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Taking responsibility is more than just admitting reponsibility. It is also about bearing the consequences. Such as, if you broke something, you fix it. If you
by mongol 4y ago
Taking responsibility is more than just admitting reponsibility. It is also about bearing the consequences. Such as, if you broke something, you fix it. If you lost something, you pay up to replace it. Or similar. A manager usually can't fix a problem themselves though. But unless they pay a cost for their mistakes, they are not really taking responsibility. Then they just pay lip service to the word.
- JohnAaronNelson 4y agoThank you. Saying “my bad” is the first step. Fixing it afterwards is what good people do. When someone is accused of a crime, they can plead innocent or guilty. That is step one. There are more steps after that…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- s1artibartfast 4y agoFor a CEO, the next step is trying to get the business back on track and restore stock price. I think that his crazy to think Zuckerberg will not try to do that.
- miiiiiike 4y agoWhat do you suggest?
- jjulius 4y agoAdmit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship, or you don't know which direction to go, and then let someone else do it.
- nomel 4y ago> Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship This makes the assumption that the current path was the only, and best, path, and that the CEO doesn't see a better path in the distance, or some danger immediately ahead. Most of the big tech companies were made by people who ignored the crowds yelling at them to keep going straight. And, many of the failed behemoths of today did just that.
- kachnuv_ocasek 4y agoCutting bonuses, for example?
- miiiiiike 4y agoAgreed. If I fuck up and fire people, I'm not taking home a bonus.
- mikkergp 4y agoWouldn't that mostly impact just the executives and not Mark Zuckerberg himself? He did seem to get a 23 million dollar bonus last year, but that's peanuts compared to his net worth.
- blsapologist42 4y agoZuck already doesn't get any salary or bonus.
- bink 4y agoHe gets $1 in salary but his total comp is in the tens of millions.
- ForHackernews 4y agoThere was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions (like sinking billions into white whale VR projects), but no longer.
- smsm42 4y agoAFAIK Facebook ownership has been setup in a way that nobody can fire Zuck, and investors were fully aware of it when investing.
- Xcelerate 4y ago> There was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions This is still by far the most common case, and in fact it is probably becoming more common because large index funds have recently increased requirements related to ownership share structuring (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/05/sp-and-ftse-russell-on-exclusion-of-companies-with-multi-class-shares https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/05/sp-and-ftse-russe...). In this specific case though, the investors knew that Zuck had complete control and they decided to invest regardless, so I do not have any sympathy for their complaints.
- codeisawesome 4y agoDoes this mean Facebook wouldn’t be allowed to list in this index if it tried today?
- Kaytaro 4y agoTaking responsibility would be putting himself on the chopping block. I don't blame him for not doing so, but that's what that word means to me.
- hamburglar 4y agoWhat does zuck losing his job look like? He just stops collecting a salary? His stock stops vesting? Does he have to relinquish all his ownership? I can’t imagine anything short of that would affect him in any appreciable way, and that doesn’t seem like a reasonable result of “getting fired.” If I got fired today, all my stock would still belong to me.
- Animatronio 4y agoHave you ever quit your job over a mistake you made - say a bug you introduced in your code? That would also be taking responsibility.
- jjulius 4y agoLife is a lot more nuanced than, "If bug in code, then lose job". Your hypothetical depends on the severity of the bug in the code. Edit: In this instance, the "bug" led to 11,000 people losing their jobs.
- Kaytaro 4y agoIf a mistake I made resulted in thousands of people losing their jobs who wouldn’t consider it? At the very least I wouldn’t lie about “taking responsibility” if I had no intention.
- Animatronio 4y agoThe only mistake was hiring too many people in the first place, way way beyond what was really necessary. I suppose that gave them false hopes of being forever employed by Fb, aka millionaires in the making. I know being fired stings like hell, but it just a job, a limited time contract. Hopefully some good startups will come out of this whole situation.
- musictubes 4y agoI dunno, think Zuck losing however may billions of dollars of net worth is a pretty stiff consequence. He didn’t have to take responsibility but did. He also literally paid for the consequences.
- ForHackernews 4y agoIs it, though? On paper, I've lost about 35% of my net worth in the recent market downturn, and it hasn't affected my life even the slightest. Maybe it's different if it's your own company and your ego is tied up in the stock price, but some numbers in a brokerage account going down doesn't feel like a "stiff consequence" to me.
- runarberg 4y agoA billionaire that looses half their net-worth is still a billionaire. They still hold more money than you can dream of, they still hold more power then you can imagine. It is not the same for a billionaire to loose money as it is for you or me. To take a concrete example. Elon Musk could just close down Twitter right now, and waste away his 44 bn USD he spent on it. After that squander, he would still be the richest man on the planet.
- smsm42 4y agoTrue, but what should happen instead? If losing lots of billions won't be enough, what would be?
- runarberg 4y agoidk. If this many people were to loose their jobs under my authority, I think I would at the very least loose my job. But perhaps there also ought to be a class action law suite, workers should be able to sue a negligent business leaders that costs them their jobs, similar how a shareholder can sue for lost profits. But honestly a business leader that screws up so bad, should probably loose all their wealth, like 100%.
- 4y ago
- tshaddox 4y agoWhat specific consequence would you expect him to bear? It's not like there's any meaningful financial consequence that he would actually feel. He ain't gonna know what food insecurity or the specter of medical bankruptcy feels like. Should he impose some consequence on himself, like he only gets to spend $1 million on leisure over the next year?
- jjulius 4y ago>What specific consequence would you expect him to bear? If your decisions lead to 11,000 people losing their jobs, and you "take responsibility for that", then you should be 11,001. Edit: Happy to take the down votes, but also happy to have a dialogue around why this might be a flawed take.
- brianpan 4y agoI'm no fan of Zuck, but what did he do in this case but create a company that provided a lot of jobs, then made some bad forecasting decisions that resulted in losing some of those jobs? Plenty of CEOs have blamed the economy, the pipeline, the customers, the competition, the weather, etc. He's accepting he made some decisions that over-extended the company and as a result they have to make difficult layoffs. (Which has happened at every company I've been a part of and is happening at many other companies just in the past week.)
- iepathos 4y agoThere is always employee turnover in business, this is normal and employees are never guaranteed lifetime employment or the CEO quits too, that's silly. Standard part of all contracts with US companies is an at will clause stating that employees can be terminated at will without reason except for an illegal one. The people losing their jobs should thank Zuck for the time he did employ them, the chance he took on them, and also for the generous severance packages he's giving them during a general economic downturn.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoWhy? What if your decisions lead to hiring 100k, and -10k in a downturn. Is that a net good or not? What if you want to hang on, and hope to hire more in the future?
- ff317 4y agoResponsibility actually is just admitting fault, IMHO. It's accountability that's all about paying the cost for the fault.