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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

#261

Post by manuelabeledo »

sokoloff wrote: post #176
manuelabeledo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the trend is downwards... If you take the anomaly of 2020-2021 into account [0] Also, revenue is not down. Growth is. Apparently, we live in this stupid dystopia where growth is more important than money, even for gargantuan companies like Alphabet. How are they planning on growing at a >10% rate YoY forever ? [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/reve...

You cited Alphabet revenue, not advertising or YouTube revenue. > Google’s parent company, reported $59 billion in advertising revenue for the fourth quarter, a decrease of 3.6% from the same period in 2021. Those results marked the second time ad sales fell since Google became a publicly traded company in 2004. > Google’s video platform, YouTube, recorded a second straight quarter of declining revenue for the three…

> You cited Alphabet revenue, not advertising or YouTube revenue.

Because you previously said:

> Alphabet is absolutely posting troublesome trends in their revenue reports.

Essentially you are telling me that if revenue as a whole goes up, but not in some divisions, that makes sense of layoffs across all divisions.

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

#262

Post by alldayeveryday »

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…

Another variable to consider: the 2020 - 2022 market was rewarding growth (as opposed to profitability or being cash-flow positive). The Corporate loan interest rate was practically 0%. Companies which could show growth, even at the expense of lighting cash on fire, were rewarded as far as the stock market is concerned. CEOs are expected to bias towards shareholder value, lest they be replaced by someone who will. And so, with these variables in play, many took the decision to rapidly expand their operations (costs) in any way that produced marginal growth. They lived and died by their ability to, on each quarterly earnings call, share the message of QoQ and YoY growth. For many companies this required rapid hiring.

The market now is demanding flesh and CEOs are either expected to provide it, or else get fired. Just like in the former time period, they would get fired had they not shown growth. I personally do not think a CEO should be fired now for having to hire employees, when they would have been fired in the first place had they not rapidly hired.

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

#263

Post by efficax »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #79
efficax wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. what that means is not well defined, and a ceo could say: i’m not doing layoffs because my analysis is that they will hurt our business, not help, but generally the meaning of their duty to shareholders is that they increase share prices and layoffs make that happen.

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/04/25/how-shareholders-jump... > “There is a widespread and completely erroneous belief out there that there is some sort of legal duty that corporate managers have to ‘maximize profits’ or ‘maximize shareholder value,’” said Cornell law professor Lynn Stout, author of “The Shareholder Value Myth.” In Stout’s view, the misplaced assumption comes from an old case that cites stockholder…

they do have a fiduciary duty. what does that mean? it's not clear. people interpret it to mean increasing shareholder value in the short term. it doesn't have to mean that, but that's how corporate management tends to behave.

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

#264

Post by alldayeveryday »

simple10 wrote: post #190

Am I oversimplifying, or are the layoffs more of a predictable function of correcting for zero interest money without fear of employment lawsuits? Money was free (zero interest) during covid. Most tech companies increased staff to keep pace with each other. A lot of these hires were in support staff and junior positions needed to support low acquisition costs of new customers. Now that interest rates went up and grow…

> The short of it... did CEOs really make any significant mistakes? Or did they just take advantage of the market conditions in predictable ways? i.e. They did their jobs as it's currently incentivized.

Agreed with your argument, and taking it a step further, not only did they take advantage of the market conditions, they were forced to do so or face getting fired themselves. When your competitor is rapidly expanding, and/or you are not showing the revenue growth that the market is awarding, you get the boot.

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

#265

Post by Darmody »

sharemywin wrote: post #141
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…

But when you post insane profits and still laying off people? come on. good luck hiring people next time your looking for people.

It's FAANG companies who are firing, not your local webdev agency.

As soon as they start looking for people and offering salaries starting at 150k, tens of thousands will jump straight in.

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

#266

Post by dml2135 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #250
jonathankoren wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was obvious, then the market would have priced it in. Bubbles don’t exist? I’m sorry, but to paraphrase an old quote, the market’s can remain irrational, longer than your faith in a rational market.

I think that's a different question then if it's obvious. I don't really understand the obvious claim. If it was obvious to investors and executives then what? They knowingly spent money they knew was a waste?

It's not that complicated -- it was obvious to some people, and not obvious to others. Clearly then, the wrong people were in charge.

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

#267

Post by kerkeslager »

twawaaay wrote: post #212

Accountable to whom? For everything within the law, CEOs are only accountable to company owners. That's it. CEOs are only managing the company for somebody else -- the owners of the company. That's it. That's all they do. When the owners don't like the CEO they just get a new one, until they find a person that will do their bidding (or at least increase their share value). Trying to change the mind of a CEO makes no…

> The problem is people who don't care about other people.

Agreed, but the idea that CEOs are somehow not part of this group is a bit bizarre, particularly when you consider that a large part of CEO compensation is often stock or stock options. You can't exonerate CEOs by blaming shareholders when CEOs are generally shareholders.

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

#268

Post by josephcsible »

lhorie wrote: post #258
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…

I'm seeing a lot of this "screw up = get fired" narrative lately and I think it's a bit ironic. Talk about screwing up in engineering contexts and suddenly the tune changes: now people will talk about improving processes, blameless postmortems, and how the individual is not at fault. Imagine a youtuber saying googlers should be fired because some decision was made that affected the youtuber's income negatively. Or im…

Executives should be held personally responsible for kinds of things that low-level employees aren't. That's why executives get paid so much more.

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

#269

Post by [deleted] »

j0hnyl wrote: post #240
nmca wrote: post #229

I'm surprised that nobody links to the best proposed solution to this problem, so I will: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/dumpceo.html The US could, if it was inclined, legalise prediction markets & investors could subsidise markets for stock price conditional on the CEO stepping down, thus revealing in the strongest possible wisdom-of-the-market sense whether the CEO is going a good job. This would solve the problem…

there would need heavy moderation in order to avoid nefarious things like contract killings

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