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Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

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Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#111

Post by danabrams »

mabbo wrote: post #20

The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.

And over the last 12 months, most of the CEOs have lost lots and lots of investor money as share prices collapses, yet they still have their jobs

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#112

Post by danabrams »

mabbo wrote: post #20

The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.

And over the last 12 months, most of the CEOs have lost lots and lots of investor money as share prices collapsed, yet they still have their jobs

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#113

Post by kritiko »

papito wrote: post #73
njovin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a few recent examples of CEOs making decisions for the future health of the company that knowingly lower the stock price for more than 2Q.

"Jeff Bezos explains to Amazon investors why no profits are a good thing" https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/12/4217794/jeff-bezos-letter...

"Making shareholders money" does not have to be synonymous with maximizing profits, does it? You want to maximize the stock price. Amazon and Tesla seem like examples where stock price and profits were not correlated.

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#114

Post by danabrams »

mabbo wrote: post #20

The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. If laying people off is the best way to do that, they'll do it. Blaming the CEO for doing the job they were hired to do seems short-sighted. Blame the broken system that incentivizes this, that makes doing it profitable. And then, let's change the system.

Haven't the big tech firms mostly had their share prices drop precipitously in the past 12 months. Shouldn't the CEOs be fired if they not only failed to make shareholders money, but in fact lost lots and lots of money for them?

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#115

Post by k8t »

automatic6131 wrote: post #102
colinmorelli wrote: post #86

Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about…

>when COVID hit and tech companies saw large surges because investors and CEOs saw industries leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight, they hired to support that growth Yes, they all egregiously failed. A massive, widespread, collective failure for which they should lose their jobs, as many other people do. On the face of it, it was obvious, that's not even hindsight bias - it was the topsy turvy world that bad…

If it was obvious, did you initiate any shorts while it was happening?

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#116

Post by colinmorelli »

epylar wrote: post #99
colinmorelli wrote: post #86

Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about…

Was it rational given the information we had at the time to think we would sustain that kind of rapid growth, the public health emergency wouldn't end, we wouldn't get inflation from the supply chain issues and the money printing?

To be clear, in my original post I'm not making a stance on whether I think CEOs should have made the particular calls they did or not.

If you want my opinion, though, it's easy with the benefit of hindsight to say they shouldn't have. But some industries were, in fact, thrown several years into the future and there wasn't a compelling reason at that time to assume they'd just fall back as things returned to normal. Others should probably have reasonably expected growth to slow down (or reverse) as people could get out in the world again. I don't think there's one broad answer to the market overall.

Frankly, it's a little odd to me that we would expect companies to just be able to weather whatever the economy throws at them with no changes needed. Companies fail. They grow, they then shed headcount. Sometimes its right, sometimes its wrong. But I'm not sure how we could ever live in a society where there could be a complete upheaval to entire industries over a single quarter, and then again 2 years later back in the other direction, and everyone trucks on like nothing happened.

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#117

Post by Cardinal7167 »

colinmorelli wrote: post #86

Regardless of individual opinions on whether CEOs should be terminated for layoffs or not - there's a surprising amount of comments here that seem to not understand that growing companies don't hire for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow. Where you want to be tomorrow is based on where you and your investors believe the world is going. If the world materially changes enough to shift your expectations about…

That’s fine and all and I agree about CEOs reacting and needing to be ahead of the curve but when they do fail they still get the golden parachute and I still get the “we’ll write you a good letter of recommendation”.

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#118

Post by ghaff »

duped wrote: post #83
qup wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

screen actors guild Writer's guild of America

Both of which are unions

In addition, both guarantee some minimum pay scale while working (which is mostly not a concern for software developers or engineers more broadly in the US) but do not in any way guarantee work.

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#119

Post by eftychis »

k8t wrote: post #115
automatic6131 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when COVID hit and tech companies saw large surges because investors and CEOs saw industries leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight, they hired to support that growth Yes, they all egregiously failed. A massive, widespread, collective failure for which they should lose their jobs, as many other people do. On the face of it, it was obvious, that's not even hindsight bias - it was the topsy turvy world that bad…

If it was obvious, did you initiate any shorts while it was happening?

Just to gather small data: yes.

Re: Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs

#120

Post by sokoloff »

blitzar wrote: post #64
blackoil wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg did this. He correctly or incorrectly believes, Metaverse to be the future and so he invested in it knowing that short term profit may fall because of this.

He did so however on the basis that it would increase the share price. Facebook needed a narrative to pitch to shareholders, the metaverse was the one they selected.

Over the long run, yes, that was his belief (and job). I don’t think he did so expecting a share price benefit in the following 2 quarters, the premise of the question.
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