Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Base Salary Is Only Rs 83, But There’s A Catch – News18

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, is the company’s lowest-paid employee on paper. As per the reports, Zuckerberg received a base salary of $1 (Rs 83) in 2023. This amount might sound absurd to many because according to Fortune Business magazine, it is significantly lower than the median salary of a Meta employee. The median salary is around $379,000 (approximately Rs 3 crore). Base salary is the fixed amount an employee must be paid for their work as agreed upon during the hiring process. The median salary represents the middle value between all salaries considered. However, $1 (Rs 83) is just a nominal base as Zuckerberg is entitled to receive hefty amounts of money under ‘other compensation’ as well. The other compensation amounts to a staggering $24.4 million (Rs 20 crores).

As per the report published in the Fortune, a major portion of this ‘other compensation’ covers the security expenses of the Meta founder. The report reveals that in 2023, Meta increased his security pre-tax allowance by 40 per cent from $10 million (Rs 83.39 crores) in 2018 to approximately $14 million (almost Rs 320 crores). However, there were some reductions in this security spending due to Meta’s commitment to a “year of efficiency”. In 2022, he spent $14.8 million (Rs 323 crores) on security, while in 2023, this cost dropped to around $9.4 million (Rs 78 crores).

Another important portion of this compensation was channelled towards the expenditure related to the private use of aircraft, amounting to almost $1 million (Rs 8.24 crores).

These perks from the company had helped the Meta CEO Mark surged past Elon Musk to become the third-richest person in the world according to Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index ranking. Zuckerberg and Musk’s net worth is $186.9 billion (Rs 1,550 crores) and $180.6 billion (Rs 1,500 crores), respectively. In 2024, Tesla stock has seen a 34 per cent drop making it the poor performer in the S&P 500 Index. In contrast, stocks of Meta Platforms Inc. have surged by 49 per cent. Musk, who ranked at the number one position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as recently as early March, came to fourth.