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…
I think the fact that so many CEOs got it wrong is actually an argument for why the shouldn't be fired. If one or two CEOs got it wrong, you could argue that they were incompetent, ignorant, or greedy and they should have been better informed because plenty of other CEOs were. Everyone getting something wrong says to me that the failure wasn't down to individual mistakes and there was something larger at play.
If you want to see a real leader, look at Tim Cook. He made decisions based specifically on where the company is, where it's going, and already factored in external factors (such as the pandemic growth). Contrast this to dozens of other "CEO"s who made a horrible decision hastily, executed layoffs horribly wrong, and then vaguely blamed a pandemic. The exact same lazy gameplan because these CEOs cannot lead, might as well replace them with chatgpt, maybe they'll write better layoff emails.
As a reminder, the CEOs core role is to steer the company. When that ship slams into an iceberg, you have failed your core role. What happens when workers fail their core role?