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When did we decide the only people who could be CEOs had to be blessed with magic CEO-dust or whatever, and must be showered with cash because there aren't enou

When did we decide the only people who could be CEOs had to be blessed with magic CEO-dust or whatever, and must be showered with cash because there aren't enough people so-dusted and they're apparently impossible to train unless they've had just the right pedigree from birth? Is there really no-one at the company who could do the job and would be happy to take a promotion and a "mere" $1M salary? It's not fucking brain surgery, normal people can figure it out, and they used to. It's just a job. In Mozilla's case especially, such a gamble ("gamble"—I really don't think it's that out-there) seems eminently worth it, since they've been treading water at best for over a decade. What's the worst that can happen? They fail? Already happening. I suspect this entire trend (across the economy, not just at Mozilla) is due to some combo of our modern intense aversion for taking responsibility for anything whatsoever, and pervasive self-dealing in the management class. Board won't replace the "right" kind of person with the "wrong" kind because it's Simply Not Done—why, if anyone in the top half of the intelligence bell curve and an OK work ethic could do their jobs with just a little experience and training, they might no longer command such insane salaries! Can't have that. But, I'm open to the possibility that it did in fact become unworkable, for some reason I don't know about, to just train people into these positions as-needed, and in fact we do have to pay stupid amounts of money to a tiny, incestuous c-suite class who are the only possible candidates for these roles, or else everything will fall apart.

_8j50 4y ago
Again with this sentiment, you're not paying the CEO. "We" didn't decide that, the people with the 3M decided that person's services was worth that amount and it is their money to spend or waste as they see fit.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  You get that I'm using that a touch poetically, which is a common usage of "we" in this kind of context, right? I.e. "what changed such that this is now how society operates, even though it seems kinda worse than how it operated before?" I (obviously?) don't mean that we all got together and decided this, and that only a small set of probably-biased-by-their-own-interests people are the ones making the decisions is exactly one of the possible reasons for it that I highlighted, making it (surely?) even clearer what my post was about.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    Cool story bro. You should just start your own company and get a CEO and pay her $40k.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > "Is there really no-one at the company who could do the job and would be happy to take a promotion and a "mere" $1M salary?"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I want to reserve my response until you clarify who 'we' refers to. I just do not want to assume.
tmpz22 4y ago
You don't have to hand wave a CEO as just magic dust. At least on paper the CEO is there for their ability to network at the highest of levels whether that is to recruit other executives, raise capital, predict global strategy, whatever. Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the American CEO institution you have to understand their first and primary argument is that they can still do things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke filled room where "big deals get done".
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the American CEO institution you have to understand their first and primary argument is that they can still do things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke filled room where "big deals get done". Sure—and I'm serious that I'm open to the possibility that something actually did change about the business landscape for non-shitty (i.e. not corruption or principal-agent-problem) reasons such that it's in fact true that there's a big advantage to hiring from the small pool of acceptable CEO candidates that justifies giving them entire train cars full of cash, but it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that way and things were... basically fine. Not that there weren't huge advantages to being in the "right" set, or whatever, as there has been in any time and place, but that it seems like for the specific case of CEOs it used to be more acceptable to train up existing employees, who didn't start their employment with the company somewhere in the top-exec echelon, into those kinds of roles, which behavior seems like it would act as a pretty effective relief valve on CEO comp getting out of control. What's going on now sure looks like what would happen if the people in charge of hiring for these roles had a strong interest in keeping the compensation extremely high. But it's still possible there's something else going on, and there are good, non-corrupt motivations at work.
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    > it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that way I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of corruption in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street in the 90s. People in power grasping community resources as their own is nothing new to humankind. Its still worth being passionate about and rebelling against. While the general theme of the corruption may be similar its still eventful that it is occurring in new areas and in new ways (i.e. SPACs, ICOs).

_8j50 4y ago

Again with this sentiment, you're not paying the CEO. "We" didn't decide that, the people with the 3M decided that person's services was worth that amount and it is their money to spend or waste as they see fit.

yamtaddle 4y ago
You get that I'm using that a touch poetically, which is a common usage of "we" in this kind of context, right? I.e. "what changed such that this is now how society operates, even though it seems kinda worse than how it operated before?" I (obviously?) don't mean that we all got together and decided this, and that only a small set of probably-biased-by-their-own-interests people are the ones making the decisions is exactly one of the possible reasons for it that I highlighted, making it (surely?) even clearer what my post was about.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  Cool story bro. You should just start your own company and get a CEO and pay her $40k.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > "Is there really no-one at the company who could do the job and would be happy to take a promotion and a "mere" $1M salary?"
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I want to reserve my response until you clarify who 'we' refers to. I just do not want to assume.

tmpz22 4y ago

You don't have to hand wave a CEO as just magic dust. At least on paper the CEO is there for their ability to network at the highest of levels whether that is to recruit other executives, raise capital, predict global strategy, whatever. Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the American CEO institution you have to understand their first and primary argument is that they can still do things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke filled room where "big deals get done".

yamtaddle 4y ago
> Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the American CEO institution you have to understand their first and primary argument is that they can still do things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke filled room where "big deals get done". Sure—and I'm serious that I'm open to the possibility that something actually did change about the business landscape for non-shitty (i.e. not corruption or principal-agent-problem) reasons such that it's in fact true that there's a big advantage to hiring from the small pool of acceptable CEO candidates that justifies giving them entire train cars full of cash, but it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that way and things were... basically fine. Not that there weren't huge advantages to being in the "right" set, or whatever, as there has been in any time and place, but that it seems like for the specific case of CEOs it used to be more acceptable to train up existing employees, who didn't start their employment with the company somewhere in the top-exec echelon, into those kinds of roles, which behavior seems like it would act as a pretty effective relief valve on CEO comp getting out of control. What's going on now sure looks like what would happen if the people in charge of hiring for these roles had a strong interest in keeping the compensation extremely high. But it's still possible there's something else going on, and there are good, non-corrupt motivations at work.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  > it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that way I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of corruption in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street in the 90s. People in power grasping community resources as their own is nothing new to humankind. Its still worth being passionate about and rebelling against. While the general theme of the corruption may be similar its still eventful that it is occurring in new areas and in new ways (i.e. SPACs, ICOs).