Mark Zuckerberg's salary last year was just $1

Mark Zuckerberg's salary last year was just $1

Mark Zuckerberg has so much money that he's decided his yearly salary should be one dollar. The Facebook founder, whose wealth is estimated at $27 billion, paid himself $1 in 2013 — a steep drop from his 2012 base salary of $500,000.

But before you applaud Zuck's selflessness, know that the move is mostly symbolic — he still made $3.3 billion last year in stock options, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Facebook's stock more than doubled last year, ensuring that Zuckerberg doesn't need a large base salary to live comfortably. He's not the first to take pay cut — other top tech CEOs like Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin own sizable equity stakes but only get paid one dollar in salary.

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Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.