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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

#201

Post by caeril »

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…

It's truly insane to see. HN has been filled, for the last decade, with stories and advice about hopping jobs every two years to garner 20-40% pay increases, completely oblivious to the bubble that was SO OBVIOUS to some of us. Armies of self-interested careerist strivers doing everything imaginable to optimize their income, in the midst of the biggest tech bubble since 1999, giving precisely zero fucks about the impact their actions had on either their employer, or on broader society (morally disgusting adtech and social media platforms work in particular).

And now these same people have the audacity to bitch that the very employers they've been strategically milking with their Machiavellian labor market plays would realize their mistake.

No. Full stop. To these people I say:

You've been paid $300-400k in total comp for a decade to build platforms that have DEGRADED the society we live in. You have extracted maximum rents from a job market that favored you, to provide NEGATIVE value to society, all while looking down your nose at lowly plumbers, carpenters, and those subhumans in flyover country who grow your food, mine your copper, and produce your electricity. Now the job market no longer favors you, and you, of course, regard this as the fault of everyone else. Fuck off. Fuck right off, right now.

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

#202

Post by nemothekid »

colinmorelli wrote: post #147
sharemywin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hate the CEO's saying "I take full responsibility for what happened" I call bullshit. If you did you'd quit in shame.

If the bar for asking a CEO to quit is "you did not correctly predict the future" then we're going to have to ask most CEOs to quit at some point. And most employees for that matter. The issue I have is with broad strokes generalizations that layoffs indicate a failure of a CEO. They don't necessarily mean that. Any more than shipping a bug to production indicates a failure of an engineer who should now be fired. Sim…

>If the bar for asking a CEO to quit is "you did not correctly predict the future" then we're going to have to ask most CEOs to quit at some point. And most employees for that matter.

Fine. But that’s not the CEO “taking responsibility”, it’s the employees who fall on the sword who take responsibility.

If I build your house out of wood and it burns down, and I say I will “take responsibility” while doing nothing while you have to buy a new house, I’m not really taking responsibility am I?

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

#203

Post by joegahona »

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…

> Yes, they all egregiously failed. A massive, widespread, collective failure for which they should lose their jobs, as many other people do.

I am all for thoughtful discussions on how tech CEOs could be held responsible outside of empty mea culpas in blog posts, but "they should lose their jobs" feels like cutting off the nose to spite the face. Does ousting a CEO really help the company, or the workers who didn't get laid off? And where does the line get drawn? % of layoffs or absolute number of layoffs? How does the absolute size of a company get factored in?

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

#204

Post by robocat »

jackmott42 wrote: post #172
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…

It is a very odd discussion to have since, even when running a company well, no public company should be compensating its CEO to the tune of even 1 million a year. It is absolutely a ruling class leeching off society that this happens. It doesn't happen everywhere or even in america in the past, big companies can be run without this behavior. It isn't supply and demand, it is cronyism. Should a CEO be allowed to get…

Your argument is nonsense unless you can explain why you pick your cutoff point at $200 million.

Plenty of people in the USA would argue that $200k is a bad number: those overpaid software developers with their share incentives need to be stopped /s. Shareholders should revolt against those rich software developers?

> It is absolutely a ruling class leeching off society that this happens

I mean, the same argument can be made for US tech companies leeching off the world (or just leeching off USA citizens if you wish to be parochial).

A relevant simple thought experiment: what would you do if you won lotto?

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

#206

Post by WalterBright »

The free market is a chaotic system. Resources are constantly being reallocated to the most profitable use. This includes the work force. This is also called creative destruction.

This is the source of the prosperity from the free market, because market conditions constantly change, and business must adapt. Trying to force things into a steady state will result in inefficiency, stagnation, and will be much worse for everyone.

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

#207

Post by sangnoir »

koonsolo wrote: post #175
jackmott42 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a very odd discussion to have since, even when running a company well, no public company should be compensating its CEO to the tune of even 1 million a year. It is absolutely a ruling class leeching off society that this happens. It doesn't happen everywhere or even in america in the past, big companies can be run without this behavior. It isn't supply and demand, it is cronyism. Should a CEO be allowed to get…

Isn't it up to the shareholders to decide this?

It's mostly up to the boards' compensation committees. The board members are mostly C-suite themselves in their day jobs. Go figure. The power of the majority of shareholders is diffuse, except for large funds and activists: decision makers in both groups tend to be from the same high-compensation executive in-group - so they will not rock the boat.

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

#208

Post by charcircuit »

charles_f wrote: post #97
sokoloff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even clear to me that tech employees (as a whole) would be better off if such an overall system were in place for the last decade. Instead of (highly-visible) layoffs now, you'd have seen substantially less hiring across the last decade (invisibly) and probably much lower market-clearing compensation levels as a result. You can't have the benefits of go-go-gang-busters hiring sprees without sometimes having…

Two things 1) you mostly need your money now , to pay rent or mortgage, food, activities. In that cyclic markets like this are bad for devs. In choosing between a higher salary that comes with a non negligible chance that you won't have a salary at all for a sustained period, or lesser compensation but higher stability, I choose the latter. 2) The crazy increase of salaries was the result of the raise of demand, and…

>you mostly need your money now

I don't believe this to be true. I imagine the majority of people in tech have their money stored in assets (stocks, house, car) as opposed to cash.

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

#209

Post by cudgy »

crazygringo wrote: post #128
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…

> On the face of it, it was obvious If it was obvious, then the market would have priced it in. But it didn't. So the crowdsourced collective wisdom was indeed that industries were leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight. That was the thing that was "obvious" to most people. You may have disagreed at the time, and if you'd shorted stocks you could have made some money. But the idea that "on the face of it, it wa…

Actually, hiring for a future that is based on economic predictions that are notoriously inaccurate due to many factors, including simple personal biases of the experts making the predictions is quite foolish if you think rationally about it.

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

#210

Post by HDThoreaun »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22
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.

> The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. This is a poor take. The function of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to execute on major objectives of the firm. This might be optimizing for max profit, but it might not, depending on what your majority shareholders communicate to the board and management (as well as how they vote their shares). A…

This isn't wrong, but firms are made up of large groups of investors. It is exceedingly rare for their priorities to align with anything other than "maximize long term discounted profits" or "maximize short term profits". If you have any examples of publicly owned companies that aren't executing on one of those two missions I would like to hear them. Even ESG can easily be seen as a way to maximize long term discounted profits by making the company more sustainable.
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