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Yeah, I don't get the lust for blood that people have like clockwork whenever layoffs occur and the CEO is forthright about taking the blame. Would it be better

Yeah, I don't get the lust for blood that people have like clockwork whenever layoffs occur and the CEO is forthright about taking the blame. Would it be better if they handled it like Elon [1]? I don't recall people wondering aloud if Elon took a pay cut when that happened. Do we really think this is preferable to layoffs like Lattice, or Coinbase, or Stripe, and wish this style was more of the norm? [1] https://www.kron4.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2022/11/twitter-letter1-1.jpeg?resize=876,1127 https://www.kron4.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2022/11/tw...

haliskerbas 4y ago
Because the CEOs usually stay rich and the people who lose their jobs don't. And there's no rule stating that the CEO has to make 1000x what other people do. If you want to keep it that way, good on you. Some folks want something different and so they hold executives to a different standard!
williamsmj 4y ago
Read the letter again. This CEO is absolutely not forthright about taking the blame. He doesn't even speculate about root causes, much less assign blame. He describes the problem... "While our revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic, our costs have grown by even more as we geared up for a continued rate of growth that now looks unlikely. Additionally, so much of our organization was built for a paradigm of rapid growth, in terms of the roles, ratios, and structures we’ve put in place." ...but nowhere does he talk about why these things happened. He literally uses the passive voice top avoid taking responsibility ("our organization was built" not "I built"). You come away with the feeling this is a good letter in which he takes responsibility because he distracts you by spending the rest of the letter describing the details of the severance offer, which is completely orthogonal to the issue of root causes and responsibility.
- joegahona 4y ago
  I'll acknowledge you're correct (if slightly cynical) and I'm being naive (if optimistic). This is an interesting area that deserves further scrutiny and research -- I don't pretend to have the answer.

haliskerbas 4y ago

Because the CEOs usually stay rich and the people who lose their jobs don't. And there's no rule stating that the CEO has to make 1000x what other people do. If you want to keep it that way, good on you. Some folks want something different and so they hold executives to a different standard!

williamsmj 4y ago

Read the letter again. This CEO is absolutely not forthright about taking the blame. He doesn't even speculate about root causes, much less assign blame. He describes the problem... "While our revenue has grown by five times since the start of the pandemic, our costs have grown by even more as we geared up for a continued rate of growth that now looks unlikely. Additionally, so much of our organization was built for a paradigm of rapid growth, in terms of the roles, ratios, and structures we’ve put in place." ...but nowhere does he talk about why these things happened. He literally uses the passive voice top avoid taking responsibility ("our organization was built" not "I built"). You come away with the feeling this is a good letter in which he takes responsibility because he distracts you by spending the rest of the letter describing the details of the severance offer, which is completely orthogonal to the issue of root causes and responsibility.

joegahona 4y ago
I'll acknowledge you're correct (if slightly cynical) and I'm being naive (if optimistic). This is an interesting area that deserves further scrutiny and research -- I don't pretend to have the answer.