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OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

overpaid.lol

171–180 of 395 posts

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#171
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an equally valid hypothesis that a "good" CEO is just one that keeps their hands off the levers of power, doesn't rock the boat or fuck anything up, and quietly lets a good company perform; whereas a bad CEO is one who, due to ego and self-aggrandizement, can't help but impose themselves via meddling and prevent a good company from performing. By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive com…

yeah just sit there, keep a steady hand, and project confidence

There are a lot of well-functioning organizations for which that’s exactly what’s needed.

Leaders should be paid for outcomes not activities.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#172
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I think for the last 10-15 years, ivy types could legitimately just raise series A type money, run a company like shit, but capital was a moat and so ended up as CEOs. This is actually how the world works

Investors aren't dumb. What does Ivy gain in this trade by just raising a lot of money and running it poorly? You think he can raise a huge round and just decide to pay himself $20m a year? Capital is not a moat. There are entire industries (VC, PE, Banks, etc) that are looking to write checks. Nothing would make them happier than to give you money, under the condition that there is significant upside (more VC) or as…

Assuming he doesn’t completely shit the bed he can spin any mediocre tenure into a great success and now he has experience running a company.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#173
post #54

I know this is a common trope here, and yeah, plenty of MBA-type CEOs are trash. But speaking as a founder/CEO of a small company, the quality gap between an average hire and top talent at the director level is night and day. Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. The times I regretted going with the 2nd or 3rd place candidate because they were cheaper ended up setting us back…

Like others have said - many people at the top are so successful because they ended up at the right place and right time, and their approach just fit exactly the problem at hand. They did not see the future, they just had a hunch - and that can go either way.

Put them anywhere else and it will be a disaster.

A good case study of this is Ron Johnson, who did miracles at Apple and then ran J.C. Penny into the ground.

If you look at the causes, it was blatantly obvious what he was doing wrong (doing away with sale prices). It's a kind of fundamental thing that one could understand by just asking some questions. Maybe it's not genius, maybe people "just do things" and they just happen to work once.

Most success stories are accidental, and one's ability to succeed really depends on how many times they are allowed to fail first.

Most of us here - we have no such luxury. We fail, we become homeless.

There are exceptions, of course, and there are truly talented managers out there. If I look around, however, all I see is clown cars accidentally driving into gold mines.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#174
post #110
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing CEO pay with CEO ability. There is plenty of examples of companies doing poorly until a new CEO comes in, and others of a company doing well until the CEO retires and a replacement comes in. Ivy types have a poor history of figuring out which is which in advance though.

There's an equally valid hypothesis that a "good" CEO is just one that keeps their hands off the levers of power, doesn't rock the boat or fuck anything up, and quietly lets a good company perform; whereas a bad CEO is one who, due to ego and self-aggrandizement, can't help but impose themselves via meddling and prevent a good company from performing. By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive com…

> a "good" CEO is just one that keeps their hands off the levers of power, doesn't rock the boat or fuck anything up, and quietly lets a good company perform

How can you tell if a company is good? Because trillions of dollars are spent by banks, private equity, hedge funds, and others truing to figure out if a company is "good."

> By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive compensation and potential for disaster by just not having a CEO at all

Sure, but somebody is still making the decisions the CEO would have otherwise made. Maybe it's a good thing that the power isn't concentrated in one person; I'd be open to that. But you now have to trust that each department head is making good decisions. That's fine if they were already making good decisions, hit it's disastrous if they weren't.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#176
post #148

Funny, but 2027 will actually be the year of the AI Companies run by AI CEOs. Obviously kind of early and hard to pull off still, but by the end of next year I think you will see a ton of people attempting it with at least partial success. There are already plenty of less serious attempts.

What does this mean in practice? Surely no AI-managed company could become public by way of lack of accountability and governance.

Governance will be provided by T-800 prototypes.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#177
post #54

I know this is a common trope here, and yeah, plenty of MBA-type CEOs are trash. But speaking as a founder/CEO of a small company, the quality gap between an average hire and top talent at the director level is night and day. Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. The times I regretted going with the 2nd or 3rd place candidate because they were cheaper ended up setting us back…

No I think for the last 10-15 years, ivy types could legitimately just raise series A type money, run a company like shit, but capital was a moat and so ended up as CEOs. This is actually how the world works

Dammit! Why am I the only 'Ivy type' that cannot raise a round?!!! .

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#178
post #54

I know this is a common trope here, and yeah, plenty of MBA-type CEOs are trash. But speaking as a founder/CEO of a small company, the quality gap between an average hire and top talent at the director level is night and day. Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. The times I regretted going with the 2nd or 3rd place candidate because they were cheaper ended up setting us back…

the quality gap between an average hire and top talent ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶l̶e̶v̶e̶l̶ ̶ is night and day.

Fixed that for ya.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is logical that there are people who are great at what they do and others who are not. We’ve all worked with both and if you are in the business of finding talented people, how else would you talk about it?

"Talented people", not "talent".

That’s a weird thing to be upset and reprimand us about.

I suppose one can insist that people say “most talented people” but it seems so much more streamlined and to say “top talent”. I have never come across anyone who is bothered by this.

FWIW I am way more bothered by the use of the word “resources” to refer to people. I think it is disgusting and offensive.

Re: OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future

#180
post #86
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO's job isn't the one that everybody here apparently thinks it is. A CEO's job is networking, marketing and PR. They get paid the way they do because they can get into the rooms they need to get into to build the inter-business relationships they need to build.

So you’re saying that what makes them able to be a CEO is that they became a CEO

Yes, but the way you're phrasing it suggests there's something getting lost in translation. A CEO's job is to perform the role of CEO: when the head of engineering wants to zig, and the head of marketing wants to zag, they need to choose between the two in a way that leaves no question about what the decision is or whether the direction should be followed. I don't think people would obey an AI oracle in that way, I certainly wouldn't.
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