Ask HN: Why do corporate failures always seem to punish the wrong people?

My partner was let go after 15 years working tirelessly for one of the big five. She's probably the most resilient, rewarded and liked person that has survived and fought through this part of the business in the past decade, and while I am clearly biased, all her colleagues would most certainly agree. She's moved from IC to managing over 30 people and barely manages to use vacation days because she's always working.

She was let go not because of her own incompetence, failure or not fitting in, but purely out of rushed budget cuts (budgets were finalized, finalized again, and then they realized it's still not good enough).

The reason for those cuts, in this particular instance, was not the overwhelming rise of AI and/or getting more firing power for data centers, it was very clearly a long-visible path of failure two levels above, where one particular person continued to wreak havoc up over the past few years, and, ultimately, caused this cul-de-sac disaster.

The person at the center of this all is an older dude who consistenty has been on the wrong side of any decision he's made. I've only heard of a few things as it is (literally) none of my business, but it's been nothing but chaotic and ill-advised choices. He moved into this role from failing elsewhere, leaving the chaos there behind him, and over the past two years, now has caused yet another disaster in this new role.

My question is, and sort of the point of this post (which I understand is entirely philosophical): how do these people consistently survive their self-inflicted disasters? While her entire team (30+) has been let go now as a result of it all, the person who ran this into the ground continues onwards in the business?

They even made her fire and break the news to most of her team in weekly chunks recently, before telling her she's of course, also done.

I used to work for a big five too, but have been self-employed for over a decade now, so I may be too far out to understand, but it just puzzles me how certain people always manage to stay untainted admist the chaos they've caused, at the cost of everyone else. This used to be a thing I've heard over and over again from friends at Google, but it really seems to be very consistent thing elsewhere, too.

They're clearly not smart people, is it ruthlessness? Are they aware of the disaster they're navigating into and plan well ahead? It's a mystery to me, and it just can't be healthy for these companies to allow such folks to continue onwards.

Those people who are responsible for the chaos? They're also the people who gets to decide who is punished for the chaos.

That's a more noble aspect of framing the question, and I guess I could even see why someone may try to not kamikaze themselves out of a financially very juicy system even if it was their own actions causing the trouble. However, they all operate in some form of management mesh, so clearly, one level up or across the line must notice or know who caused the chaos?

Maybe it is the nature of how failure is expressed at that level, to know a team of 30 has been let go and is not available as your extended arm to execute anymore. So, where it manifests as a job loss at a level lower, it is merely a limitation of power for them.

> Why don't people take accountability for their actions?

This is not my experience. People who are in positions of power, e.g. managers, are the kind of people who are incapable of admitting fault. They can't lose face so the shit is rolled downhill. It's narcissism.

Because corporations are autocratic. All power is top down. Make corporations democratic with bottom up power structures, and the opposite will happen. Leadership will face blame for everything, and the bottom rung will never.