7 ms·

When the company was doing well, the stock was doing great, etc etc, it was all good. Now that the story isn’t looking as great, we’re seeing execs get thrown u

When the company was doing well, the stock was doing great, etc etc, it was all good. Now that the story isn’t looking as great, we’re seeing execs get thrown under the bus. I’m not pushing any opinion on whether she did something wrong or unacceptable. But this is happening, just as Dave Clark “resigns” from Amazon, who also doesn’t have the same economic outlook they benefited from during the pandemic. Amazing how quickly these execs fall out of favor. The closest comparison I can think of from my big tech experience is the show “Man in the High Castle”, not an amazing show or anything, but I see parallels in the way it captures how Nazi henchmen were sitting high one minute and potentially murdered the next minute, or as soon as they fell out of favor. Yeah I know I sound absurd drawing any kind of comparison with Nazi Germany. But in my experience, it doesn’t matter who you are. You always have some boss, if you don’t deliver and meet their expectations, you’ll get thrown under the bus pretty rapidly. There’s more empathy in first level and skip level managers at Amazon than any director level. In my time at Amazon, I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships because it would help me ultimately do better whatever is right for the company. (I was a 11 year Amazon veteran before I left last year).

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
[flagged]
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Curious how even the most die-hard leftists seem to be a-ok with this. You should talk with some actual 'leftists'! They aren't at all what your sources say. Just read some leftist blogs or news sources or talk on HN. It turns out that the great majority of people of all stripes are reasonable, normal humans, and the those who tell you otherwise are the threats, the ones trying polarize and control others through hate - if people started having civil, respectiful conversations, the polarizers would be done.
  - K0SM0S 4y ago
    I've come to realize and eventually accept that it shouldn't be called "left/right" but rather "faster/slower". As we vote, we don't strike a ±10 on some symmetrical scale; rather we decide between 0-10 on some speed range. It correlates with the strong observation in poli. sci. that the older we get, the more we tend to vote conservatively (the younger we are, the less we stand to lose since a life has yet to be made and wealth be accumulated; conversely the older we get, the more stakes we have to lose if we upend the status quo). This seems true across cultures and generations, and corroborated by a slew of psych. data. Your "normal" range of people (able to have a reasonable discussion etc.) is a fat 70-ish % of the population, centered on some '5' speed mark. Astoundingly, these people both left and right are ignored by insanely polarized politics who mostly focus on the edges, the extremes, where electoral battles are seemingly won in a dirty side-effect of the uninominal voting scheme. Hint: rank-based choice is one easy solution to this problem, but notice how most parties around the democratic world seem to ignore that yet simple and easily computable fact as of the 21st century. What I mean is that we choose to mislabel and misunderstand the problems and their solution; somehow this insane polarized and wildly suboptimal situation is maintained by whoever's in charge at most political forces as we speak. I think it's time we bring back some engineering mindset in the design of societal governance, because we might just have been too busy making the internet to notice that the people in charge are no wiser than most of us; in fact they're pretty much the very type of human beings we usually don't listen to for serious matters —at least when we're on the 'good' timeline of humanity.
    - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
      > I think it's time we bring back some engineering mindset in the design of societal governance I'd love to see that, but for engineers (who generally value things like accuracy), being involved in politics is particularly distasteful. Instead, we live in world run by lawyers and moderated by marketing consultants, where the truth is unimportant, and discarded completely if it's a hurdle to winning. There are ways to fix this, even simple, well known ways (your suggestion of ranked choice voting being one of them), however the paradox is that those who have the power to implement them, are the ones who are benefiting from the status quo, thus have no incentive to fix things.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  The difference between countries and companies is competition. If you're in a dictatorial company and don't like the dictator, leave and work for a different company. If you're in a dictatorial country, you're stuck.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Also, it's your country. It's someone else's company.
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    >If you're in a dictatorial country, you're stuck. I don't think the only problem with dictatorships is that they don't allow their subjects to leave...
miketery 4y ago
> I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships Can you expand on this? I’m sure I’ve made mistakes in the past that had I had some mentorship or was more receptive I would’ve faired better.
- lazide 4y ago
  I’m reading it more as ‘Don’t get too close to the help, or your hand will waver when you need to start chopping’. Not ‘don’t get too close to your boss’.
nostrademons 4y ago
This is by design. To quote Steve Jobs: "When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." "In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say." I've heard some economic analysis that indicates that this is why executives are paid so much. As an exec, you're responsible for company performance, and if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did. To get people who actually understand & respect the risks (you don't want anyone who doesn't in an exec position), you have to pay them enough that they're basically set for life after a few years in the job, because in a few years they may find themselves unemployed and unemployable. (Of course, this creates another moral hazard issue, where once you've paid them all this money and given them this generous severance option, they have no incentive to actually do well, because they're already collecting their retirement plan. C'est la vie - this is why you get execs that make superficial changes while the company lumbers on to its demise, and then cache out with 9-figure parachutes when everything goes bankrupt.)
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did. It's your job to do something effective. The outcome can't 'have nothing to do with anything you did.'
  - version_five 4y ago
    I'd guess that macroeconomic conditions could have nothing to do with what an executive did. I'm sure there are cases where you're held responsible for absolute, rather than relative performance, so even if you did some brilliant thing they minimized downside, if the stock went down you're still screwed. This tangentially reminds me of the gas price stuff. I (while not a Democrat) see Biden et al getting a lot of flack for gas prices, while realistically there is not some magic lever that the US could throw that would change the overall economic conditions - I'm sure they could do better or worse, but prices would still be higher. The subtlety either gets lost on people, or they just use it for political gain and pretend its because of something the government did. Same for executives, you're presumably constantly fighting back attempts to take your spot, and any perceived problem will be leveraged to try and push you aside.
WoahNoun 4y ago
Dave Clark left to become CEO of Flexport. Maybe the retail conditions influenced this decision, but CEO of Flexport seems like an obvious fit for him.
wallfacer120 4y ago
"You always have some boss, if you don’t deliver and meet their expectations, you’ll get thrown under the bus pretty rapidly." It's almost like you live in a hierarchy or something. Like every other person in history.
riyadparvez 4y ago
> In my time at Amazon, I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships because it would help me ultimately do better whatever is right for the company. Can you please elaborate on this with some concrete examples, if possible?
renewiltord 4y ago
Dave Clark upgraded to CEO of Flexport. This is pareidolia.

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago

[flagged]

wolverine876 4y ago
> Curious how even the most die-hard leftists seem to be a-ok with this. You should talk with some actual 'leftists'! They aren't at all what your sources say. Just read some leftist blogs or news sources or talk on HN. It turns out that the great majority of people of all stripes are reasonable, normal humans, and the those who tell you otherwise are the threats, the ones trying polarize and control others through hate - if people started having civil, respectiful conversations, the polarizers would be done.
- K0SM0S 4y ago
  I've come to realize and eventually accept that it shouldn't be called "left/right" but rather "faster/slower". As we vote, we don't strike a ±10 on some symmetrical scale; rather we decide between 0-10 on some speed range. It correlates with the strong observation in poli. sci. that the older we get, the more we tend to vote conservatively (the younger we are, the less we stand to lose since a life has yet to be made and wealth be accumulated; conversely the older we get, the more stakes we have to lose if we upend the status quo). This seems true across cultures and generations, and corroborated by a slew of psych. data. Your "normal" range of people (able to have a reasonable discussion etc.) is a fat 70-ish % of the population, centered on some '5' speed mark. Astoundingly, these people both left and right are ignored by insanely polarized politics who mostly focus on the edges, the extremes, where electoral battles are seemingly won in a dirty side-effect of the uninominal voting scheme. Hint: rank-based choice is one easy solution to this problem, but notice how most parties around the democratic world seem to ignore that yet simple and easily computable fact as of the 21st century. What I mean is that we choose to mislabel and misunderstand the problems and their solution; somehow this insane polarized and wildly suboptimal situation is maintained by whoever's in charge at most political forces as we speak. I think it's time we bring back some engineering mindset in the design of societal governance, because we might just have been too busy making the internet to notice that the people in charge are no wiser than most of us; in fact they're pretty much the very type of human beings we usually don't listen to for serious matters —at least when we're on the 'good' timeline of humanity.
  - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
    > I think it's time we bring back some engineering mindset in the design of societal governance I'd love to see that, but for engineers (who generally value things like accuracy), being involved in politics is particularly distasteful. Instead, we live in world run by lawyers and moderated by marketing consultants, where the truth is unimportant, and discarded completely if it's a hurdle to winning. There are ways to fix this, even simple, well known ways (your suggestion of ranked choice voting being one of them), however the paradox is that those who have the power to implement them, are the ones who are benefiting from the status quo, thus have no incentive to fix things.
nostrademons 4y ago
The difference between countries and companies is competition. If you're in a dictatorial company and don't like the dictator, leave and work for a different company. If you're in a dictatorial country, you're stuck.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Also, it's your country. It's someone else's company.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  >If you're in a dictatorial country, you're stuck. I don't think the only problem with dictatorships is that they don't allow their subjects to leave...

miketery 4y ago

> I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships Can you expand on this? I’m sure I’ve made mistakes in the past that had I had some mentorship or was more receptive I would’ve faired better.

lazide 4y ago
I’m reading it more as ‘Don’t get too close to the help, or your hand will waver when you need to start chopping’. Not ‘don’t get too close to your boss’.

nostrademons 4y ago

This is by design. To quote Steve Jobs: "When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." "In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say." I've heard some economic analysis that indicates that this is why executives are paid so much. As an exec, you're responsible for company performance, and if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did. To get people who actually understand & respect the risks (you don't want anyone who doesn't in an exec position), you have to pay them enough that they're basically set for life after a few years in the job, because in a few years they may find themselves unemployed and unemployable. (Of course, this creates another moral hazard issue, where once you've paid them all this money and given them this generous severance option, they have no incentive to actually do well, because they're already collecting their retirement plan. C'est la vie - this is why you get execs that make superficial changes while the company lumbers on to its demise, and then cache out with 9-figure parachutes when everything goes bankrupt.)

wolverine876 4y ago
> if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did. It's your job to do something effective. The outcome can't 'have nothing to do with anything you did.'
- version_five 4y ago
  I'd guess that macroeconomic conditions could have nothing to do with what an executive did. I'm sure there are cases where you're held responsible for absolute, rather than relative performance, so even if you did some brilliant thing they minimized downside, if the stock went down you're still screwed. This tangentially reminds me of the gas price stuff. I (while not a Democrat) see Biden et al getting a lot of flack for gas prices, while realistically there is not some magic lever that the US could throw that would change the overall economic conditions - I'm sure they could do better or worse, but prices would still be higher. The subtlety either gets lost on people, or they just use it for political gain and pretend its because of something the government did. Same for executives, you're presumably constantly fighting back attempts to take your spot, and any perceived problem will be leveraged to try and push you aside.

WoahNoun 4y ago

Dave Clark left to become CEO of Flexport. Maybe the retail conditions influenced this decision, but CEO of Flexport seems like an obvious fit for him.

wallfacer120 4y ago

"You always have some boss, if you don’t deliver and meet their expectations, you’ll get thrown under the bus pretty rapidly." It's almost like you live in a hierarchy or something. Like every other person in history.

riyadparvez 4y ago

> In my time at Amazon, I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships because it would help me ultimately do better whatever is right for the company. Can you please elaborate on this with some concrete examples, if possible?

renewiltord 4y ago

Dave Clark upgraded to CEO of Flexport. This is pareidolia.