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If you put Tim Cook on the assembly line or on the cash register at an Apple store, do you think he would even keep up? If you took someone off the assembly li
by henryfjordan 5y ago
If you put Tim Cook on the assembly line or on the cash register at an Apple store, do you think he would even keep up?
If you took someone off the assembly line and make them CEO, would Apple's output crater to 1/1400th of what they produce today?
- NovemberWhiskey 5y agoIt's unclear to me the answers to these questions tell us anything useful.
- titanomachy 5y agoPossibly more relevant: if you took someone off the assembly line and put them in charge ten years ago, would the company perform worse by at least the value of Tim Cook's compensation over that period? Impossible to know for sure (can't A/B test history), but my guess would be "probably".
- serverholic 5y agoAre you really suggesting an assembly line worker could do the job of Apple's CEO?
- henryfjordan 5y agoI'm saying they could do it better than their pay ratio currently suggests. Being a CEO is not that hard.
- tlholaday 5y ago> Being a CEO is not that hard. Being an extraordinary CEO is very difficult.
- henryfjordan 5y agoSo is being an extraordinary assembly line worker
- gremlinsinc 5y agoYeah, it takes grit to exploit people left and right, all day everyday. Most people aren't cut out for that amount of evil... Ironically I want to be a CEO but of a worker-coop that has a cap on pay, union-built in, and flat management style... read: ethical CEO.
- missedthecue 5y agoAre you speaking from experience or have you never actually run a multi-trillion dollar company and you're simply making assumptions?
- ipaddr 5y agoNo one on here is speaking from experience. Are you expecting only replies from multi trillion dollar company CEOs? Let's try to keep the gatekeeping down. Pretending only multi-trillion dollar company CEOs opinions are the only ones that count is dishonest.
- missedthecue 5y agoNo I don't think he is the CEO of a multi trillion dollar firm, hence why I find his absolute statement about the simplicity of such an occupation peculiar.
- el_ravager 5y agoWe're saying literally anyone could do the job of Apple's CEO.
- yupper32 5y agoI'd guess that if you took a group of people on some of the the lowest totem poles at Apple and had them replace the entire C-Suite, Apple's output would certainly crater. Probably to bankruptcy (though it might take a while, Apple has huge cash reserves). Replacing one individual from the C-Suite could maybe get carried by the rest. And yes, the other way would work fine. Having the C-Suite take over an individual store would be fine.
- henryfjordan 5y agoI very much doubt the C-Suite could take over a busy store with no training and run it. Customer interactions require skill. Knowing how the register works or how to order more inventory requires training. I have no doubt they could do it with proper training. I also have no doubt that if you took a random apple store employee and gave them Tim Cook's education that they could be a passable CEO.
- yupper32 5y agoTim Cook's education? Are you saying they'll all spend 12 years at IBM, ending at the director level while getting their MBA at Duke, then spend time being a COO and VP at other companies, and then finally replacing Tim Cook? Ok fair. I think comparing that to a few weeks of training to run a store is wild.
- henryfjordan 5y agoThe headline literally compares them though. Tim Cook is paid 1400x the average worker. Do you think someone working in an Apple store would rather be there than getting an MBA at Duke? or being COO somewhere? Tim Cook was incredibly privileged to get the education and opportunities that he did. I'm not saying he wouldn't be a better CEO than most, but most people don't get to try so we don't know that fact. He's absolutely not 1400x times better than people with similar education. Even Apple isn't doing that well. If luck had him become CEO of IBM instead of Apple we wouldn't be praising him as "extraordinary" just because of circumstance.
- viktorcode 5y agoMost likely he wouldn't. The second statement is false equivalence. The equivalent comparison would be "if you took someone from the assembly line and make them CEO, would Apple's cost grow 1000% in ten years?"
- stanmancan 5y agoNo kidding. Apple has added $2,500,000,000,000 to it's market cap since Tim Cook took over in 2011. If you think "anyone could do that" then I don't really know what to say.
- ipaddr 5y agoSo you assert that moving Tim to another company would see that company grow as the same rate? Steve Jobs setup Apple with so much success that I would have given half of Tim's salary to Steve's estate and still felt that we are ripping off of Steve. Tim Cook is a caretaker CEO who didn't add that value himself. He was smart enough not to do anything to take Apple off of the path it was on but lacks vision. Apple sits on boatloads of money that could have been used to secure a key vertical in the future.
- stanmancan 5y ago> So you assert that moving Tim to another company would see that company grow as the same rate? No, never said anything of the sort. > Tim Cook is a caretaker CEO who didn't add that value himself. The market cap begs to differ. He is far from the product visionary that Steve Jobs was but he is great at execution. There is a reason Jobs picked him as his successor.
- steelstraw 5y agoIf you randomly took someone off the assembly line and made them CEO, yes, that would paralyze the company. Conversely, putting Tim Apple on a cash register would just slow down 1 cash register.