6 ms·

i hate this trend of ceos saying they take responsibility. Reminds me of lord farquuad, "some of you may die, but that is a price i'm willing to pay"

bryant 4y ago
They know what accountability is. That's why they never use the word. Yeah we know you're responsible for it, but how are you being held accountable for it? No one will remember in two years time, but my hope is it'll factor into candidates' decisions around whether to pursue a career with Stripe. If I've got senior executives without accountability, it's a distraction to my ability to deliver the product as well as to lead my own teams supporting their vision because it means I can't rely on them, and this outcome with absolutely no accountability behind it is a good enough reason for me to never want to join Stripe in the future.
- joegahona 4y ago
  Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided acceptable accountability in a situation like this?
  - bryant 4y ago
    Good examples of self accountability? Sadly not. (Edit: see huffmsa for a good example) Good examples of accountability to the board? All over. But boards care (by mandate) only about profit unless specified otherwise. There's no incentive for a board to care about whether people are put out on the street either; it's one of the major reasons for why unions exist and are successful: they provide a mechanism for accountability that ties adverse employee decisions back to future revenue loss. Tl;Dr: nope, and that's sadly by design because why would anyone be self-accountable when the consequences hit the wallet? I was hoping for a ray of light to pierce the dark.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      Unions have a range of outcomes for business success. Yes, some may hold management accountable and ultimately help companies; others screw over everyone besides long tenured employees. Suppose Stripe was unionized and somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022 which is the level they’re reducing headcount to now. Would the laid off employees been better off in that world without a year of Stripe employment, income, and benefits? It’s very unclear.
      - bumby 4y ago
        >somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022 Why would the union do this? It seems like a contrived example to prove a point. Unions would conceivably benefit from more hires because they would have more union membership. My anecdotal experience is that unions are a massive benefit to laid-off employees. Laid off employees were given 80% pay while they waited with a known re-hire date. In other cases, they are given priority when the company is looking to rehire with an unknown rehire date. Unions have downsides, for sure, but I don't think your example points them out here.
        shuckles 4y ago
        There are plenty of unions that keep supply low. Nearly every labor union in California, for example, has underfunded apprenticeship programs for exactly this reason. I’m surprised you aren’t aware this is a phenomenon. Unions answer to their current members, and there’s plenty of incentive to keep the current membership smaller. And my example was simply continuing the original poster’s insinuation that a union could have helped management avoid the over hiring mistake they were about to make by making the consequences of that mistake greater.
        bumby 4y ago
        To be clear, I was technically a non-union employee in a union shop so that may explain some of my ignorance. (Most of the white collar employees were non-union. The controls engineers were in a quasi-union status without actually joining the union. It was a weird situation because of some ongoing legal battles.) What you said does make sense though. The union apprentiships were extremely competitive, possibly because they were constrained to low numbers.
  - huffmsa 4y ago
    Satoru Iwata took a large pay cut when Nintendo was in a downturn in 2014ish
    - lucasyvas 4y ago
      Came here to say this one.
    - eganist 4y ago
      Good call. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      That's actually not uncommon in Japan. CEOs are basically married to their companies, and take their performance quite personally. Also, Japanese execs are paid substantially less than their US/UK counterparts. I doubt that it has happened in quite a while, but there have been CEOs that have committed suicide, when their companies failed. Doubt that will catch on, in the US.
      - rippercushions 4y ago
        The salaries of Japanese execs are indeed tiny by US standards. However, as Kalzumeus says, instead of paying money so you can buy status, Japanese companies give status directly: company cars with drivers, company villas, very generous expense accounts, etc etc.
        ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Similar to the US entertainment industry. A lot of the nice stuff that musicians and actors have, is actually owned by the company. Gilded cage, so to speak.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Not a CEO, but I'm reminded of the incident on a Navy vessel that struck a fishing boat and resulted in a number of fatalities. The captain was actually off the vessel at the time and not in charge. He still resigned because he was accountable to the decision on who he left in charge. (Tbf, I'm sure he was told to resign. But that's largely because the Navy has tried to institute a culture of accountability, albeit imperfectly)
  - remify 4y ago
    Patagonia has an interesting story about this. After having to layoff a lot of their staff in the 90s, Chouinard decided to switch his compagny values and reason of being. This article sums it up I guess, https://medium.com/@adamler/limiting-the-engines-of-growth-at-patagonia-b91e6c21bcef https://medium.com/@adamler/limiting-the-engines-of-growth-a...
  - thunky 4y ago
    The former CEO of Netflix, Patty McCord, who helped create a culture of firing people "when it was time", was fired as a result of said culture: https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-culture-and-it-ultimately-got-her-fired https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-cul... Remember, “companies don’t exist to make you happy. You know that, right? The business doesn’t exist to serve you. The business exists to serve your customers,” reminds McCord.
    - swyx 4y ago
      *former head of HR of Netflix she was apparently a big deal but i think you gave her more credit than deserved there heheh
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
colechristensen 4y ago
I think whatever a leader does which isn’t ritual suicide when announcing layoffs is going to get criticism. People in power hired when expecting an uptick and fired when expecting a downtick.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  That's kind of the fundamental problem of megawealth: You can't actually be held accountable for anything short of "ritual suicide". When a senior exec or CxO screws up, what conceivably could punish them? Lose their salary for a year? Ineffective. The wealthy make more from interest on their investments than they could ever need to live. What else could punish them? Their stock value going down? Oooh.. Mark Zuckerberg's personally lost $76B in the last 12 months, more than the entire shareholder value loss of Enron's collapse. Zucc still has so much money that an uncountable number of generations of his offspring will still never need to work again in their lives. Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring? The purpose is lack of accountability. Megawealth means you can spend every remaining day of your life screwing up, and besides doing something illegal that lands you in jail, you'll never suffer a consequence.
  - cbreynoldson 4y ago
    > Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring? I think this is the wrong question to ask -- "what end is this a means to anymore". One of the largest challenges in life is pursuit of meaning, and Zuck has, at least he thinks, found it. He still has consequences, but they are higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You could argue that those in charge should have enough at stake to feel the burn of a layoff like this, but this issue isn't dissimilar to biology. We often make local (and temporary) sacrifices on behalf our own bodies, knowing "we" will still be around afterwards to enjoy life and the removed parts won't (removing limbs, wiping out blood cells, organ removal, etc.). This isn't 1:1 with Zuck, because Zuck is more than just his role in Meta, but close enough.
cko 4y ago
"Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure."
- swyx 4y ago
  always a relevant quote in tech from one of three things: xkcd, silicon valley, and shrek
  - xnx 4y ago
    s/shrek/arrested development/ for me
tootie 4y ago
I read it as "this was our decision" as opposed to "this is our fault". Basically they are saying not to blame and middle managers, investors, board members or whatever.
pbreit 4y ago
What do you suggest?
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  just don't use that word, just state the facts.

bryant 4y ago

They know what accountability is. That's why they never use the word. Yeah we know you're responsible for it, but how are you being held accountable for it? No one will remember in two years time, but my hope is it'll factor into candidates' decisions around whether to pursue a career with Stripe. If I've got senior executives without accountability, it's a distraction to my ability to deliver the product as well as to lead my own teams supporting their vision because it means I can't rely on them, and this outcome with absolutely no accountability behind it is a good enough reason for me to never want to join Stripe in the future.

joegahona 4y ago
Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided acceptable accountability in a situation like this?
- bryant 4y ago
  Good examples of self accountability? Sadly not. (Edit: see huffmsa for a good example) Good examples of accountability to the board? All over. But boards care (by mandate) only about profit unless specified otherwise. There's no incentive for a board to care about whether people are put out on the street either; it's one of the major reasons for why unions exist and are successful: they provide a mechanism for accountability that ties adverse employee decisions back to future revenue loss. Tl;Dr: nope, and that's sadly by design because why would anyone be self-accountable when the consequences hit the wallet? I was hoping for a ray of light to pierce the dark.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    Unions have a range of outcomes for business success. Yes, some may hold management accountable and ultimately help companies; others screw over everyone besides long tenured employees. Suppose Stripe was unionized and somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022 which is the level they’re reducing headcount to now. Would the laid off employees been better off in that world without a year of Stripe employment, income, and benefits? It’s very unclear.
    - bumby 4y ago
      >somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022 Why would the union do this? It seems like a contrived example to prove a point. Unions would conceivably benefit from more hires because they would have more union membership. My anecdotal experience is that unions are a massive benefit to laid-off employees. Laid off employees were given 80% pay while they waited with a known re-hire date. In other cases, they are given priority when the company is looking to rehire with an unknown rehire date. Unions have downsides, for sure, but I don't think your example points them out here.
      - shuckles 4y ago
        There are plenty of unions that keep supply low. Nearly every labor union in California, for example, has underfunded apprenticeship programs for exactly this reason. I’m surprised you aren’t aware this is a phenomenon. Unions answer to their current members, and there’s plenty of incentive to keep the current membership smaller. And my example was simply continuing the original poster’s insinuation that a union could have helped management avoid the over hiring mistake they were about to make by making the consequences of that mistake greater.
        bumby 4y ago
        To be clear, I was technically a non-union employee in a union shop so that may explain some of my ignorance. (Most of the white collar employees were non-union. The controls engineers were in a quasi-union status without actually joining the union. It was a weird situation because of some ongoing legal battles.) What you said does make sense though. The union apprentiships were extremely competitive, possibly because they were constrained to low numbers.
- huffmsa 4y ago
  Satoru Iwata took a large pay cut when Nintendo was in a downturn in 2014ish
  - lucasyvas 4y ago
    Came here to say this one.
  - eganist 4y ago
    Good call. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    That's actually not uncommon in Japan. CEOs are basically married to their companies, and take their performance quite personally. Also, Japanese execs are paid substantially less than their US/UK counterparts. I doubt that it has happened in quite a while, but there have been CEOs that have committed suicide, when their companies failed. Doubt that will catch on, in the US.
    - rippercushions 4y ago
      The salaries of Japanese execs are indeed tiny by US standards. However, as Kalzumeus says, instead of paying money so you can buy status, Japanese companies give status directly: company cars with drivers, company villas, very generous expense accounts, etc etc.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Similar to the US entertainment industry. A lot of the nice stuff that musicians and actors have, is actually owned by the company. Gilded cage, so to speak.
- bumby 4y ago
  Not a CEO, but I'm reminded of the incident on a Navy vessel that struck a fishing boat and resulted in a number of fatalities. The captain was actually off the vessel at the time and not in charge. He still resigned because he was accountable to the decision on who he left in charge. (Tbf, I'm sure he was told to resign. But that's largely because the Navy has tried to institute a culture of accountability, albeit imperfectly)
- remify 4y ago
  Patagonia has an interesting story about this. After having to layoff a lot of their staff in the 90s, Chouinard decided to switch his compagny values and reason of being. This article sums it up I guess, https://medium.com/@adamler/limiting-the-engines-of-growth-at-patagonia-b91e6c21bcef https://medium.com/@adamler/limiting-the-engines-of-growth-a...
- thunky 4y ago
  The former CEO of Netflix, Patty McCord, who helped create a culture of firing people "when it was time", was fired as a result of said culture: https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-culture-and-it-ultimately-got-her-fired https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-cul... Remember, “companies don’t exist to make you happy. You know that, right? The business doesn’t exist to serve you. The business exists to serve your customers,” reminds McCord.
  - swyx 4y ago
    *former head of HR of Netflix she was apparently a big deal but i think you gave her more credit than deserved there heheh
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

colechristensen 4y ago

I think whatever a leader does which isn’t ritual suicide when announcing layoffs is going to get criticism. People in power hired when expecting an uptick and fired when expecting a downtick.

ryandrake 4y ago
That's kind of the fundamental problem of megawealth: You can't actually be held accountable for anything short of "ritual suicide". When a senior exec or CxO screws up, what conceivably could punish them? Lose their salary for a year? Ineffective. The wealthy make more from interest on their investments than they could ever need to live. What else could punish them? Their stock value going down? Oooh.. Mark Zuckerberg's personally lost $76B in the last 12 months, more than the entire shareholder value loss of Enron's collapse. Zucc still has so much money that an uncountable number of generations of his offspring will still never need to work again in their lives. Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring? The purpose is lack of accountability. Megawealth means you can spend every remaining day of your life screwing up, and besides doing something illegal that lands you in jail, you'll never suffer a consequence.
- cbreynoldson 4y ago
  > Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring? I think this is the wrong question to ask -- "what end is this a means to anymore". One of the largest challenges in life is pursuit of meaning, and Zuck has, at least he thinks, found it. He still has consequences, but they are higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You could argue that those in charge should have enough at stake to feel the burn of a layoff like this, but this issue isn't dissimilar to biology. We often make local (and temporary) sacrifices on behalf our own bodies, knowing "we" will still be around afterwards to enjoy life and the removed parts won't (removing limbs, wiping out blood cells, organ removal, etc.). This isn't 1:1 with Zuck, because Zuck is more than just his role in Meta, but close enough.

cko 4y ago

"Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure."

swyx 4y ago
always a relevant quote in tech from one of three things: xkcd, silicon valley, and shrek
- xnx 4y ago
  s/shrek/arrested development/ for me

tootie 4y ago

I read it as "this was our decision" as opposed to "this is our fault". Basically they are saying not to blame and middle managers, investors, board members or whatever.

pbreit 4y ago

What do you suggest?

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
just don't use that word, just state the facts.