Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

boringops.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#11

Post by hellcow »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #3
louwrentius wrote: post #2

I agree, fire the CEO. But I have a slightly different take that doesn't involve AI. What if we indeed get rid of the entire C-suite? Even better still: why are companies and orgs hierarchical? Why is there always a - for lack of a better word - dictator in charge? AI CEO is still an AI dictator. We are permitted to vote, but democracy in everyday life, that's a bridge too far, chaos, riots in the streets, cats and d…

What you're describing is called a "worker cooperative" and they are somewhat rare but do exist already in real life.

Are they rare? Aren’t credit unions worker cooperatives? Insurance is often structured this way, and I’ve heard of farmer collectives too. I have a worker cooperative grocery store nearby. I do photography as a hobby and there’s all kinds of photography cooperatives, including Magnum which is incredibly famous in that world. I’m in an HOA which is another cooperative.

This doesn’t seem rare to me.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#12

Post by forgotaccount3 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #4

Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to management, and management have a job because they are useful to ownership. Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exact…

> Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exactly the same reasons.

That is not correct.

Owner's don't align top management's interests with the owner's interests by giving them 'insane levels of compensation', they do it by giving the managements compensation in the form of shares of the company. It's not the volume of the compensation that aligns their interests, it's the type. Otherwise the 'top management' could just invest in the competitor and torpedo their own company making multiples of the original cash compensation as clients leave for the competitor.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#13

Post by 113 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #4

Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to management, and management have a job because they are useful to ownership. Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exact…

> Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to managemen

Workers have a job because their labour produces value

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#15

Post by RobRivera »

113 wrote: post #13
ElevenLathe wrote: post #4

Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to management, and management have a job because they are useful to ownership. Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exact…

> Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to managemen Workers have a job because their labour produces value

Eh - sometimes people get hired in bulk to show growth and then get assigned valueless work, or work not necessarily as valuable.

Both statements can be true.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#16

Post by fdupress »

JohnMakin wrote: post #9

> Everyone agrees: AI is coming for the developers. The $200,000-a-year engineers writing CRUD apps and maintaining CI pipelines. The line workers of the knowledge economy. Trim them. Automate them. Celebrate the efficiency gains. Watch the stock pop I very much do not think everyone agrees here, and using the Block layoffs as an example is pretty poor reasoning. It's the same kind of blind, "believe and report exact…

This author disagrees with this take. They are setting a scene here, and explicitly saying that the Block story wasn't about AI at all a few paragraphs later.

If that "bait" caused you to stop reading despite the fact that you probably agree with the author's sentiment, it's not very good bait.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#17

Post by hahn-kev »

hellcow wrote: post #11
cmeacham98 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is called a "worker cooperative" and they are somewhat rare but do exist already in real life.

Are they rare? Aren’t credit unions worker cooperatives? Insurance is often structured this way, and I’ve heard of farmer collectives too. I have a worker cooperative grocery store nearby. I do photography as a hobby and there’s all kinds of photography cooperatives, including Magnum which is incredibly famous in that world. I’m in an HOA which is another cooperative. This doesn’t seem rare to me.

I think credit unions are often owned by the customers or members. Not the employees.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#18

Post by JohnMakin »

fdupress wrote: post #16
JohnMakin wrote: post #9

> Everyone agrees: AI is coming for the developers. The $200,000-a-year engineers writing CRUD apps and maintaining CI pipelines. The line workers of the knowledge economy. Trim them. Automate them. Celebrate the efficiency gains. Watch the stock pop I very much do not think everyone agrees here, and using the Block layoffs as an example is pretty poor reasoning. It's the same kind of blind, "believe and report exact…

This author disagrees with this take. They are setting a scene here, and explicitly saying that the Block story wasn't about AI at all a few paragraphs later. If that "bait" caused you to stop reading despite the fact that you probably agree with the author's sentiment, it's not very good bait.

I agree with none of this. It's clickbait slop, very obviously, and that did make me skim it faster than I normally would have, but I read it. The burden shouldn't be on me to try to understand the point clickbait slop is making. This "style" is unreadable and exhausting and that was my salient point. Read what I just linked, it makes the complete opposite conclusion just a few months ago.

How good, non-slop writing usually works is - you lead with your main point, and break it down further throughout the main article. The fact he contradicts his leading hook indicates slop and bad writing, not failure for me to understand whatever the hell the point of this nonsense is (other than to get clicks).

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#19

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

forgotaccount3 wrote: post #12
ElevenLathe wrote: post #4

Workers ultimately have a job because they are useful to management, and management have a job because they are useful to ownership. Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exact…

> Top management has insane levels of compensation as a strategy by ownership to alight management's interests with their own, by turning them into owners. If there is going to be a management layer at all, for example the proposed "A-suite", then their compensation will balloon for exactly the same reasons. That is not correct. Owner's don't align top management's interests with the owner's interests by giving them…

If anything, a high base pay would be a dis-incentive to perform well, because increased wealth (a) reduces the marginal utility of additional compensation, and (b) makes the CEO less vulnerable to going down with the ship. The same goes for "golden parachutes".

IMO, if incentivizing good performance was really the goal, then companies would hire CEOs who are not already wealthy, pay them only enough base salary that they accept the job and can focus on it without worrying about paying bills, and compensate them mainly using illiquid, very long-dated stock options, which become worth a fortune if and only if the company is still around and profitable far into the future. It turns out that this is basically how founders are compensated, and it's a wonder that shareholders allow public-traded companies to be run in any other way.

Re: Fire the CEO, Introducing the AxO's

#20

Post by shimman »

JohnMakin wrote: post #18
fdupress wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This author disagrees with this take. They are setting a scene here, and explicitly saying that the Block story wasn't about AI at all a few paragraphs later. If that "bait" caused you to stop reading despite the fact that you probably agree with the author's sentiment, it's not very good bait.

I agree with none of this. It's clickbait slop, very obviously, and that did make me skim it faster than I normally would have, but I read it. The burden shouldn't be on me to try to understand the point clickbait slop is making. This "style" is unreadable and exhausting and that was my salient point. Read what I just linked, it makes the complete opposite conclusion just a few months ago. How good, non-slop writing…

I agree; it's poor writing that leads to poor arguments. If readers discard your argument, then you weren't making a good argument.
Post reply on HN