Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by zucked » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

waboremo wrote: post #231

superfrank wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 your CEO is a lemming, they are not capable of leading a company. They should be fired. 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 vague…

I can appreciate your point, but you have to also consider that a characteristic of Apple is the sheer size of the business. Apple can afford to be more conservative with their business plans because they can weather storms more readily.

If Apple failed to plan for a huge economic event that let competitors gain some ground, they can survive that misstep because they have such a huge moat. Conversely, if Apple did over-hire, they can also survive that climate due to their size and stay the course while others falter.

If you're captaining an ocean liner (Apple) you don't worry too much about 5-10' seas and 10 knots of wind. If you're captaining a 50' yacht (eg. all the mid-sized SaaS businesses announcing layoffs) you definitely pay attention to that sea state.

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

#282

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

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…

> now people will talk about improving processes, blameless postmortems, and how the individual is not at fault.

That makes me wonder why investors, particularly activist shareholders who drive the direction of boards, are never under scrutiny. Maybe their decisions to chase unrealistic growth, which forces the hands of CEOs and lesser executives, should also be reviewed. Maybe they should be somehow penalized or sanctioned for driving companies towards failure. Shouldn't a massive event like mass layoffs trigger a change in corporate boards? Why shouldn't responsibility go all the way to the top, why stop at the CEO level?

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

#283

Post by danaris » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

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…

When you've been subjected to decades of drivel asserting loudly and repeatedly that the reason CEOs get paid big money is specifically because they are the ones who hold the responsibility for screwups like this, you start to think that maybe they should actually be held accountable, just like they say they deserve.

When an individual engineer screws up, if the processes in place are working correctly, that screwup should only cost some time and possibly a bit of money—most likely within an order of magnitude of a few days and $100. This is why we have processes in place: because people are fallible, and it's not good to give any one person that much power.

When a CEO screws up, there's no one to catch that screwup. The buck stops there. So many of these companies are structured specifically to give the CEO some significant degree of autocratic power—the power to say "this is what we will be doing, because I say so", whether or not they have other justifications backing them up—and now that we're saying, "Hey, that kind of power is supposed to come with accountability," you try to tell us they shouldn't?

As for "companies can run fine without one," I'd say that's a very useful hypothesis to test. But your strawman of "give a bunch of money to people on fiverr" isn't the logical way to test it: it's "set up a system with democratic processes in place, create a management committee, possibly with a rotating chairship, and in general give the employees more say over the direction of the company they work for".

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

#284

Post by foobiekr » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #268

lhorie wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you want execs that never take risks and simply milk cash cows until they die?

Do you want golden parachutes?

This is how you get these.

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

#285

Post by cloverich » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

njovin wrote: post #30

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to make the shareholders money. As much money as possible. This is a poor take. The function of the CEO of a publicly traded company is to execute on major objectives of the firm. This might be optimizing for max profit, but it might not, depending on what your majority shareholders communicate to the board and management (as well as how they vote their shares). A…

I'd like to see a few recent examples of CEOs making decisions for the future health of the company that knowingly lower the stock price for more than 2Q.

> that knowingly lower the stock price for more than 2Q.

The question alone is a bit loaded, because stock price is meant to reflect the future prospects of the company -- its long term profitability. A better example might be making decisions that knowingly lower the profits for multiple quarters.

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

#286

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #167

XargonEnder wrote: post #41

Hate to say it but it seems rational to hire like crazy to hedge against a rocket hot economy increasing demand. Also seems rational to cut back when things cool. I certainly don't like it, but I do get it.

This makes sense, but I think we also need some of the protections other countries have, like if you're doing a mass layoff you need to cover wages for a month or two after, you need to prove you're not going to be rehiring for those same positions soon, etc

Those exact wage protection exist, at least in California.

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

#287

Post by malermeister » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #128

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…

> On the face of it, it was obvious If it was obvious, then the market would have priced it in. But it didn't. So the crowdsourced collective wisdom was indeed that industries were leaping 5-10 years into the future overnight. That was the thing that was "obvious" to most people. You may have disagreed at the time, and if you'd shorted stocks you could have made some money. But the idea that "on the face of it, it wa…

Maybe the profit motives of rich people are just a bad source of truth and we shouldn't dogmatically believe they'll somehow always be right?

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

#288

Post by kerkeslager » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #280

kerkeslager wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When times are good why wouldn't you hire to maximize profits and then cut people loose when times are getting bad? Because you don't want to harm people.

Now That would be a firing offense for a CEO. Most shareholders prioritize returns over headcount, otherwise they would be donating to charity instead of buying stock.

It's almost like just relying on the invisible hand of the market to create good results doesn't work.

And to be clear: just because you're incentivized to harm people, doesn't exonerate you when you harm people. "I was just following incentives" isn't a defense.

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

#289

Post by 41amxn41 » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

No. Government officials and politicians should be held accountable.

Instead, sadly, I can predict they will become more and more comfortable and untouchable which is exactly what they want. The reason? Social control has become really cheap in the last decade.

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

#290

Post by notinfuriated » Mon, Feb 06, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

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…

> I'm not saying it's ethical to mass hire and fire.

Agreed, although I don't suppose I'll ever see a post on HN with people angrily calling for the firing of Tech CEOs for hiring too many people at potentially higher salaries than their "worth" to the rest of the market.