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Ending the cult of the CEO
- pnutjam 9y agoOver 60 years ago, Frederick Lewis Allen published "The Big Change". He noted that we do not live in a Capitalist Society, we live in a Managementist society. Capital is too often diced up and spread around so that it has no bearing on decisions and the "owner" has no responsibility or even ability to track things.
- hkmurakami 9y agoI really hope that we can end the cult of the entrepreneur as well. It's not some special thing to incorporate and start a company, and it's not inherently superior to any other line of work.
- jimbeam77 9y agoThere's nothing special about starting a company for sure, but successfully growing one takes a lot of grit.
- lhnz 9y agoUnpack grit and you're left with psychological traits which many normal people have.
- jimbeam77 9y agoSo why don't many normal people successfully grow a business?
- ghostly_s 9y agoBecause the economy can only support a limited number of business owners, but a large number of employees.
- jimbeam77 9y agoThe economy doesn't 'support' business owners - business owners (and their customers and employees) are the economy.
- knieveltech 9y agoThat business owners are floated on the backs of their employees seems pretty obvious.
- lacampbell 9y agoYes, you're generally either an employer or an employee in a modern economy. Is this news to anyone?
- knieveltech 9y agoI feel like you are missing or intentionally ignoring the point here.
- lacampbell 9y agoI'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.
- knieveltech 9y agoDroll, given I'm not the one who appears to be confused here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- omginternets 9y agoBecause they're doing other, equally-valuable things that require the same traits?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lhnz 9y agoWell, some of them do. And also a lot of people with "grit" don't amount to anything. They lack networks, capital or the right idea. Or they have something else that they feel is more important than building a startup: a family, work flexibility, or a hobby that consumes them.
- tboyd47 9y agoThey need health insurance
- __jal 9y agoBecause the risk calculation looks different when one has a bank account that can support one's family while working for free for a x% chance of a payout.
- Terr_ 9y agoIn addition, beware the stories of "self made" tycoons which will conveniently ignore how -- even if they didn't trigger it -- they still had a safety-net of wealthy relatives that they could rely on for emergencies or loans. (Ex: Bill Gates.) Statistically speaking, poorer people can't afford to undertake the same risks, so they can't take advantage of the same opportunities. Once you hit zero, you can't gamble your way back.
- ryandrake 9y agoBingo. Tons of money can't buy you the home run, but it can buy you a stronger bat, a slower pitch, and as many swings as you need to hit that home run.
- knieveltech 9y agoTranslation: why don't many normal people have trust funds, expensive educations, the disposable income and lack of financial responsibilities to be able to work for free for extended periods of time, friends in industry, investor class connections, or some combination of all of the above plus a shitload of luck.
- trendia 9y agoIf those things are required, then why do so many immigrants become entrepreneurs?
- ladytron 9y agoThey are not required. Many more here who are successful do not have all or any of those things. They just don't talk much.
- chickenfries 9y agoMany wealthy immigrants have those privlidges...
- s73ver 9y agoThey're not required, but they make things a whole lot easier.
- mschuster91 9y agoSpoken from a German POV, it's quite simple: racism. When you're an immigrant and no one wants to hire you because you have a non-German family name (illegal in theory, hard to enforce in practice!), you have four options: be stuck in low-level menial work for the rest of your life, rely on food stamps/government assistance ("Hartz IV" in Germany), turn into crime life or start a small company (costs ~ 50€ or such for a fully-liable company, and for a sorta-limited company "UG" a bit more). Also, immigrants usually do not carry cultural dead weight - once again I refer to Germany. Starting a company is not really popular here, as you will be socially shunned if you fail (even if you not end up bankrupt in the process, but that's another can of worms). Germans are risk-averse to the extreme, immigrants usually not.
- maxxxxx 9y agoMaybe some people just aren't interested in doing that? Many entrepreneurs don't want to be employees and maybe many employees don't want to be entrepreneurs. I think both groups should be happy that the other exists.
- metaphorm 9y agothey do. you just don't read about the successful entrepreneurs that grow their business from 1 gas station convenience store to 4 gas station convenience stores.
- iamacynic 9y agoi don't think it really registers in peoples' conscious minds that somebody owns _every single_ restaurant/deli/store/shop/building/etc. in a city, and it's definitely not some rich dotcom guy.
- analog31 9y agoLack of an idea is the main obstacle for me. My best business idea so far has only produced about $20k/y of sales.
- ktRolster 9y agoIf you are really skilled at running a business, then going to startup conferences and such will certainly give you a bunch of ideas.
- dv_dt 9y agoI think it's basically the shrinking of the middle class and people with enough capital to contemplate starting a business. Looking at the number of business starts shows an ever decreasing number - which correlates with the stagnation of wages and size of the middle class. Also linked, the number of hours worked has increased steadily, as well as a increase in both parents working, so availability of time in households to supply "labor capital" to start businesses has also shrank.
- throwaway18917 9y agoClearly they're just not trying hard enough to be rich.
- martin1975 9y agoWhy would I/we when between me and my wife we earn > 200k a year with 9-5 jobs? Most SBO owners dont make that much. I get to see my family and children grow. The people I know who run a small business successfully slave away at their workplace because they have to... or the last friend sold it because he burnt out after a year. The only time one would endeavor to run a massive business rather than a small one is if you invented/patented something or provided a service that can be scaled and you need help to bootstrap it... in which case unless BillG or DonaldT is yer uncle, you're gonna be sucking on some VC's titty anyway... i. e. they own you.
- ghostly_s 9y agoAnd do you think only the CEO deserves credit for when this happens?
- shallot_router 9y agoObviously it'll depend. But if a founder/CEO turns a 3-person startup into a 500-person multimillion dollar company within a year or 2, and is responsible for a lot of that effort, then they arguably deserve the bulk of the credit. In most cases, probably 10% or less of the credit belongs to the CEO, though.
- kelnos 9y agoThat's the thing though: as the size of the company, customer count, and revenue numbers increase, the founder/CEO has less and less _directly_ to do with that. If I found a company and directly hire 10 people and act as a day-to-day leader where everyone reports to me, you can say that I had a large impact on everything that happened. Two years later, when we have 300 people, I'm out of the day-to-day hiring decisions and I'm not directly making all the deals that the company makes, I can still claim to be steering the ship, but I can't claim direct credit for much of what the company does. Sure, it was my initial founding decision that has made all of it possible, but I'd be incapable of being involved in literally everything at a larger scale such that I could take credit for it.
- harryh 9y agoHere are some decisions that you might be faced with when holding the CEO job at a 300 person company: - The New York Times has just written an article about how your company mined user data and sold it in a nefarious way. But this sort of sale is critical to your business model. What do you do? - You hired a VP of Sales 6 months ago who interviewed better than anyone you have ever met and came with glowing recommendations, but he has missed his quota for 2 quarters. Do you fire him or do you give him some more time? - A competitor has, completely unexpectedly, launched a similar product as yours but is charging customers half the price. Your CTO doesn't know how they could be turning a profit at such a low cost. They're very quickly eating into your market share. How do you respond? Obviously these situations would be far more nuanced than these 2 sentence descriptions and obviously you would get all sorts of opinions from employees & advisors but ultimately making these sorts of calls is the CEOs job. Making these decisions well is not easy and it can have a huge impact on the company.
- hkmurakami 9y agoSure. But I'd want to see a world where headlines like "Entrepreneurs are just rich kids" cease to be, because that headline is only created when entrepreneurship is put on a pedestal and is seen as something that is inherently superior to everything else. People wouldn't feel indignant that it is "unfair that rich kids have an advantage" at the entrepreneurship game (which they absolutely do), if entrepreneurship weren't seen as this holy grail mount Kilimanjaro thing.
- knieveltech 9y agoI'm pretty sure people are going to continue to be pissed off about some lucky assholes winning the birth lottery and cashing in their ticket to further profit off the labor of others less fortunate regardless of what kind of media spin you try to put on it.
- WalterBright 9y agoWhat do you attribute the success of Bruno Mars too?
- knieveltech 9y agoI don't know who that is but I strongly doubt their career in any way dismisses the lack of class mobility in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america-social-mobility-parents-income/399311/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/america...
- WalterBright 9y agoBruno Mars has been profiled on "60 Minutes" a couple times because he's a classic rags-to-riches story.
- WalterBright 9y agoBy the way, high taxes makes upward class mobility much more difficult.
- smacktoward 9y agoLess so when you get $100 million dumped on your head first, though.
- gech 9y agoIt takes grit to get up everyday at 4 a.m. just to drive a truck or work at a warehouse or be a nurse etc etc etc
- voidz 9y agoHow is that relevant?
- maxxxxx 9y agoAnd let's stop talking of "job creators" while we are at it.
- Retric 9y agoI also find it funny that people get wealthy by destroying jobs not creating them.
- dtietjen 9y agoI'd argue the cult of the entrepreneur and cult of the founder are two different things. You're right, anyone can found a company. Entrepreneurship, on the other hand requires execution, vision, and creativity and is a real art.
- zorked 9y agoMany things are a real art.
- knieveltech 9y agoTell me about it. You ever try making croissants?
- treehau5 9y agoDude. Or Preztels. Man. I never thought yeast, flour, and sugar could be so complicated.
- pferde 9y agoAnd synergy, don't forget synergy!
- Mendenhall 9y agoI am not into the cult of anything, nor do I think anyone is superior just for being an entrepreneur. I do think being an entrepreneur is superior in one key regard, "its all on you". No one to fire you or lay you off, no one to blame for hiring practices or corporate culture etc etc. What I personally love about being an entrepreneur is the success is not all because of you, but the failure sure is.
- Amygaz 9y agoMy objective observation of many entrepreneurs I know (i.e. not all of them, but a majority that I know), is that they do not take any meaningful risks: they use other's people money, not their own, they have a pretty good paycheck, a lot of equity, often at an age where hard responsibilities are nonexistent (e.g. no family, no house, sometime they have a dog), and they get to play boss no matter how good, or bad, or clueless, or not CEO material... So, I did acquire a bias toward agreeing with parent.
- mjfl 9y agoYou're right. I'll have to take down that shrine to Mark Zuckerberg in my closet. ???? "Cult of the entrepreneur"? What does that even mean? What concrete action would cause an end of the "cult of the entrepreneur"? Not starting new businesses? Or just not being friendly to Zuck at parties? What are you talking about?
- erikb 9y agoThis cult is important, though. Important to achieve exploitation of talented, young people who would otherwise take a save, well paying job in a big company or government.
- jobcreators 9y agoi can't read this without shaking my head. boo hoo. when CEOs' compensation starts to mirror their output/tangible contribution to the company, i'll be able to take stories like this more seriously. i.e., i agree that CEOs are given far too much credit and cannot possibly be looped in on everything that leads to the successes or failures of a company, but they certainly pay themselves as if this was the case.
- pixie_ 9y agoI'd say the CEO acts as the primary role model and the employees/company often reflect the attitude of the CEO. Think of the workplace stereotypes of amazon - customer focused, google - side projects, spacex - mission, uber/oracle - aholes, apple - design, microsoft - developers , facebook - hackers, etc.. the CEO sets the tone and if you agree with it you'd probably like working there :)
- oliTwist23 9y agoAmazing!!
- Neliquat 9y agoFacebook = hackers?! To whom?
- pixie_ 9y agoLike hoodies and hackathons, not like hacking into stuff.
- coldpizza 9y ago> Think of a prominent global-company CEO. Sir Martin Sorrell? Indra Nooyi? Elon Musk? > Now, name the CFO and CMO. I bet you can’t. I can't, but it's because it's not the CFO and CMO representing the company on the public realm, so they're not the faces and names I see when there's news about a company in which I do not work at or with. If this "exposure" happens within a company as well, that's an issue for each company to assess and deal with accordingly.
- jathu 9y agoThis is reminiscent of auteur theory in film, which essentially says that the director is the author of the film. Similar to corporations, making a movie requires a lot of people with different skills/talent. The director overshadows everyone and is the person primarily credited with authoring a film, they even overshadow the writers of the screenplay. One of the leading arguments for auteur theory is that the director has the vision of the film and they set out to create it. This is the same narrative used in the startup world: the founders have the vision. So this extends to why we credit founders for the invention of products, just like how we credit directors for films. Maybe 100 years from now we will say "Steve Jobs invented the iPhone/smartphone", just like how we say "Thomas Edison invented the light bulb" or "Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver".
- mattnewton 9y agoIt's older than that, how many innovations are credited to Emperors, and victories in battle to Generals? I think it must be the product of some parts of human nature.
- kelnos 9y agoYes, I think people naturally need well-defined figures to look up to, to praise, and to try to emulate. It's a lot more powerful to say "George Washington" won the US Revolutionary War than to talk about all his subordinates, even when those subordinates made many independent wartime decisions that were essential to winning the war. And yet I can't even name one of those people offhand.
- WorldMaker 9y agoAlexander Hamilton is the next easiest to mind, due directly to the musical. One of Hamilton's complaints in real life and emphasized in the musical was that he wanted as much, if not more, to be as brave/glorious as the generals and soldiers of the War, but was "stuck" in such an inglorious position of being Washington's aide-de-camp and helping Washington run the war. ETA: The explicit irony being that most of Hamilton's work during the war is of course attributed to Gen. Washington, and in the current zeitgeist the only reason people remember his involvement today being the popularity of a musical of a biography of his.
- elihu 9y agoThe way I look at it, there are two kinds of CEOs. There are the ones that founded the company and have led the company according to their own personal vision. Many of them hold stock worth billions and they're generally looked up to as "captains of industry". The other kind is the CEO who is hired by the board of directors. They're usually very well paid and given a lot of stock, but aren't wealthy the way, say, Bill Gates is wealthy. They also tend not to be as admired, since they didn't build the business from the ground up. People wonder why the second class of CEO receives such lavish compensation, when they're essentially just a regular employee. I suspect that the compensation is actually part of the qualification for the job. It makes shareholders feel good if the CEO holds a lot of stock, because it's a strong incentive for them to put the interests of the shareholders (whom it's easy to stereotype as rich, entitled lazy people living lavishly off of passive investment income) above the interests of the employees the CEO works with every day (who are usually hard-working people who, if the company is successful, generate far more wealth than they're compensated for). Normal human behavior would be to put the interests of the employees above the shareholders. Large stock grants counteract that. Sometimes I wonder if a hired CEO were to refuse to receive large stock grants, would that cause the shareholders to revolt and/or the board of directors to not hire or try to fire him/her, simply because they're not comfortable with a CEO who doesn't have an incentive to pump up the stock value. (It's worth noting that shareholders can change their investments much easier than employees can change employers, so shareholders are more likely to prefer policies that pump up the stock value now even if they're bad for the company in the long run.)
- thanthen 9y agowould Jeff Bezos be categorized as the second class CEO you describe?
- idoh 9y agoSometimes non-founder CEOs are worth it and can completely turn around the fortunes of a company. For example, Eisner for Disney, Kroc for McDonald's, Welch for GE, Jobs (the second time around), and either Ballmer or Nadela (depending on which one you pick). So I don't think the founder / non-founder distinction holds up.
- cortesoft 9y agoThis is just how humans view the world. We attribute everything the government does to the President, we attribute everything in a film to the director, and everything in a company to the CEO. We view the world this way, when in reality things happen at every level.
- bg4 9y agoPack order mentality is probably not something humans will ever be able to overcome. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why-it-pays-to-be-a-jerk/392066/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why-it-... edit: typo
- cafard 9y agoGiven that a fair chunk of today's NY Times front page is devoted to Steve Cook rebuking Travis Kalanick, I'm not going to short to incense stocks quite yet.
- cafard 9y agoUmm, Tim.
- amjaeger 9y agoI'm sure the majority of the article is valid, but Apple's stock skyrocketed after Job's death. I'm sure it's an outlier but kind of wish that had been acknowledged given the image used.
- kelnos 9y agoI think that was a somewhat unique situation: It was fairly well known for months before Jobs' death that he was ill, and that he wasn't very involved in the day-to-day operations of Apple anymore, and that Tim Cook was clearly going to be his successor, and had already taken on many if not most of the CEO's duties. Even then, AAPL dipped a little during Oct 2011 (Jobs died on Oct 5th), recovered in November, and then started really moving upward over the next 2-3 months. I think the large jump can be attributed to how well and how successfully they handled the transition, and to the point that people -- as much as they viewed Jobs as key to the company's success -- realized that Apple could still perform well without him, based on the idea that the "cult of Jobs" didn't end with his death.
- throwhaha323 9y agoThis is a throwaway because I am throwing the truth down. The people who work with me describe me as a visionary CEO. If you want to end the cult of the CEO, why don't you introduce me to another visionary of my caliber - because there aren't any in my organization. I assign inventions to my cofounders: "Invent this. This is the requirement." They come back with nothing. Why? Because they're not a visionary CEO, I am. Why can I invent something meeting the requirements, but they not only can't come up with the requirements to begin with, but when handed the requirements, can't invent something that meets those requirements? (Leaving me to do so.) The visionary CEO is not over. The reason it is not over is because there is nobody you can introduce me to who will come work with me as another visionary. They exist, of course. Elon Musk is one of them. What do you think the chances are that I can get Musk to join my board? Made as a throwaway because even in this crowd it is rare to acknowledge what other people repeatedly call visionary intelligence.
- prodmerc 9y agoYeah, it's time to end human nature. Please, how often do you see anything credited to more than 10 people, even though maybe thousands worked on it? It's human nature to look for the leader, or leaders if there's no clear leader or if that seen leader is actively advertising the others, but no one will ever credit 100+ people actually working on anything. A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
- wand3r 9y agoI found it hard not to disagree with this article. I am not sure I agree with the premise but this argument wasn't persuasive. Of course a stock drops when the CEO abruptly dies. Of course 100percent of people responsible for the well being of others (employees and shareholders) and countless decisions is stressed. A counter example to jobs (cliche pic on every article like this) is Ive. The cult of personality is an obvious way to humanize a company. It can be good or bad. Kalanick bad right now; Musk good right now. Being a good CEO is more important than simply branding yourself. IDK, article fell flat for me I see both sides and it's subjective in my book
- dahart 9y ago> This focus has a devastating impact on the lives of CEOs... Leaders deserve to be happy too... solving the problems starts with communication... we need to wage war on this picture A whole article about how hard CEOs have it, and not a single mention of CEO pay or the ongoing efforts to even get reporting of CEO pay ratios? I mean I agree that CEOs get a ridiculous amount of stress and an unfair share of credit and blame, but if we want to fix it, I wouldn't start with platitudes like 'why don't we talk more', I'd start by paying CEOs less. > The result is that a startling 100% of CEOs report that they suffer from stress and, according to research by Apollo Life, one in four say they struggle with insomnia. Yeah, 100% of the population suffers from stress too. And I just googled it: 30% of the population suffers from insomnia. LOL.
- Melk 9y agoPretty funny isn't it. Seeing the cult of the CEO in an article about the cult of the CEO. Cultural changes always need time.
- Melk 9y agoPretty funny isn't it. Seeing the cult of the CEO in an article about the cult of the CEO. Cultural changes always need time.
- tertius 9y ago> I'd start by paying CEOs less. I would say that it's a good thing that you're not king then... And no, the stress of C level jobs does not compare to the mean like you would have it.
- self_assembly 9y agoI agree that the stress level of C jobs does not compare to the mean. It must be nice not to have to stress about a mortgage, kids college, affordable healthcare and all the other things that ordinary people in western society struggle with. I think a lot of people would trade stressing about their families financial well being with the needs of the shareholders. I'm not saying it is not a tough job but at the end of the day I don't think CEOs stress compares to regular middle class people just trying to get by.
- marplebot 9y agoWas anyone else bothered by the way studies were cited in this article? > 100% of CEOs report that they suffer from stress Anytime I see 100% I assume the study was bullshit. > the death of a CEO causes a company's value to fluctuate by $65 million more today than it did 60 years ago (adjusted for inflation) I'm guessing the sample size here is pretty small or at very least a measure of absolute "fluctuation" doesn't seem like the right thing to measure. I can imagine a world where the death of Steve Jobs alone could have caused this effect. Also what was the fluctuation before was it $100 million? $1 million?
- rileymat2 9y agoIt is hard to tell, but it appears the death of the lifeway ceo in 2002 had very little lasting impact.
- JoeCortopassi 9y agoReasons why CEO's make millions and I don't: - Business Network: If I had a billion dollars, I would never have been able to acquire Instagram. I wouldn't even be able to get a seat at the table. Zuckerberg closed it in record time while talking to a company that wanted to be on it's own - Market Knowledge: I thought the iPad was the stupidest device ever, Steve Jobs didn't. I now have 4 at my house along with two of those stupid iWatches (actually they're pretty nice) - Portfolio: Marissa Mayer wasn't paid what she was paid because the board expected her to perform well, she was paid her salary (and golden parachute) because the company was dying and they had no idea what to do. Mayer had an idea of something that might work, but why on earth would she risk her awesome résumé with taking on the risk of a company on it's last leg? - Access: If my daughter has a birthday, I can schedule an early day to be home and celebrate with the family. When Steve Jobs came down with cancer, he was required to disclose his medical details publicly because of the fiscal impact it could have on the public stock - Job Market: I'm a programmer. There are jobs everywhere for me. If the CEO of Uber loses his job (fingers crossed), it might be a looong time before he finds a new one and even then it's not likely to be remotely similar to what he does now. I mean shoot everyone loves Gabe Newell, but if he lost his job, what are his options? Not as many as me. Look, I'm not saying that some CEO's pay isn't exaggerated. I'm just saying that I'm not worth nearly as much as a talented CEO. If the company your 401k/pension was invested in hired me as CEO, you better believe you'd grab your pitchfork.
- CountSessine 9y agoThe Marissa Mayer one is the one that really stands out to me. A lot of people seem to think that she was brought in to save Yahoo; no one on the inside was thinking that. Everyone understood that Yahoo was hopeless and they were headed for a sudden collapse. Mayer was brought in to rescue whatever shareholder value she could and as long as shareholders got something back they would be willing to split some of it with her.
- yuhong 9y agoPart of the problem is that it took way too long for someone like her to be the CEO.
- cosinetau 9y agoI'm guessing a possible resolution is to disseminate the responsibility that a CEO holds. I've never been at that level of management, but it appears that other players (inside and out of an org) require a single point-of-contact, or ultimate authority. I think this might be better, simply because 1:1 relationships are easier to coordinate than 1:n (chair and council), or n:m (council and lieutenants), which dissemination might bring. My counter question is: where would the buck stop?
- dilemma 9y ago》The result is that a startling 100% of CEOs report that they suffer from stress and, according to research by Apollo Life, one in four say they struggle with insomnia. Many multinationals have launched expensive well-being programmes in response, but these just wallpaper over the core problem: CEOs unnecessarily carry the full weight of company performance on their shoulders. It is the job and responsibility of the CEO to delegate so that decisions can be made elsewhere.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rglover 9y agoNo.
- vonnik 9y agoI think this article misunderstands one of the roles of the CEO, which is to be the face of the company, the individual to whom the media can attach its narrative. Group stories don't have the same appeal. Harder to tell. Even if they're more true. CEOs are traveling salespeople. They represent a larger group. They persuade. And one of the groups they sell to is the media.
- gavinpc 9y agoThe "cult" underlying this phenomenon is our celebrity culture. We fetishize the 0.01%. The role of overpaid CEO is established; it no longer needs any more special justification than top athletes, entertainers, or TV "personalities." Conveniently, we have lots of companies that need saving. And it seems to me that, for a country where people still like to pretend there's a "free market," we sure hate to see companies fail. I think of the old saying, "Many a good hanging has prevented a bad marriage." But hey, who asked me.
- theprop 9y agoThis is true. And not true. It is SO true that a company is a team effort. It is also sadly true that CEOs get most if not all the credit of what their teams accomplish even if they didn't have much of a part in it. The current CEO "God" Jobs said as much, and in fact had wrong intuitions on a number of the most critical things today in Apple's business... a gigantic one being a hesitance to open up the iPhone to 3rd party apps. I think other Apple team members eventually convinced Jobs (probably didn't take that much effort) to open things up. Jobs was rightfully concerned 3rd party apps could crash your phone which wasn't a good idea!! That said, when Apple didn't have a strong product-focused leader we saw where it went earlier, and one can see how it's floundering today -- under Cook, Apple was maybe 2 years or more late with a large screen phone and the iWatch is not good at all. Tesla under a certain CEO has in less than 15 years what's widely considered the world's best car...beating few dozen companies with long histories of making cars and limitless resources. Amazon took big risks with AWS, Prime, and many other things and failed miserably many times e.g. the Fire phone...but they have a leader who kept pushing things forward. Compare Amazon to say Walmart (to my view largely the same company it is today that it was 20 years ago) or any other e-commerce company. The visionary leader who can deliver revolutionary products relentlessly really does matter.
- soufron 9y agoIt's very nice to say that business is almost always a team effort, but it does not explain why some teams succeed and other don't.
- LeicaLatte 9y agoYes, let us all stop being humans because some humans are bad.
- jernfrost 9y agoGood this topic gets brought up. I've blogged about this in the past: http://blog.translusion.com/posts/CEO%20Salaries/ http://blog.translusion.com/posts/CEO%20Salaries/ Studies by Gabaix and Lanier, who were in favor of performance based pay showed that the difference between the best CEO and the 250th best was 0.016 percent. Meaning if one replaced the 250th best CEO with the best, then the companies market capitalization would grow by 0.016 percent. Perhaps what really matters is how bad the CEO is not how good he/she is. E.g. it is like studies of parenting, there is no difference in outcome for kids with awesome parents and those with average middle-class parents. The big difference is between bad parents and average parents. Something similar with IQ. There is no difference between having 130 in IQ and having 200, with respect to your chances of winning the nobel prize. But there is a noticable difference between having say 100 and 130.
- erikb 9y agoI always wonder why people happily give up the rewards they earned for their hard work. Prestige, connections, bonusses. I think that's a big part for the guy at the top getting most of it as well. And the reason is self-preservation. While all these things are nice, to most people it is more important to not experience the opposite: public criticism, haters, losing your job. In many situations it is also reasonable, since for a middle-income person a save reliable income is usually the most valuable asset they have. Losing it is much more hurtful to their lifes than losing a bonus. Therefore they give up some higher-risk opportunities for safety. Summary: The employees probably also want the success and failure associated to their boss not themselves.