lifestyle

Is this guy the world's best boss?

We bet there aren’t too many sickies being taken in that office…

No matter how great your boss is, we’re guessing they’ve got nothing on Dan Price.

This 30-year-old entrepreneur is the founder of a Seattle payment processing business called Gravity Payments.

And he also happens to be the world’s best boss, after he announced last week that he was taking a $930,000 pay cut to allow the company’s minimum wage to increase to $70,000.

That’s right – he is voluntarily missing out on almost $1 million a year to pay his 120 staff members fairly.

Related: Women make great bosses. Fact.

“Is anyone else freaking out right now?” Price asked after a few moments of stunned silence. “I’m kind of freaking out.”

Your boss comes in and doubles your salary and slashes their own? Yeah, freaking out pretty much covers it.

Under the new company rule, some employees’ salaries have almost doubled. The base wage was previously $48,000.

Price, who has always lived a fairly frugal life for a big-shot CEO and who still drives a 12-year-old Audi, will now have to learn to live off $70,000 a year.

Related: Thought your boss was an asshat?

He told the Huffington Post that he had decided to take the pay cut after a friend told him about her struggles to pay the rent.

There’s greater inequality today than there’s been since the Great Recession. I’d been thinking about this stuff and just thought, ‘It’s time. I can’t go another day without doing something about this. There will be sacrifices. But once the company’s profit is back to the $2.2 million level, my pay will go back. So that’s good motivation.

Today, the average American CEO earns a wage that is 300 times higher than the average worker.

But while other CEO’s might see such a huge pay cut as a sacrifice, Price believes it will pay off in the end, with happier employees working more efficiently.

Related: This CEO retired. So his staff gave him the best send-off we’ve ever seen.

With a boss that awesome, we bet there aren’t too many sickies being taken in that office…

 

Have you ever had a particularly awesome boss?

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Top Comments

Helen 10 years ago

Can I go to work there?


Philosophical 10 years ago

Employee loyalty earned. People underestimate the value of a happy team.