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It's so bizarre, considering that the modern CEO's only job is to issue meaningless positive statements to shareholders. If you look at many top CEOs resumes,
by infotainment 2y ago
It's so bizarre, considering that the modern CEO's only job is to issue meaningless positive statements to shareholders.
If you look at many top CEOs resumes, they are almost always devoid of any real experience. People talk about replacing various jobs by AI, but I'm pretty sure an LLM could replace most CEOs and no one would notice.
- cess11 2y agoIt's someone who can take blame to protect branding and is easily replaced.
- infotainment 2y agoExactly; is someone who is essentially a replaceable scapegoat really worth millions per year in salary?
- cess11 2y agoSure, if it allows owners to stay in control and keep profiting from the people that perform the labour in the organisation. It's someone you can pin board and shareholder decisions on, as well as changes in market and accidents, that just goes away and lets some other people keep their power and profits instead of being accountable for their mistakes or lack of strategic performance.
- klipt 2y agoBut if it were just that, plenty of people would be willing to take the blame for less money. I think the problem is you have to hire someone highly qualified and with relevant experience to at least show you're doing due diligence, and those people aren't cheap.
- cess11 2y agoIt has to be someone who looks somehow impressive, it can't just be a random homeless person doing it for a meal, that would look like the enterprise is doing something criminal. Pay plays a part in that, it signals that the person is extraordinarily competent and all around great and important. In large corporations CEO:s aren't very important, it's just one person who mainly collects and structures information from people closer to the work and makes public appearances on behalf of the corporation and does paper shuffling required by the state and so on. It's not rocket surgery. Using this person to protect the reputation and image of shareholders and the board as well is a 'no-brainer' decision to make if your interests are well served by it.
- dash2 2y agoI very much dislike these threads where two people act like sockpuppets of a single not-very-advanced llm, agreeing with each other's views which are invariably exaggerated, uninformed and cynical. I've been seeing more of them recently; if you see one, downvote it. American capitalism has lots of problems. The idea that CEOs "almost always" have no real-world experience is hardly worth arguing against: "almost always" is meaningless rhetoric and "real-world" likewise (what counts as real-world experience for Google? WPP? Northrop Grumman?). Jensen Huang is mentioned literally at the top of this thread and is an obvious counterexample.
- cess11 2y agoSorry, I don't mean for my views to hurt your feelings. I find it obvious from the context that they were referring to celebrity CEO:s in global corporations and not Mom or Pop in some small mom-and-pop corner store. When I look at en.wikipedia on Huang it seems he graduated into a managing role and then founded Nvidia. By "real-world experience" I'd mean experience as a worker, but I can't answer for the person you're actually quoting. However, it's an interesting example. Clearly Huang has managed to promote an image to you that is very different from mine. As I see it, Nvidia is a main supplier of hardware for globally fashionable grifts and scams, like large portions of so called 'crypto' and 'AI'. I also expect Nvidia to be an important supplier in the war industry, and I'm sure it is in surveillance tyranny.
- dash2 2y agoHuang started as a chip designer and then founded a company developing chips. What other kind of work experience would be relevant? AI contains scams, but also obviously important real progress; your points about war and surveillance are pure mood affiliation and irrelevant to the topic at hand.
- cess11 2y agoProduction of chips, for example. One could argue that design is a form of administration rather than work. I'd say so called AI is largely a scam. It's wobbly databases with non-deterministic query languages dressed up as a substitute for intelligence. Email is similarly a scam. Through mail you send someone an item, which might or might not have some script on it. Email is very different, and it's largely used for spam, even though the name seems to say it is very similar. Is this what you call progress? No, I'm pointing out that Nvidia are supplying criminals and tyrants with the tools they need for their abusive and oppressive activities. I do not expect your mood to change from having this pointed out, rather the opposite, I expect you to already be somewhat aware of it. Personally, I try to avoid doing business with such people, and I would prefer to not be dependent on their enablers, though that is almost impossible for systemic reasons.
- SkiFire13 2y agoTo be fair if I were to be a scapegoat for Boeing there's no way I would do that for cheap.
- cootsnuck 2y agoWhen company valuations are fundamentally based on "faith to perform well", yes. It's a product of touting a speculative economy as one of "rational actors". CEOs function as mythological heroes more than anything. So there's no number too high to pay since even their defeat can be incorporated into the ongoing myth of the brand. It's very strange to me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bpodgursky 2y agoI don't want to be rude but you have no idea what you are talking about and clearly have 0 insight into the day-to-day of an actual CEO. It's fine to argue that a particular CEO is underperforming, it's often true, but very few of them are "underworking" by any reasonable definition.
- gardenhedge 2y agoEmpty rebuttal. Consider adding more substance to your comment. As a reader I have no idea which of you is correct.
- bpodgursky 2y agoI hear you, but this isn't my day job.
- earnesti 2y agoCEO's definitely are underworking. Maybe not CEO's of publicly traded companies, though.
- cess11 2y agoArguably CEO:s are administrators, not workers.
- roughly 2y agoHow’s this for a definition: the average CEO gets paid 350x what the average worker gets paid, so unless they’re generating 350x the value of the average employee, they’re underworking.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EnigmaFlare 2y agoIf they have 350 employees, then they double the company's profit, I suppose they just generated 350x times the value of an average employee. If they have more employees, they only need to increase it a smaller proportion to be generating 350x as much value.
- pie_flavor 2y agoIf it's so easy, why aren't you doing it? Presumably it requires some amount of investment to break into, but with such a high upside it's still massively +EV.
- Planktonne 2y agoSome people want to do work they find meaningful.
- paxys 2y agoThen why complain about how much someone else is getting paid?
- Planktonne 2y agoThe parent comment isn't complaining about the amount CEOs are paid, but the amount they are paid relative to the value provided.
- pydry 2y agoI dont know why on earth youd assume that the executive/board/CEO club is meritocratic or that it would be open to talented outsiders.
- maximus-decimus 2y agoThe job being easy to do and the job being easy to get are two completely different things.
- pie_flavor 2y agoSo how are new ones minted?
- consteval 2y agoBy luck and status. Right place right time. They have some experience, and they just so happen to know X, Y, Z (probably because their dad knew X-1, Y-1, Z-1 and so on) so they get in. Maybe they went to harvard or something.