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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

#371

Post by Apocryphon »

HTTP418 wrote: post #361
danaris wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever you have to make decisions involving multiple humans, tradeoffs are pretty much a guarantee. However, over the past few hundred years, we've been gradually coming to the collective conclusion that autocracy is inferior to democracy for systems involving larger numbers of people and decisions of larger stakes. I don't see why that should apply any less to replacing the hierarchical model of companies, where a…

It's a very different situation. In a country you cannot escape the king, he will be the absolute ruler until he dies. Since there was no escape eventually they were replaced with democracy. You can willingly leave a corporation at anytime you want. Autocracy have an advantage over democracy when it comes to speed of change. Sometimes it's good change (progress) and sometimes it's bad change (i.e. over-hiring). Large…

> Large corporations that become democratic will lose the ability to react quickly.

Not really clear that corporations that stay autocratic do much better. As with kingdoms that turn into sprawling empires, all you're left is a bunch of middle management petty kings who the CEO-emperor delegates power to, who might not be much better. Bureaucratic rot sets in.

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

#372

Post by glitchc »

zackmorris wrote: post #299
glitchc wrote: post #39

The only solution is to form a guild for software engineers. Control access to the guild through credentials and other means. Provide mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities through the guild. Allow the guild to negotiate rates and working conditions with the industry. If actors can do it, why can't we? If you want to level the playing field with tech CEOs, that's the way to do it.

I'm all for unions, but unfortunately there's too much propaganda against them for software developers to muster a majority vote in their favor right now. Rather than debate their pros and cons, I wish that we would do some root-cause analysis and design something better. Maybe something like guilds, working towards UBI. As an analogy: socialism has many benefits. But the major downside is that it usually requires a…

That's why a guild. It transcends any one company.

> Anonymity would also be key. We should have the right to start and stop employment on our terms, picking up odd contracts here and there, without committing to any employer.

> We might also demand no distinction between remote and office work.

Considerations like these are exactly what the guild can tackle on all our behalfs.

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

#373

Post by pm90 »

Clent wrote: post #305
foobiekr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we don't let them be bad in the job in one way, they'll be bad in the job in another way, therefore why bother. I reject these defeatist attitudes and question the engineering skills of anyone who thinks this way. It is always better to try something. Human created systems are inherently problematic and do not fix themselves. The dream is to engineer a system that does not have faults.

I get the sense that when it comes to innovations in organizing and leadership, there is very little solid innovation. We’re pretty much working with the same dictatorial hierarchy that has existed since forever.

Some exceptions are perhaps Valve. Most other companies try to make a change at the margins and even that is heralded as a great innovation but generally fails to get adopted widely.

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

#374

Post by pm90 »

piva00 wrote: post #359
foobiekr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's exactly where every single big corporation goes to: risk-averse and being milked as cash cows. Being a corpse in the way of others. So why not speed up the process and at least cut the suffering from thousands of lives and skip the step when those risk-takers inevitably fuck up and overhire? Let all companies be boring cash cows after the initial stage, might even improve innovation from smaller players. I vot…

Yeah it’s a bit silly to push workers at a Big Tech behemoth to work like they’re at a startup. This is completely delusional and leaders who propose these things should get fired.

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

#375

Post by [deleted] »

earthling8118 wrote: post #365
superfrank wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a swimmer swims more slowly, big deal, nobody cares. If a CEO makes bad decisions people's lives can be uprooted. There's a key difference here. You've completely missed the point of my analogy. If you compare everyone else the the person who is the best in the category, then everyone else will pale in comparison. Using "You're not as good as The Best" as a reason to fire someone is stupid since there's only one…

I absolutely did not miss your point. I don't think everyone needs to be the same as the "best". I do think that when we operate an economic system we need to have a certain level of quality in important positions-- one that has not been met. This isn't a game and our lives hold more weight than a swimming competition. I'd much rather eliminate scarcity and the need for people to have a job to provide their basic nee…

[deleted]

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

#376

Post by mohamedattahri »

Apocryphon wrote: post #328
sdz wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investors you refer to typically manage money on behalf of their investors and are actually under constant scrutiny. If they run mutual funds, their performance is measured every day, and if they underperform for a number of quarters in a row, their investors will absolutely “fire” them by withdrawing money from their funds.

Then sounds like their incentives are inherently not conducive to the business of running businesses built on reasonable growth, and causes them to fall prey to the groupthink of expecting unrealistic macro environments to continue indefinitely.

Their role is not to run businesses. Their role is to allocate capital while weathering the macroeconomic environment to create returns.

Sometimes the best way to do that is to invest in a business, other times it’s to buy other assets, and other times cash is king.

Lastly, they are only involved because the shareholders of said companies involved them. Going public is not mandatory.

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

#377

Post by seper8 »

cudgy wrote: post #337
seper8 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that newly graduated student provides more than 200k in value?

Ok, but did the company have to pay that much to get that same value? I saved a company from losing a $5 million dollar sale when I was 6 months out of university, but should I have received $5 million for my value? Plenty of other people could have accomplished the same thing.

Who are you to say what the company thinks is fair pay?

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

#378

Post by thunky »

HWR_14 wrote: post #312
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…

How did they fail? The spent 1 year salary times 15,000 people times $333,333/man-year. So $5 billion. That's a pretty big cost. On the other hand, it was a hedge against losing significant opportunities/market share. The question is "was it a good bet".

Exactly. Just because they ended up reducing headcount doesn't mean they failed.

Success isn't measured from the employee perspective.

Everyone here calling for their heads is using the wrong measuring stick.

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

#380

Post by thwayunion »

next_xibalba wrote: post #316
thwayunion wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maximize share price This is obviously not true. Even in the most extreme version of the "shareholder value" philosophy, the goal is not to maximize share price alone. The goal is to maximize total return way that is sustainable within the timeframe that the major of (voting) shareholders consider relevant. The simplest counter-example is the existence of dividends. Any time a company issues a dividend, they could…

> The simplest counter-example is the existence of dividends. No. All professional valuation models account for dividends and buybacks. Both can and do effect share price. > financial engineering tricks that a company could do to make their share price shoot to the moon just before cratering to zero Yes, I would have assumed it obvious that a company wouldn't seek to maximize their share price over an infinitesimal t…

>> The simplest counter-example is the existence of dividends.

> No. All professional valuation models account for dividends and buybacks. Both can and do effect share price.

This is another way of saying that professional valuation models account for the fact that it is NOT true that the "incentive structure of public companies is only to maximize share price".

> Yes, I would have assumed it obvious that a company wouldn't seek to maximize their share price over an infinitesimal time frame.

Okay. But that's my whole point! Over WHAT time frame is the corporation optimizing total returns, and how are those returns DISTRIBUTED to share holders, and even then, WHICH shareholders hold the decision-making power?

Share price isn't the whole story, and isn't even the whole story if you consider variable time frames.

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