Would you take $1 to run the biggest tech company in the world?

For the third year in a row, the chief executive of Apple turned down any kind of significant salary or stock options as compensation for running one of the largest tech companies in the world.

Steve Jobs took a single dollar as compensation for his time running the iPhone and Mac manufacturer, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement. It’s a rather symbolic gesture, basically indicating he is doing the job pro bono.

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Jobs is still one of the largest single shareholders of Apple with around 5.5 million shares. At the current market price of $345, that’s just shy of $2 billion. He hasn’t received any kind of stock options or significant compensation as far back as the proxy statement goes, to 2008. (He did, however, land in hot water with the SEC over previously received stock options, with an investigation that eventually cleared Jobs but fingered Apple’s former CFO and general counsel.)

Meanwhile, the rest of his executive staff are doing quite well for themselves. Including stock options, Apple’s chief operating officer Tim Cook made off with around $60 million in 2010. Peter Oppenheimer, the company’s chief financial officer, made $30 million including options, and Apple’s senior vice president of retail Ronald Johnson also made $30 million. The actual flat salary for each executive was $800,000 per year.

Apple now makes around $20 billion in revenue each quarter off sales of its iPhone, iPad computer tablet, iPods and Mac computers. Apple sold twice as many iPhones in its most recent operating quarter as it did the quarter before that. And now that the company is going to offer its insanely popular mobile phone on Verizon, another massive cellular network, it’s basically a given that the company will be able to keep up those sales. That’s also not mentioning a refresh of the iPad and iPhone on the horizon.

And under Jobs’ and his team’s command, Apple has cruised past most companies to become the second largest company in the world based on the company’s market cap. Seeing as their job is to increase the company’s value for their shareholders, it’s hard to imagine investors squawking about the pay.

But sometimes it isn’t always about the money. After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger passed up any significant compensation when he was governor of California.

I just know that if I were the head of a company like Apple, I would walk up and take that $1 check like a boss.

Though, after taxes, it would probably be around 63 cents.