Meta boss and human person Mark Zuckerberg was paid a nominal $1 in salary again in 2022 and took home no bonuses, yet he cost the company tens of millions in compensation to cover expenses including security and private jet travel.

The founder and CEO at the advertising-cum-social-media biz, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Meta Quest among its operations, trimmed his salary to $1 in 2013 and hasn’t looked back since.

According to a proxy filing statement, published ahead of the annual meeting of shareholders at the end of May, Zuck still drew a single dollar from Meta last year but he received $27.11 million in the “All Other Compensation” bracket.

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His increased personal security detail accounted for $14.82 million of this, with cover provided at “his residences and during personal travel time pursuant to Mr Zuckerberg’s overall security program.”

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Meta says it has identified “specific threats” to Zuck “as a result of the high-profile nature of being our founder, CEO, chair, and controlling shareholder. We believe that Mr Zuckerberg's role puts him in a unique position: he is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr Zuckerberg.”

It likely doesn’t help that Meta, which makes the vast majority of its revenue from ad sales, is often heavily criticized for its perceived lax attitude toward privacy and efforts to maintain platform dominance, areas that can attract the attention of regulators.

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The compensation payment for Zuck also includes almost $2.3 million “for costs related to personal usage of private aircraft.” This covers passenger fees, fuel, crew and catering costs. The private aircraft is indirectly owned by the billionaire and operated by an independent charter company.

Meta adds in the proxy statement:

The costs of Mr Zuckerberg's security program vary from year to year depending on requisite security measures, his travel schedule, and other factors. The compensation, nominating & governance committee believes that these costs are appropriate and necessary in light of the threat landscape and the fact that Mr Zuckerberg has requested to receive only $1 in annual salary and does not receive any bonus payments, equity awards, or other incentive compensation.

2022 was described in the filing by Meta lead independent director Robert M Kimmitt as among the “most challenging years as a public company,” so how did the other execs brush up? Not too shabby is the answer. New CFO Susan Li was compensated to the tune of $15.3 million, with the majority comprised of stock awards; chief product officer Christopher K Cox got $22.591 million; and CTO Andrew Bosworth received $20.2 million.

Meta made $29.94 billion in operating income in calendar 2022, down 38 percent from the prior year. This was on the back of $116.7 billion in revenue, down 1 percent. Costs and expenses were an eye-watering $87.66 billion and this is why Meta made job cuts in November and March, chopping 21,000 heads in total.

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2023 was named as the "Year of Efficiency" by Meta as it also tries to reduce real estate, speed decision making by removing layers of management and cancelling projects that are “duplicative or lower priority”.

The proxy statement says average employee compensation at Meta was $296,320, which includes salary, bonuses, sales commissions and the value of equity granted to staff. The base salary was not outlined. ®

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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/10/people_ai_chat/

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/05/meta_ai_commercial_adverts/

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/meta_10000_jobs_cut/

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[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/