[HN Gopher] Many companies aren't prepared to replace underperfo...
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Many companies aren't prepared to replace underperforming CEOs
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 199 points
Date : 2022-11-04 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.gsb.stanford.edu)
| jyu wrote:
| Being CEO is good work if you can get it. Run a company to the
| ground and receive your golden parachute package for all that
| hard work.
| hypersoar wrote:
| I'm thinking of a Jadzia Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
| Jadzia is among the lucky few among her race, the Trill,
| implanted with a "symbiote" carrying the memories of all of its
| previous hosts. Carrying a symbiote is an unrealized dream for
| many Trill who wash out of the rigorous application and training
| process and are told they're incompatible. In one episode, one
| such disgruntled fellow tries to steal Jadzia's. In another, we
| learn a twist: compatibility is actually very common. There just
| aren't enough symbiotes to go around, so they lie about it.
|
| My pet theory is that grossly-paid C-suite executive jobs are
| like this. Plenty of middle-managers could do as well as the
| average CEO. But there's only so much room at the top of the
| hierarchy, and we _need_ to pay them hundreds of millions of
| dollars.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I mean, we don't need to pay them that much. These obscene
| salaries weren't the norm a few decades ago. They're the end
| result of Reaganite tax policies failing to tax super-high-
| earners progressively.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| You might think that paying a 45% marginal rate tax instead
| of 94% would mean you could be paid less while keeping more!
| How did lowering personal income tax increase compensation?
| sdiacom wrote:
| I imagine it's much easier for a CEO to justify divesting
| money from the company's profits to himself and to the
| government at a 1:1 ratio than it is at a 1:20 ratio.
|
| I would posit that the CEO-to-government ratio acts, in a
| roundabout way, as a profit-to-pushback ratio. As a CEO, it
| may not be worth facing the board's reaction to spending
| two million dollars just so that you get an extra hundred
| thousand dollars.
| googlryas wrote:
| That's only one part of the equation. But simply because the
| individuals get to keep their cash doesn't mean the companies
| need to give it to them.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| In fact, I see no obvious connection between the marginal
| tax rate and how much companies choose to set CEO's pretax
| compensation. Can grandparent explain?
| idontpost wrote:
| digitalsushi wrote:
| where i work we joke that everyone with a title of director and
| up is just playing "corporate Highlander"
| bgro wrote:
| I've never seen a CEO with any actual accountability. There's
| always someone else who failed and caused THEM this
| inconvenience.
|
| I hear it's a hard job that's deserving all of that money.
| True, I don't want to talk and lie to customers all day. I just
| want to build things. Does the CEO want to build things? It's
| probably a different skill set they're not interested in. I
| could do it though, just like any job.
|
| With some practice and a guiding team I can do literally
| anything. Even better if I don't have to worry about production
| bugs over the weekend. Even better if I know if I get fired
| tomorrow, I could retire and be set the rest of my life. Or use
| my golden privileged network + stamp of success to start back
| up whenever I want.
|
| Not that they "do" even customer relations type of work. That's
| what their staff is for. They just have to be the face that
| reads the prompts.
|
| I constantly see a lot of humble bragging, of course,
| immediately followed by pictures from ultra luxury places or a
| second vacation home in an extremely expensive place.
|
| From what I see, it's just someone who has a few zoom meetings
| every day where they're essentially host at a party. Their team
| does all the actual work going into any of it. They pick the
| drinks and the scenery, note all the guests' allergies and even
| call in the catering. Host just shoes up for a little bit.
|
| Then they take a long lunch, and come back an hour before
| everybody leaves for work. "Taking off already? Ha ha, I miss
| those days where I could do nothing all day too and then head
| out early. Have a good one."
|
| Write a blog entry and then it's time to hurry off and talk to
| meet the interior decorator for lunch and vacation planning
| committee. Of course this all counts as work because the host
| NEEDS somewhere to entertain the guests.
|
| When they have a bad day and have to do layoffs, for example,
| they can't even truly take accountability then. It's just
| wrapped up as an learning experience, or "the rest of the
| company needs this to not lose even more jobs."
|
| Maybe they even describe how they failed, but you can just tell
| it's just words. They don't truly believe that in the heart.
| Like a child lying about being sorry.
|
| It's probably better than the worst of them who say, "Actually,
| you deserve this. If only you'd worked harder." Or is that the
| best of them because they're finally honest? I truly believe
| that's the real feeling behind any humility-appearing outward-
| facing apology.
|
| (Wouldn't you cut your salary before layoffs, for example, if
| you truly felt real sorrow? Even if it you could cut it just
| enough to save 1 more person. Let alone taking a humble
| standard salary and saving a few. The opposite of this action
| would be receiving a large bonus that year. Something we see
| and hear happening in actuality almost every time.)
| failuser wrote:
| How much of C-suite job effectiveness is who you know?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > Plenty of middle-managers could do as well as the average
| CEO.
|
| I've worked with several CEOs and countless senior executives,
| both at very large companies and small, who had varying degrees
| of competency. I don't think this is generally true. Being
| successful at that job entails a specialized skill set that is
| rarely evident in middle management. What you are "managing" at
| the most senior levels of large organizations is very different
| than as a middle manager, it becomes an entirely different kind
| of role. The vast majority of people aren't even able to
| competently run a small company or startup, never mind a large
| enterprise.
|
| I think very few people are really cut out for that role. It is
| a case where demand exceeds supply, which drives up prices.
| There are many mediocre people in those roles _because_ supply
| is so scarce.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think you are right that the skills to be a successful CEO
| are rare, but I think the main problem is that the hiring
| process for CEO is so incestual that the majority of the
| people who would be good for the job aren't even considered.
| Instead the applicant pool consists of "son of current CEO",
| "son of CEO's favorite politician", and several "CEO that is
| currently failing a different company". The applicant pool
| feels small because they never look beyond the boundaries of
| "billionaire families who go to the same country club".
|
| There are a few CEOs that seem to truly make a difference,
| and maybe those would be worth the money, but for the most
| part companies are grossly overpaying for people who are
| mediocre to terrible at the job and will deploy the golden
| parachute in a couple of years to go fail at a different
| company.
| startupsfail wrote:
| The CEOs that belong to the club (network) can draw on the
| resources available to that network. It is widely believed
| that this ability is more important than the technical
| skills. It used to be correct when e-mail, LinkedIn or
| Google were not a thing. Now this is simply a cargo cult.
| jandrese wrote:
| That smells like rationalization to me. "No candidate
| outside of my personal circle of friends could possibly
| do this job because being in the circle is required to do
| the job."
| lenzm wrote:
| More like self fulfilling prophecy. The clique
| preferentially favors doing business with each other
| causing their businesses to perform better.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Relevant though somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/
|
| I think that there are _a lot_ of people that are cut out to
| be CEO, but most of them are already working as CEO - of a
| small business, or household, or one-man consultancy. There
| are very few people that are cut out to be CEO _of the
| particular big corporation that is hiring for CEO_. If you
| take the Ribbonfarm essay at face value, the quality that
| qualifies a person to be CEO is that their natural
| personality is in total alignment with the direction that the
| organization needs to go, and so they can merely be
| themselves, loudly and brashly, and they will attract
| followers that take the organization in that direction. There
| are just a handful of people, oftentimes one or none, whose
| natural personality is perfectly aligned with where the board
| wants to take the company. When you find that one, you should
| pay top dollar to get and retain them, because you may not
| find another.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yellowstuff wrote:
| CEOs have a ton of leverage and use it to use to their personal
| benefit. But they really are important- stock prices will
| change the value of a company by hundreds of millions of
| dollars based on a good or bad CEO joining or leaving, and it's
| not like the investors are all in on the scam.
|
| There are mechanisms in the existing system to fight high CEO
| pay, EG activist investors will get involved with companies and
| occasionally force CEOs out or cut their pay.
| goopthink wrote:
| The company board's sole job is to hire and fire the CEO when
| appropriate: https://reactionwheel.net/2021/11/your-boards-of-
| directors-i...
|
| However, having been on a team that prepares board materials and
| also having presented to a company board, I can tell you that the
| information they receive is extremely carefully managed in a way
| that allows responsibility to seem to flow downwards rather than
| upwards. What you see as an IC or as a manager or ever director
| is extremely different from the cause and effects a board sees in
| a monthly or quarterly update. Hence they often come to different
| conclusions than the people in the trenches would. That said, I'm
| sure this is true for any large organizational unit (government,
| military, corporations, nonprofits, etc).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The board has other jobs. They have to sign off on the validity
| of financial statements in public companies, for instance. CEOs
| bring them decisions that need to be made like granting a
| conflict of interest waiver to a CXO employee. Just two
| examples that they usually are required to make. They also help
| with other major course setting.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This is usually resolved by requiring a minimum ownership stake
| for each prospective board member, and to make sure it
| represents a significant fraction of their total net worth.
|
| To guarantee that the board would lose their shirts if they
| make decisions completely opposite to reality, thus motivating
| a more thorough investigation of what they see and hear.
| darkerside wrote:
| What? In what case has this ever happened?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Berkshire, Costco to a certain extent, many of the big
| Japanese and Korean conglomerates, Bosch, Dassault,
| traditional old money banks, etc...
|
| Excluding external board members, by definition.
| zeristor wrote:
| Sounds a bit like buying a commission, by having enough money
| you proved worthy of it.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It is quite similar, the most widespread usage historically
| would likely be the 18th century trading companies such as
| the British East India Company which used this method along
| with others to operate with a relatively tiny managerial
| workforce by modern standards.
|
| There was another post on HN a few weeks back with an
| article that looked into it and the numbers were really
| staggering.
| simlevesque wrote:
| if you could find it I'd love to read that.
| gumby wrote:
| Could you find that article, perhaps via algolia HN
| search? I didn't see it.
| gjm11 wrote:
| A couple of people asked where this was. I think the
| article is
|
| https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/some-things-to-learn-
| from...
|
| and the HN discussion is
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32710002
|
| (but I am not MichaelZuo and it's possible that I've got
| the wrong thing).
| yellowstuff wrote:
| I think that's the exception, not the rule. Many large public
| companies have many board members with only trivial ownership
| stakes.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Many corporate boards have an "executive chairman" which means
| the CEO is also the Chairman of the Board. Perhaps even more
| importantly a substantial number of board members are
| executives from other companies, meaning CEOs sit on each
| others boards and wash each others' backs.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I have to wonder if it should be considered a legal conflict
| of interest for a CEO to sit on the board at all, forget
| being chairman.
|
| The powerful really love rigging stuff in their favor huh
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I've been in preparation of board materials for Fortune 100
| companies (primarily for the audit committee) and honestly that
| is not my experience.
| justinpombrio wrote:
| Do say more!
| whatshisface wrote:
| The audit committee would be the one place you'd expect that
| not to happen.
| [deleted]
| Elof wrote:
| From the opposite side I've regularly presented in board
| meetings at 3 small to medium sized startups and this has not
| been my experience as well. One CEO was even removed at one
| of them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Are board members rewarded for digging in beyond what's
| provided to them?
| eftychis wrote:
| They are not punished if they don't -- this is the right
| question. Except if they are a major-ish stock holder which
| is usually not the case (for publicly traded).
| goopthink wrote:
| Insofar as board members are compensated by stock grants,
| they are incentivized to increase the stock price. But if a
| board member starts trying to do independent verification of
| what the CEO/team is telling them, that's a sign of mistrust.
| Because the board primarily interfaces with the executive
| team, would they know where to start?
|
| That said, I've seen some board members try this out by
| offering to help/chat with some under-performing teams that
| they have expertise working with and asking light
| questions/giving advice... but having been on the receiving
| end of a conversation like that, it often feels like there is
| a lot of politics going -- you don't know if someone
| genuinely wants to be helpful, is vetting your capabilities
| and fit for the role (based on the trickle-down
| responsibility), or is trying to do independent fact finding
| (trickling it back up).
| dqpb wrote:
| Ceopilot?
| indymike wrote:
| Many CEOs have very one-sided contracts that makes firing them
| expensive. A great number of companies have boards that are
| highly sympathetic to the CEO which makes it take even more
| effort. In a lot of cases bigger shareholders referred the CEO to
| the board when they hired the CEO, so the board members that
| represent that shareholder's interests are invested in the bad
| CEO. So, you basically end up having to fire a friend that your
| friends invested in and lose a lot of money, and then have to
| find a new CEO.
|
| I really like companies where the board isn't friendly to the
| CEO, and their meetings start with a vote on, "Shall the CEO be
| retained?" If there's a "No", then the floor opens for a
| discussion of CEO performance.
| mkl95 wrote:
| One of the C-level guys at my current company should have been
| replaced a while ago. He ruins everything he touches _but_ he 's
| also one of the founders.
|
| There are virtually no processes for anything which makes him
| untouchable. Whenever he fucks up, some PM or low level manager
| is fired due to their "low performance".
|
| Is there anything non C-levels can do about it? Honestly I don't
| think so, all you can do is avoid the guy as much as possible and
| assume it's not the kind of company where you want to spend 5+
| years.
| shoeshoeshoey wrote:
| You work at Meta, too?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| You can resign. You're not a slave. This man is only your
| master insomuch as you desire.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I really think everyone under any manager/director/VP (directly
| or indirectly via skip levels) should be able to call a "vote
| of no confidence" and get them replaced with a majority vote.
| It's the only way to combat clueless leaders and raise issues
| like this.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| This can only be done if workers have actual ownership stake
| in the company enough to do this.
| bertil wrote:
| The idea is for HR to implement a reporting system that
| allow the team to give that feedback to someone high-up
| enough to do something about it.
| siva7 wrote:
| corporations are not democratic institutions
| seppel wrote:
| Well, they are to quite some extend. But on the level of
| the owners / shareholders.
| [deleted]
| teg4n_ wrote:
| maybe they should be
| missedthecue wrote:
| In essence, they are. Shareholders elect board members who
| hire for important roles.
|
| This is similar to democratic governments. In no democracy
| will voters elect the Minister of Energy or Transport or
| Defense or Labor or the foreign secretary. This is chosen
| by the elected officials.
| noasaservice wrote:
| That's a good question: Why not?
|
| The USA "ideals" taught in school say that democracy and
| democratic republics are the best forms of government....
| yet (almost) all our companies are autocratic
| dictatorships.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Because it's under the guise of meritocracy, where if you
| just work hard enough, say 60 hours a week, you too can
| become CEO someday.
| noasaservice wrote:
| "Meritocracy " isn't a thing, since the "merit deciders"
| (ala kingmakers) decide whatever they want. (Or the next
| question in that line: who decides what merit is and who
| has it?)
|
| And, the gist also has very strong vibes of Ronald
| Wright's misattributed John Steinbeck's quote:
|
| "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root
| in America because the poor see themselves not as an
| exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires."
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-
| once-...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| 60 hours of golf is a lot.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The people to whom the org is responsible are the (Greek)
| demos[1]. For governments, this is the people. For
| corporations, this is the shareholders. Corporations are
| somewhat democratic WRT their demos.
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/demos
| twblalock wrote:
| The actual machinery of government is not a democracy
| either. People who work at Federal agencies have to do
| what their managers tell them to do.
|
| We elect the head of the executive branch. The rest of it
| is basically run like a bunch of corporations. We
| certainly don't elect the people who work at the IRS, for
| example.
| acchow wrote:
| Resulting in the hiring of only people who agree with them
| whyenot wrote:
| Managing other people can be difficult, especially when you
| need to make decisions that are in the best interest of the
| organization (and its owners), but what may not necessarily
| be a popular choice among the employees you are responsible
| for. Often times "clueless leaders" actually do have a clue,
| it's just that their decisions have to consider other
| factors, not just what is best _for you_. It can really suck
| to be the person in that position.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| This gets said so often yet it doesn't necessarily align.
| Personal responsibility is pushed aggressively, too.
|
| More often, ICs don't get all the information. It's not
| about having a clue as much as information asymmetry. All
| those meetings should imply as much, anyway.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| See any managers response during stand up: "in meetings
| all day, oh btw Blarg I need to talk to you about a
| release process". That's it? That's all you want to
| share?
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| I have been in that position delivering that update. The
| kind of work you have to do as VP/Director does not
| translate well into the task oriented stand up updates
| that developers give. Often times I would be working
| across multiple projects/initiatives - some I am
| responsible stakeholder, some I am an informed
| stakeholder, some are with external teams or companies -
| and most of these projects are over long periods of time
| - as in it is not 2 point or 4 point story item that can
| be updated in 60 seconds over stand up.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I worked one place where they brought in a new director who
| wasn't functionally competent. I have theories of why which
| are all probably partly true. Like he saw actually engaging
| and managing his division as a distraction from social
| engineering a lateral move up the ladder.
|
| Eventually everyone under him in mass went to his boss and
| HR and told them flat out he needed to go. And the company
| did nothing for 18 months. And then just pruned him and the
| whole division of 25 experienced RF chip designers.
| mbaytas wrote:
| I have a theory that when the C-suite decides to slay an
| entire division they assign an incompetent boss. Give
| them a few months to mess it up. Then go for the kill.
| The incompetent new boss magically absorbs all the blame.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > whole division of 25 experienced RF chip designers.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| It's Mark Zuckerberg isn't it?
| sli wrote:
| > Is there anything non C-levels can do about it?
|
| Labor unions and strikes.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Can you provide some examples of where a labour union has
| went on strike to remove a C-Level person?
|
| I eagerly await your examples.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| Market Basket employees protested to restore the fired CEO.
| They weren't union so not really a strike.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| A strike wouldn't be to remove a C-level as much as really
| drill home the consequences of poor decisions. Individuals
| are still too lenient in letting themselves go through the
| burnout treadmill for the upper trenches to feel it.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Most strikes tend to be around :
|
| - More money
|
| - Better job security
|
| Like the one taking place here right now
|
| "On October 30, 2022, the Canadian Union of Public
| Employees (CUPE), issued a strike notice, after the
| Government of Ontario refused their demands for an 11.7%
| salary increase alongside other requests for improved
| working conditions."
|
| They are not after any "change" to how things are done,
| just a massive 11.7% pay hike every year for the next 4
| years.
|
| Again, any example of a strike which was to force the
| replacement of a C-Level?
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I'm not trying to refute your point. You're allowed to be
| a little less aggressive.
|
| Point being strikes typically hit C-levels indirectly,
| not directly. A short term loss and display of collective
| power which could be avoided with foresight. Individuals
| are more often targeted through boycotting.
| kennend3 wrote:
| So in the case of CUPE asking for 11.7% increase in pay,
| who is the C-Level involved, and what is the "point" they
| are trying to make besides simply demanding more money?
|
| How about this "strike"?
|
| "The 2019 General Motors strike began September 15, 2019,
| with the walkout of 48,000 United Automobile Workers from
| some 50 plants in the United States. Demands by workers
| included increased job security, gateway for temporary
| workers to become permanent, better pay and retaining
| healthcare benefits."
|
| what was the impact to the C-level? how did them
| demanding job security and better pay relate to them at
| all?
|
| There is pretty much NO case of union action ever
| attempting to impact directly or indirectly a C-Level
| person.
|
| They strike for Benefits, money, job security and that is
| about it.
| majormajor wrote:
| Non C-levels can try to do something about it _if and only if_
| they have strong and safe relationships with other C-levels who
| would be in a position to influence the CEO on the issue.
|
| That's not necessarily common, especially the larger the
| company gets.
|
| Otherwise trying to do something about it can quickly turn into
| a "ok, clearly these two people can't work together, I as CEO
| don't really know this particular person, I do know this
| C-level person, I think the easiest thing to do here is to
| remove the one of them that I haven't been working closely
| with." And then something would only actually happen if, say,
| there's a pattern over multiple years of several VP Engs (or
| similar high-profile people) all having the same issues with
| the same C-level.
| pak9rabid wrote:
| Yeah, jump ship to a more competently-ran company.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > He ruins everything he touches but he's also one of the
| founders.
|
| Statements like this are always so interesting to me online
| from the "there's two sides to every story" perspective.
|
| Why not devil's advocate it and try to walk through life maybe
| not thinking in blanket statements? How can somebody who ruins
| everything be successful at all in life?
|
| Maybe I just have more to learn...
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Here's a more likely explanation: luck + first mover got them
| to a position, and their current strategy risks a downfall by
| a competitor in the long run.
|
| Once in power, it is in fact really easy to stay in power.
| alexeldeib wrote:
| This isn't even that extreme. Malicious people can be highly
| successful. The founder doesn't even sound deliberately
| malicious necessarily. There is a lot of room to be
| successful between "brilliant and well meaning" and "unable
| to deliver value or persuade others you do so".
| kennend3 wrote:
| > Maybe I just have more to learn...
|
| As someone who has been with large multi-nationals for a very
| long time let me give you some examples.
|
| 1) "failing up".
|
| Sometimes you cant deal with your manager or the situation
| except to make them look good, and eventually they get
| promoted up and out of your way.
|
| 2) "Protected class"
|
| Think "nepotism". Let's say that "B" doesn't do well, but he
| is very close to the "CxO". who in their right mind would
| fire "B"? We call this a "CLM" - Career limiting move.
|
| Alternatively, lets say I hired my best friend.. How wiling
| am I to fire them?
|
| If you are the owner/founder, it is really hard to get rid of
| them no matter what they do (Go read up on WeWorks).
| eftychis wrote:
| Best move in (2) cases, I have been thinking, is to move
| them aside: have them do exploratory work and perhaps not
| have people under them.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Yes. It is interesting over the years watching people
| play "hot potato" with the boss' friend or such.
|
| Eventually they land somewhere and it doesn't take long
| to figure out the deal and then they start working on a
| strategy on how to move them somewhere else.
|
| Obviously the person i responded to hasn't spent much
| time with a large org to see this first hand.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| He's successful because he's part of a successful team.
| JamesianP wrote:
| Or just completely taking credit from others without
| sharing it.
|
| And as a corollary, flat out stealing ideas/code/whatever.
| If it's still just a startup, no one (that matters) may
| have every done a thorough search yet to be sure that the
| technology provided by the founders is original. Or course
| it won't survive scrutiny from the press or due diligence
| from a potential buyer or anything.
|
| A friend of mine worked with a startup where there were
| three founders and they were all notorious for taking
| unearned credit. I think at least one was a pathological
| liar. As time when on, the true origins of everything they
| "contributed" came out. Depending on how good they were at
| bs'ing and raising money at least, a couple were were fired
| quickly and the last one took years to get rid of (a big
| enough fraud scandal finally went public).
| birdyrooster wrote:
| This is why free software is a grift when the real problem is
| we are slaves to an ownership class and all the control of
| software can't save us from their ability to infect companies,
| markets, governments, cultures and fuck them up. Democracy in
| all of these structures gives us the same benefits of FOSS with
| many more added freedoms and a handful new responsibilities.
| lazide wrote:
| If he's a co-founder, he probably has enough stake that no one
| is able to fire him, or there is no coalition of other owners
| large enough to do so that is tired enough of the antics to do
| so.
|
| One of the privileges of ownership is being able to fuck
| yourself over by destroying your own stuff, after all.
| bertil wrote:
| I've seen two situations one that sounds a bit like your is
| poorly managed but isn't bad, one that is really bad:
|
| 1. Co-founder likes to make stuff, build stuff, sell stuff,
| raise money, etc. but does not like, or care for leading 50+
| people. Typically he (always he) keeps the title, a small team
| of senior or very dedicated people, and do whatever he is
| actually good at. At the same time, a newly appointed,
| experienced VP does the actual management of the larger team,
| while nominally reporting to the CxO. This is a good way to
| avoid drama while the reality of the situation dawns on the co-
| founder: his report is doing all the grown-up work. You don't
| like that work. It's CxO type of work... so you shouldn't squat
| the title any longer. It takes a while, though.
|
| The benefits: the VP has ample time and an incentive to prove
| they can handle the weirdness of a board, and get promoted to
| SVP, or CxO when their role gets more obvious. They are easier
| to replace if they underperform or don't indulge in the CxO
| delusion long enough. It's unfair, but it works and most people
| end up finding what they need in time.
|
| 2. Someone was CyO at the previous company, and was able to
| coast long enough while that first project crashed and burn.
| Before it did, that someone was hunted to be a new company to
| be CyO because... well, they look like they know what they are
| doing. No one at the new company knows what a good CyO does. So
| they can continue coasting. And it can hurt so many great
| people who need support.
|
| I've seem both at the same time, and it's painful to see so
| many people miss what is the problem.
|
| "But so-and-so it's really CxO!
|
| -- Who cares? VP of x is doing great work
|
| -- They fight with CyO all the time
|
| -- Yeah, because CyO is incompetent and does nothing..."
|
| Titles don't really matter: if someone has an inflated one, it
| shouldn't make them too dangerous. Lack of feedback does: the
| CxO gets asked to work on special projects and is happy. The
| CyO is not told to get his shit together, and everyone suffers.
| lovich wrote:
| There's nothing you can do because the companies are
| dictatorships or oligarchies at best, not democracies or
| meritocracies. If he's the founder presumably he had enough
| ownership in the company to force the company to keep him in
| that position.
|
| Changing that up requires a radical redesign of how companies
| are legally constrained in the US or a cultural change that
| causes an expectation of worker ownership so that they get a
| say. For examples look at Germany requiring a representative of
| the workers on company boards
| kingkawn wrote:
| Feudalism lives on beneath a thin veneer of electoral
| democracy
| kibwen wrote:
| Employee-owned companies aren't entirely unheard-of in the
| US. Legally, they're structured as companies where employees
| own more than 50% of its shares via an ESOP:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_ownership
| User23 wrote:
| A fun example along those lines is the Green Bay
| Packers[1]. They are a public non-profit whose shares are
| largely owned by members of the Green Bay community.
| Shareholding is mostly a matter of community pride, as it
| confers very few rights[2].
|
| It's actually a pretty good model, and I wonder why it
| isn't used for other municipal assets.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc.
|
| [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TOTALB-269
| kibwen wrote:
| Legally speaking I think that might be in a different
| category than what I was referring to (nonprofit vs
| corporation). And there are other legal structures, like
| co-operatives (and credit unions?), with similar ideas.
| deberon wrote:
| I agree it's a great model! Unfortunately the NFL has
| banned it (last I heard) - https://web.archive.org/web/20
| 110813051753/http://www.sports...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think the only thing a non-C-level can do is get another
| C-level person to take action. Present a well-thought-out and
| well-documented case, and see if they will take action.
|
| This may sound risky. But:
|
| 1. If you succeed, you may dramatically improve your working
| environment.
|
| 2. If you fail in a way that damages your job, you probably
| should have been looking for a way out of there anyway, because
| he's going to continue to make that a crummy place to work.
|
| Note well: You probably shouldn't try this until you're ready
| to leave, both emotionally and financially, because you may get
| fired on the spot.
| [deleted]
| NohatCoder wrote:
| As best I can tell it is all one big boys' club. The network of
| CEOs who sit on one another's boards, are personal friends etc.
| is a pretty well connected graph.
|
| When they hire, fire, negotiate wages and so forth a primary
| concern is exchanging favours. Why would a board member say no to
| granting a $100M payment package when it is a step on the way to
| getting a similar deal themselves some day?
| falcolas wrote:
| I've only seen a CEO let go once in my career. And it wasn't due
| to performance, it was due to an alleged sexual assault which
| quietly and quickly disappeared.
|
| I imagine with the various golden parachute clauses and valuable
| social connections with other companies (I'd wager there's some
| skeletons in closets being held hostage too), it's too damned
| expensive to let a CEO go for anything less than a scandal.
| JamesianP wrote:
| Well if a company's stock is down 42 percent like the average
| for fired CEO's in the article, it may also be way more
| expensive to keep them.
|
| Are you counting CEO's that retired (ergo possibly forced out
| nicely) to spend time with family or whatever?
| andirk wrote:
| I've seen a few leave willingly to other similar companies
| before ever succeeding at the current one, or even doing
| poorly. The qualifications for the next CEO position seems to
| be that one was a CEO before, regardless of performance. Much
| like DC, after a certain level on the org chart, one "fails
| up".
| bombcar wrote:
| In _theory_ the Board 's only job is to fire the CEO (and hire
| the next one) but if you've ever been to a board meeting they
| hardly are like that at all. They mainly are to align the
| company's "journey" with the "journey" of all the other companies
| the board members are involved with.
| Jalad wrote:
| Minor correction, the board's only job is to hire/fire the CEO,
| and decide whether the company can be sold to a prospective
| buyer
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| As a Delaware CEO, there is more than this. It depends on if
| the company is private or public. There is a duty of loyalty
| and a duty of care. Both of them have specific obligations,
| including hire/fire the CEO, sales, resourcing (e.g.
| financial plan approval), compliance, a neutral voice on comp
| and other stuff.
| rajeshp1986 wrote:
| The biggest issue the board seats have become status ornaments.
| People grab these board seats and most of them don't understand
| the company or product are shy of taking responsibilities. You
| would see two kinds of people who are on the board - first they
| are in some executive positions in other organization and are
| already very busy and the second category of people who grab
| these board positions for fame but don't want anything to do
| with it.
| bergenty wrote:
| The board's purpose is to pay supposedly knowledgeable people
| and set a schedule where they only have to work 10 hours a
| year.
| andirk wrote:
| Discontinued website theyrule.net had a really cool visual web
| of board members of high profile companies [0]. Amazing how
| many board members of one company are board members of a
| handful of others. It's like there's a breed of person who is
| just "board member".
|
| [0] https://theyrule.net/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| > It's like there's a breed of person who is just "board
| member".
|
| Typically known as "capitalists", the bourgeoisie, the 1%,
| etc.
| noasaservice wrote:
| I like the term "Oligarchic kingmakers".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > the 1%
|
| How many are they again?
|
| I doubt there are millions of them on the US.
| klyrs wrote:
| When many people say 1%, they're really thinking of the
| .01% or less.
| atq2119 wrote:
| More like 0.1% or less.
| lovich wrote:
| It's called an interlocking directorate[1] and is why a lot
| of access to power and capital is class based and not
| meritocratic. It's also part of why C level pay has
| skyrocketed as the members of the boards all happen to have C
| level positions and they all end up approving the pay
| increases of the people who get to vote on their pay
| increases
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking_directorate
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| I once heard a joke that, in the right environment "If you
| know what you're doing and show a little enthusiasm, you'll
| wind up on 6 boards before you can turn around and realize
| what's happening".
|
| It makes sense that certain types of people would wind up on
| a lot of boards very quickly.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I've seen a couple of CEO replacements, who were brought in for
| various reasons. You'd expect a B-school like Stanford to stress
| "planning" since that's their solution to everything.
|
| For the new CEOs I've seen, "they've been there before" seems to
| receive WAY more weight than it ought to. Often they're people
| who just keep failing up.
|
| You can take the Civil War as a useful analogy. Neither Grant nor
| Sherman had really "been there before" the war, and their resumes
| were decidedly unimpressive. Somehow the test of _actually doing
| it_ won out over their lack of formal qualifications.
| jandrese wrote:
| The Union had to fire a lot of generals before settling on
| Grant and Sherman.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Indeed. But at least there was a forcing function operating:
| a war.
| devmor wrote:
| I dont find this surprising. Look at how many companies keep on
| CEOs that burn their business to cinders and do nothing to curb
| scandal after scandal. Especially in tech and video games.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| It seems pretty obvious (#) that more democracy _inside_
| companies is going to bring benefits. I mean we believe that our
| past two hundred years of growth is in part down to the ability
| for a democracy to harness new chnage and ideas and adapt as
| needs be. So if it works for countries why not companies?
| Especially as there are plenty of companies who employ more
| people than some countries have citizens and many companies who
| control more funds than GDP of dozens of countries?
|
| It's something we should believe, balls to bone.
|
| So why have we still got dictators in our private markets when we
| won't tolerate them in our ballot boxes?
|
| My guesses :
|
| - it really is about the wealthy and the elites. Only cataclysms
| seem to seperate the wealthy from their grasp on power - the end
| of WW2 led to the birth of pretty much all modern democracies,
| and the death of the USSR found the rest.
|
| - There is a lot of baby in modern capitalism, but also a fair
| amount of bathwater. We could throw out one and keep the other if
| we are careful. I honestly don't think that "I own all the voting
| shares so FU" is a great way to organise Facebook's billions, and
| a lot of people tend to agree. However why stop at dualmclass
| voting shares. Why is the AGM vote on director remuneration non-
| binding? Why don't employees get to vote for their boss? Vote on
| the yearly budget? I think if we chose the C-suite like we choose
| our parliament we might read the manifesto a little more closely.
|
| - Imagine a world where UBI magically worked and we all chose to
| work based on not can we make rent this week but "is this group
| of people actually any good and able to deliver the thing that's
| needed?" How often would we chnage jobs? How large a company is
| too large?
|
| I don't have any real answers - I barely can articulate the
| questions. But Where we are today is incredible compared to the
| past ten thousand years of human history. But how we organise our
| selves today, how we react as a species to the coming storms will
| determine if there is another ten thousand years or not. And I am
| damn sure that billionaires and hero leaders are not the solution
| we need.
|
| (#) From a middle class man raised and educated in a modern
| democracy
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Theres no accountability above a certain level. In a stable
| business (am excluding new innovations), proving or disproving
| the performance of an entire org, let alone company, is extremely
| difficult. Individual contributors are much easier to judge, and
| thus live lives of sub-ordinance. Their inputs and outputs can be
| easily mapped. The trick of working, and thus living a nice life,
| is to rise to a level of plausible deniability, which begins ~3/4
| levels of management up.
|
| In Big Tech, most high level management was just there first.
| They started when that business unit started, and have been there
| for 20 years. An old stable business unit promoting a low level
| go getter way up the chain is basically unheard of
| lazide wrote:
| Bwahaha, I take it you've never actually been near anyone who
| has done that, let alone done it yourself?
|
| That's total fantasy.
|
| If someone is _really really good_ , it can look like they're
| not doing much for anyone who doesn't know what to look for,
| for the same reason a ships captain who is looking like they
| aren't doing anything is usually a really really good one.
|
| The folks who directly interact with them often are well aware
| of this, but in a large org that may only be a couple percent
| of the organization.
|
| Because they set the right culture to get things done smoothly,
| they've hired and trained the right leaders to make sure the
| right decisions get made (and oversee them appropriately), they
| chart a course that produces the right outcomes without a lot
| of drama, they delegate what they need to, but not things they
| should not, have problems dealt with proactively before they
| cause major issues, etc.
|
| If you see a ships captain running around looking busy all the
| time, or even worse, dealing with major issues all the time,
| that's a terrible captain.
|
| Same with a business unit leader.
|
| Paying attention to what needs to be paid attention to for all
| that to work correctly, _and_ integrating that into the correct
| action is extremely difficult.
|
| Especially under stress, and with constant distractions, which
| that level in Tech has a huge amount of.
|
| It is very difficult to find someone who can do it, and they
| command a premium because of it. Hands on experience with the
| tech and people over a long period of time is a huge help, but
| just being around awhile is no guarantee of success. The filter
| is very harsh.
|
| Lack of someone who does it effectively, or if they lose their
| ability to be effective, gets really obvious really quick, and
| has major consequences for the organization.
| Keegs wrote:
| > It is very difficult to find someone who can do it, and
| they command a premium because of it.
|
| Is it difficult because people like this are rare, or because
| so few people are ever considered for these positions?
| lazide wrote:
| The stakes for the owners are very high - a wrong choice
| can easily crash a major part of the company in a non-
| retrievable way.
|
| The number of potential candidates is usually pretty small,
| after all the filtering, because of this.
|
| Because those people are rare.
|
| In my personal experience, perhaps 1 in 1000 have the
| mental fortitude and raw capabilities for it, but then they
| need the experience and knowledge in the space for any of
| that to matter, so the pool of course gets smaller. Even
| fewer have the personal life circumstances to allow it (aka
| the right kind of support structures, the right kind of
| stability).
|
| There are also a lot of folks faking it.
|
| It's unusual for even a dozen candidates, to make the short
| list.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| This point of view isn't supported by org charts at large
| companies. If you were to compute the correlation between age
| of org and time in org of the business unit leader, you will
| get a very high number. It's high because people grow into
| the capabilities you are describing, just like someone grows
| into a Java developer. The opportunities to learn those
| skills are rare, and generally are never just handed out.
|
| Again this comes from experience at two FAANGs. Most high
| level business leaders started 20 years ago. You can present
| whatever type of logic you want, the data doesnt support the
| logic.
| lazide wrote:
| You're reinforcing my point?
|
| At every step, it's a filtering function.
|
| Of the hundreds who were there at the beginning, who has
| kept up and continued to grow, without screwing it up?
|
| Who learned the new skills, who figured out the limiting
| factors and discarded them, vs who didn't?
|
| Personally, my ratio at the time I left for personal
| reasons was around 1 in 600ish, depending on how you
| counted.
|
| I've known others that were higher, and a few that were
| lower.
|
| It's always less risky for the company to keep someone who
| continues to work, rather than roll the dice on an unknown
| quantity, of course, but the filtering mechanism is still
| harsh, and most don't pass it.
|
| Anyone who isn't effective is a drag on progress, and
| unless someone has too large of an ownership stake to push
| out, it's rare those with the larger stakes will tolerate
| expensive old friends for long.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wut? At higher level in an organization, there is a _much_
| greater chance that you will be fired for things that you
| really have little control over. Now, at the highest levels,
| the compensation usually matches this level of uncertainty,
| sometimes with golden parachutes as well, so if you are fired
| you 're still sitting pretty.
|
| But, for me, I wouldn't define "a nice life" with having to
| deal with that much stress as having so many things outside of
| my control.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Higher level executives typically have very strong networks
| built up. Even if they get fired, they're financially already
| well off and can easily find another role through their
| networks.
| Keegs wrote:
| I think layoffs matter too. ICs may be fired more for
| performance reasons, but they disproportionately face
| uncertainty created by rounds of layoffs, uncertainty that
| isn't compensated.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I have worked at three large household names, two are in the
| top five market caps in the world. Logically what you say
| makes sense, I just havent seen it in reality.
| danaris wrote:
| With or without a golden parachute, nearly none of these
| people would ever have to work another day in their lives if
| they were willing to live a bit less extravagantly. (And
| we're not talking "beans and rice" here; we're talking, at
| _worst_ , "only one fancy house, no yachts".)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I was part of a layoff affecting 100s of employees because of
| a boneheaded decision, corrupt project manager, etc. There
| was nothing at all I could do about it.
| pwinnski wrote:
| In theory, I agree with you. In practice, it is mind-
| bogglingly rare how often high-level executives are fired for
| any reason, whether their fault or not.
| ioblomov wrote:
| Don't want to be defending plutocrats, but consider how
| hard it is to be fired in general whatever the role.
| Honestly think it's just par for the course.
| hllooo wrote:
| That's partly the point though, isn't it? You're not
| accountable for your performance, you're accountable for the
| performance of the company. And the performance of the
| company could be extremely good or extremely bad, very much
| independently of your contributions.
| quadcore wrote:
| I like to believe Apple under Jobs was different.
| kranke155 wrote:
| It clearly was. It was a high performing organisation with
| few peers in corporate history. Apple under Jobs was perhaps
| one of the biggest value creating organisations in our recent
| memory, if not the most value creating organisation in the
| last 20/30 years. So whatever he did, it worked brilliantly.
|
| The only analogue we have now is SpaceX imo. Tesla, if they
| crack self driving, maybe.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| > It was a high performing organisation with few peers in
| corporate history
|
| Apart from the time he ran it into the ground.
|
| Musk isn't up there, Jobs isn't up there. You need a multi-
| decade record of strong capital allocation decisions, Musk
| barely has five years. Jobs had a record of making mistake
| after mistake for decades until the IPhone. Musk, by his
| own admission, made huge errors and would likely have gone
| bankrupt in 2017.
|
| Of those alive today: Buffett, Malone, and a handful of
| smaller-scale people (i.e. Leonard, Stiritz, and some firms
| with strong culture like 3G, potentially Costco). In most
| cases though, CEOs need to be saved from themselves. Tech
| CEOs are also some of the absolute worst...I can't think of
| any with very strong records (Leonard is one, but the scale
| is relatively small). You find far strong management teams,
| on average, outside tech (industrials is one area, you have
| quite a few companies that not only have good CEOs but very
| good succession). The incentives are just totally wrong in
| tech: you get rewarded for failing, so you end up with lots
| of incompetent CEOs (Pichai being one of the worst, Google
| generally is just a terrible shit-show).
| kennend3 wrote:
| You have conveniently forgotten a serious part of apple's
| history so let me remind you.
|
| " Steve Jobs and Bill Gates' rivalrous friendship is the
| stuff of tech lore. The most poignant moment of that
| fraught relationship happened 20 years ago. In August of
| 1997, Gates stepped in and saved Apple, which, at the time,
| was on the brink of bankruptcy.
|
| "Bill, thank you. The world's a better place," Jobs told
| Gates after the Microsoft exec agreed to make a $150
| million investment in Apple. "
|
| So was it working brilliantly when it was 90 days from
| bankruptcy and was thrown a lifeline by Gates?
|
| Jobs was lucky with the iPhone...
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I think Apple is excluded when Jobs was there, as an
| innovative company. The iPhone, iMac, Macintosh, etc. Along
| with that, theres exceptions to every rule.
| quadcore wrote:
| I especially like iTune and iPod because of the out of the
| box thinking and the startup-like understanding of the
| customers back then.
| [deleted]
| FredPret wrote:
| I'd say this is false. Accountability becomes easier as you go
| up.
|
| For then owner, everything is on them. They're the owner. They
| pick the CEO. They can lose their money.
|
| For the CEO, everything is on them as well, but the worst that
| can happen is they get sued or fired. They pick the people who
| are responsible for sales, costs, etc.
|
| Any failure in these areas is very simple to attribute to the
| executive in question because it all flows into their area of
| responsibility.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| A large company is like an oil tanker. Its never clear
| whether that oil tanker can be turned fast enough to avoid
| the ice berg. And thus, its never clear whether its the CEOs
| fault, or the circumstances. Too much complexity.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| The reason why is quite clear if you ask whether this would
| happen at a company that you owned 100%.
|
| The problem of a diverse shareholding base supervising a
| company has not been solved. If you are an unhappy shareholder,
| you don't push for change...you just sell and move on to the
| next one.
|
| Within tech, there is also a cultural issue because so many of
| these companies end up with VC-led boards or VC-selected
| managers who are, to be frank, quite terrible (that is the
| problem with 20 year management teams...the problems of a large
| company are different to those of a smaller one). Growth at any
| cost always ends badly. Interestingly, I think some of the
| companies that went through the late 90s ended up internalizing
| that...telecoms did, some of older chip companies, unf most
| companies will always end up learning this lesson too late.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| CEO is the easiest to measure, because you just pass through
| how the company as a whole is performing against it's goals.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm not even sure it should be "against [its] goals", because
| the goals are chosen by the CEO. (Choose bad goals and
| accomplish them, and you're still a bad CEO.)
|
| It's just company performance, IMO.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Yes but company performance is based on financial outlooks.
| You say 'We will be this efficient with our assets and hit
| these revenue numbers' and then you do or do not.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The CEO has the most opportunity to set the goals, make
| excuses, blame scapegoats and gaslight the board.
|
| Today OKRs have Narcissists running the asylum because
| they're always going to convince management that their glass
| is 70% full whereas yours is 30% empty.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| How are goals set? How do goals account for macro economics?
| How do goals account for market constraints/problems? How do
| goals account for measuring against a theoretical
| "alternative" CEO that could have done better?
|
| It's much easier to be a bad CEO in a good market than it is
| to be a good CEO in a bad market.
| bluGill wrote:
| CEOs need to be lookout ten years out. They have little
| control over this quarters numbers, or even this years. All
| they can do is changes that won't affect the bottom line for
| a while.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| This is true in a phase three company that is in efficiency
| and future cashflow harvesting mode, but in practice you
| end up doing shorter term things too involving a crisis of
| people or execution.
| danaris wrote:
| If ExampleCorp has an objectively fantastic CEO, one who
| genuinely cares about the company and the well-being of all
| his employees, and actually understands something about how
| to make those better...
|
| ...and then he retires...
|
| how long would it take for you to be able to tell that his
| not-terrible-but-kinda-lousy replacement is actually not
| doing a good job?
|
| The first CEO set things up so that they'd run well; the
| leaders he put in place will be there for years; the deals he
| made will be good for a while (and all the new guy has to do
| is re-up them when he gets the chance).
|
| So for, say, 5-10 years, the new guy get slapped on the back
| and handed a fat bonus every year for Doing Such A Great Job
| CEOing...when he's barely doing _anything_.
|
| But then the situation starts to change. The companies they
| had deals with start to get bought out, or maybe they just
| stop existing. The good managers and other leaders the
| original CEO put in place start retiring or getting hired for
| bigger and better things.
|
| The new guy stops being able to coast. But _obviously_ his
| leadership has been great this whole time, and _he hasn 't
| changed anything_, so how could it _possibly_ be his
| fault...?
|
| Our society and our industry are chronically unable to
| measure actual excellence, let alone reward it.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| And as you rise, your pay increases along with other benefits
| (time off, "business lunches"/conferences/golfing with vendors,
| etc). The furthest you are from doing actual "grunt work", the
| better off you are it seems.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Random idea- has any corporation operated with something akin to
| term limits?
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| Huawei does this, I think every 18 months they change CEO among
| the leadership team.
| JamesianP wrote:
| I understand they also don't get compensated much, relatively
| speaking. I think it fits with an Asian approach to business
| where companies are big conglomerates with much more cautious
| leadership (and therefore less expectation from them). At
| least historically.
| granshaw wrote:
| Super interesting. Def think there's lots of room for
| experimentation in corporate governance and corporation
| structure
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| Obviously not corporate, but I believe Rome had 1 year term
| limits for its 2 consuls.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Founder's daughter has been CFO for over 10 years though
| zac_hudson wrote:
| Huawei has a very unusual leadership/ownership structure,
| even amongst its peers in the tech industry. Legally, its a
| worker-owned cooperative, but unlike most cooperatives, its
| workers don't directly vote on policy; rather they choose 51
| shareholder representatives and 9 alternate representatives,
| who in turn select a politburo, which in turn selects a CEO
| from the standing committee.
| taberiand wrote:
| Sounds great, what's the catch?
| venantius wrote:
| It's actually quite common at certain types of organizations
| (typically foreign-owned) to appoint a local as CEO on a
| specific term and then to revisit when that's up.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Seems like it would be a terrible idea. CEOs are already
| incredibly short sighted, neglecting long-term disasters for
| short-term gains. Sometimes it seems as though CEOs aren't able
| to see beyond the next quarterly earnings report. Having a
| limit would incentivize running the company into the ground to
| get the highest quarterly profit possible. What do they care?
| Someone else will be CEO next year.
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| But surely if CEOs had term limits then the good ones would
| be jumping from one company to another, so if they think too
| short term then no board would hire them.
|
| Boards would hire the CEOs that set the next one up for
| success.
|
| Kinda like how term limits for the us president doesn't
| usually result in that type of behavior since it would screw
| over their party.
| danaris wrote:
| Boards are the ones hiring the bad CEOs _now_. They 're not
| equipped to tell the difference, even when they're _not_
| actively colluding to juice the short-term share prices so
| they can get out with a yachtload of money.
| afarrell wrote:
| That only works if you assume high-quality objectively-
| understandable information.
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| Maybe tying their severance, retirement package or stock
| options to the performance to the companies long term growth
| would help alleviate that problem.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The terms could be 5 years long, and re-electable.
| ISL wrote:
| It is possible to combine term-limits with a long share-
| vesting period in order to (potentially) reap the best of
| both strategies.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I had an airplane conversation with a manager at a
| multinational. He said they shuffled managers every couple of
| years. Bunch of reasons for that but partly gave the company
| better visibility into what's going on with a group because you
| have several managers on tap who've managed that group before.
| And if they have to fire a manager they have a number of people
| to tap for that role.
| shaburn wrote:
| Thank ETFs and Passive indexing
| jonathankoren wrote:
| The implosion of Facebook and Zuck's inability to stave blood
| loss, and instead bet the company on a niche product line with
| little interest and even less product should be a emperor's new
| clothes moment wrt founder stock having 10x voting rights, but I
| doubt that it will be.
|
| The college dropout got lucky with a money printing machine. Not
| screwing that up, and purchasing every competitor is pretty easy.
| Now the business is hard.
| naikrovek wrote:
| ok so what do CEOs do? hell, what does my manager do?
|
| other than calendars full of meetings, I don't know what any
| manager does. as a technical person my entire career, the only
| things that my managers have ever done is to have regular
| meetings where we talk about non-work stuff, or they tell me that
| I am in trouble and/or fired.
|
| the only thing that I know that they actually do is make
| technical decisions based on non-technical criteria, which makes
| for a very bad decision, in my experience.
|
| I worked for a lawyer once who hired me to make technical
| decisions, and then made them himself anyway. "why are we
| spending so much money on rewriteable CD's?" well, you made an
| executive call and mandated that we archive documents to CD using
| uncompressed TIFF. so we get about 10 pages per disc. I told you
| not to do that but you said you knew what you were doing.
|
| then it becomes my problem to fix while the lawyer screws off to
| some foreign beach.
| pprotas wrote:
| Don't know what CEOs do, but a good manager is just supposed to
| unblock you from business. They are there to make sure you
| don't have to worry about the CEO stuff and whatever, you can
| just focus on your job.
|
| If your manager is making technical decisions for you,
| something might be wrong!
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