Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman has come under fire from both Redditors and media outlets following the disclosure of his enormous pay package, totalling $193 million in 2023.
The eye-popping sum was unveiled in the company's US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on February 22, coinciding with its preparations for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) this week.
Huffman recently defended his compensation in a video on his social media platform.
According to Quartz, his pay package exceeds the combined salaries of the CEOs of Pinterest, Snap, and Meta.
While Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Snap's Evan Spiegel have base salaries of just $1, as per their recent SEC filings, and Pinterest's Bill Ready earns $400,000 annually, Huffman's salary was around $340,000, which was increased to $550,000 in February.
Although Zuckerberg's total compensation is significantly lower than Huffman's, he owns a substantial amount of Meta stock, which can yield him hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends.
Spiegel, who currently earns the lowest salary among social media CEOs, held the top spot in 2017, surpassing even Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and several other firms.
Spiegel faced criticism back then for his $638 million pay package, disclosed in an SEC filing by Snap ahead of its IPO launch.
Snap announced that Spiegel would receive a base salary of $1 moving forward.
Huffman currently leads in CEO compensation and stands to potentially earn more by selling shares during Reddit's upcoming initial public offering on Thursday.
He owns approximately 3.2 per cent of the company's shares. Reddit's existing investors intend to sell 7 million shares, priced between $31 and $34 each.
Reddit is supposed to make its stock market debut Thursday. Shares will begin trading today on the New York Stock Exchange.
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