anymore. I guess some are humans and some are demi-gods