The Wall Street Journal pay survey is a fascinating read. My initial impression was surprise that Steve Jobs was only number five. But the thing that shocked me the most is that Barry Diller, the CEO of IACI, is number two on that list, having made $1.14B over the years 2000-1010.

This is egregious. Not because Barry Diller is incompetent. He's a a smart guy, and a media visionary. It's because it's way out of line with what his company did. If you include Expedia shares, an IACI spinoff, IACI shareholders lost 18% over the decade period in which Dillar's compenstation was measured, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, IACI alone stock fell 80% during the time that Barry Diller made $1B.

I have been working for about 20 years, pretty much straight through since college, in the same industry (media). I have survived three recessions (1990-1991, 2000-2002, and 2008-2009). What's interesting is that I've found each time we came out of the recession, the best opportunities came out of startups. This is why I think that innovation, startups, and new technology will drive this recovery. It won't becoming out of those large, slow, political corporations. In my case, during recessions I left the large restructuring dinosaur-like company (in some cases, involuntarily) and moved to a startup. Both times it created opportunity.  In the late 1990s, a company called CMP Media Inc. (now called TechWeb and part of United Business Media), fired a whole handful of us. Led by founders Peter Heywood and Stephen Saunders, we started a new company called Light Reading Inc., which over six years grew from 2 to fifty employees. The company that fired us ended up buying the entire company back again 6 years later, for $30 million plus (if you include an earn-out). Expensive mistake, for them.