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Hiring a Boeing CEO must be pretty hard right now because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work (like testifying to a hostile congress and

by creato 2y ago

Hiring a Boeing CEO must be pretty hard right now because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work (like testifying to a hostile congress and dealing with criminal liability on behalf of Boeing), and is likely to be blamed for decades of mismanagement coming to the surface now. Said another way: I’d demand a lot more in compensation to be CEO of Boeing than NVIDIA (or any other role for that matter).

vkou 2y ago
> because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work I'm ready to do it for a mere 5 mill/year (less than a sixth of the incumbent), and I'll happily take all the blame for all my predecessor's failings, and more. Will I do a worse job than the incumbent? Maybe, maybe not, how the hell will anyone know?
- eru 2y ago
  Please feel free to make your pitch to whoever is in charge of hiring CEOs at Boeing.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I disagree that everyone is equally suitable for every job. Why should someone pay you £5m? What would you do better than anyone else?
  - consteval 2y ago
    They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. That's the whole point here - CEOs aren't paid proportionately like you or me.
    - eru 2y ago
      > They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. Usain Bolt can run 100m in around 9.58s, and gets paid a lot for that ability (indirectly via sponsors etc). Assume I can run half as fast, say 100m in 19s; do I 'deserve' half of Bolt's fame and half of his sponsorships? Similarly, you can't hire five 20% generals to put in charge of your army, and expect the same result as hiring one 100% general. Or try hiring five 20% novelists or film makers or artists or actors etc. > That's the whole point here - CEOs aren't paid proportionately like you or me. Yes, and pay _not_ being proportional to ability is common and normal in all kinds of fields. It's nothing specific to CEOs. If anything, pay being (even approximately) proportional to ability is probably the exception.
      - consteval 2y ago
        I would agree that pay not being proportional is common because as you get closer to the skill ceiling the job becomes more difficult. You need more amount of effort/expertise/knowledge per unit of skill. However, the jobs you listed are creative jobs. Not methodical ones. A filmmaker, truly, can never be replaced because he is his brain. He invented worlds nobody else could. A CEO, however, does not make products generally. Nor does he come up with new things. He's a face, a leader, and not much beyond that. He could easily be replaced with an algorithm - if humans were receptive to that. They're not, unfortunately. So for now we need a warm body. Who that body actually is... meh, not really important. Best case, pick someone tall, white, and handsome. That usually works out.
        eru 2y ago
        > A CEO, however, does not make products generally. Nor does he come up with new things. He's a face, a leader, and not much beyond that. He could easily be replaced with an algorithm - if humans were receptive to that. They're not, unfortunately. So for now we need a warm body. Who that body actually is... meh, not really important. Best case, pick someone tall, white, and handsome. That usually works out. And yet, we see companies opt for highly paid CEOs. Sure, you can claim that boards (or whoever picks CEOs) to be all in cahoots with each other. But we also don't see greedy, activist investors racing each other to force companies to replace highly paid CEOs with the kind of anonymous dolls you describe; even though they are otherwise quite happy to clash with incumbent management, and even replace them wholesale, when they get control. Usually with some other highly paid and experience people. Do you have any hypothesis as to why? > I would agree that pay not being proportional is common because as you get closer to the skill ceiling the job becomes more difficult. You need more amount of effort/expertise/knowledge per unit of skill. I'm not sure that's the right argument to make. I can't look into Usain Bolt's mind, but I don't think he'd be paid any less, even if hypothetically his running wouldn't take him any effort at all? For the other two (expertise and knowledge), how would you define them in such a way that your statement is not circular? I tend to see this as more of a case of marginal contribution. If you have a big, complicated machine that needs a tiny screw somewhere to work, and a normal screw costs 5 cents, but there's a fancy screw that enables the whole machine to be 1% more productive, the fancy screw might be worth up to ten million dollar a year, if your machine's output goes from 1 billion dollars a year to 1.01 billion dollars a year. (I say 'up to', because in practice it depends on the supply of fancy screws. If there are lots of suppliers in the market, competition will drive their price down to close to production costs, even if they still give you ten million dollar in increased productivity.) Similarly, perhaps a brand name CEO would only increase output by 1% over your hypothetical anonymous handsome guy, but that might still be worth millions a year. --- In any case, I would be quite baffled if famously greedy and supposedly short-termist shareholders, would leave money on the table by not replacing name brand CEOs with some anonymous doll, if that worked as well as you suggest.
jacknews 2y ago
boohoo. I'll take the role for a wildly discounted $20m. It would be hard to do much worse than the recent incompe .. uh, incumbents.
- coderatlarge 2y ago
  Whoever takes that job is also potentially signing up for years of litigation against them personally. 2k/hr lawyers for years add up fast :)
aziaziazi 2y ago
Do you mean miserable jobs should be paid more than easy one ? There’s a bunch of position salaries to reevaluate in the world…
- nlitened 2y ago
  No, they mean that a job which few people want (and are qualified) to do tend to have higher compensation. Supply and demand

by creato 2y ago

vkou 2y ago

> because whoever takes the job is signing up for some miserable work I'm ready to do it for a mere 5 mill/year (less than a sixth of the incumbent), and I'll happily take all the blame for all my predecessor's failings, and more. Will I do a worse job than the incumbent? Maybe, maybe not, how the hell will anyone know?

eru 2y ago
Please feel free to make your pitch to whoever is in charge of hiring CEOs at Boeing.
robertlagrant 2y ago
I disagree that everyone is equally suitable for every job. Why should someone pay you £5m? What would you do better than anyone else?
- consteval 2y ago
  They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. That's the whole point here - CEOs aren't paid proportionately like you or me.
  - eru 2y ago
    > They don't need to be better. In fact they just need to be 1/5th as good, and then it's worth it. Usain Bolt can run 100m in around 9.58s, and gets paid a lot for that ability (indirectly via sponsors etc). Assume I can run half as fast, say 100m in 19s; do I 'deserve' half of Bolt's fame and half of his sponsorships? Similarly, you can't hire five 20% generals to put in charge of your army, and expect the same result as hiring one 100% general. Or try hiring five 20% novelists or film makers or artists or actors etc. > That's the whole point here - CEOs aren't paid proportionately like you or me. Yes, and pay _not_ being proportional to ability is common and normal in all kinds of fields. It's nothing specific to CEOs. If anything, pay being (even approximately) proportional to ability is probably the exception.
    - consteval 2y ago
      I would agree that pay not being proportional is common because as you get closer to the skill ceiling the job becomes more difficult. You need more amount of effort/expertise/knowledge per unit of skill. However, the jobs you listed are creative jobs. Not methodical ones. A filmmaker, truly, can never be replaced because he is his brain. He invented worlds nobody else could. A CEO, however, does not make products generally. Nor does he come up with new things. He's a face, a leader, and not much beyond that. He could easily be replaced with an algorithm - if humans were receptive to that. They're not, unfortunately. So for now we need a warm body. Who that body actually is... meh, not really important. Best case, pick someone tall, white, and handsome. That usually works out.
      - eru 2y ago
        > A CEO, however, does not make products generally. Nor does he come up with new things. He's a face, a leader, and not much beyond that. He could easily be replaced with an algorithm - if humans were receptive to that. They're not, unfortunately. So for now we need a warm body. Who that body actually is... meh, not really important. Best case, pick someone tall, white, and handsome. That usually works out. And yet, we see companies opt for highly paid CEOs. Sure, you can claim that boards (or whoever picks CEOs) to be all in cahoots with each other. But we also don't see greedy, activist investors racing each other to force companies to replace highly paid CEOs with the kind of anonymous dolls you describe; even though they are otherwise quite happy to clash with incumbent management, and even replace them wholesale, when they get control. Usually with some other highly paid and experience people. Do you have any hypothesis as to why? > I would agree that pay not being proportional is common because as you get closer to the skill ceiling the job becomes more difficult. You need more amount of effort/expertise/knowledge per unit of skill. I'm not sure that's the right argument to make. I can't look into Usain Bolt's mind, but I don't think he'd be paid any less, even if hypothetically his running wouldn't take him any effort at all? For the other two (expertise and knowledge), how would you define them in such a way that your statement is not circular? I tend to see this as more of a case of marginal contribution. If you have a big, complicated machine that needs a tiny screw somewhere to work, and a normal screw costs 5 cents, but there's a fancy screw that enables the whole machine to be 1% more productive, the fancy screw might be worth up to ten million dollar a year, if your machine's output goes from 1 billion dollars a year to 1.01 billion dollars a year. (I say 'up to', because in practice it depends on the supply of fancy screws. If there are lots of suppliers in the market, competition will drive their price down to close to production costs, even if they still give you ten million dollar in increased productivity.) Similarly, perhaps a brand name CEO would only increase output by 1% over your hypothetical anonymous handsome guy, but that might still be worth millions a year. --- In any case, I would be quite baffled if famously greedy and supposedly short-termist shareholders, would leave money on the table by not replacing name brand CEOs with some anonymous doll, if that worked as well as you suggest.

jacknews 2y ago

boohoo. I'll take the role for a wildly discounted $20m. It would be hard to do much worse than the recent incompe .. uh, incumbents.

coderatlarge 2y ago
Whoever takes that job is also potentially signing up for years of litigation against them personally. 2k/hr lawyers for years add up fast :)

aziaziazi 2y ago

Do you mean miserable jobs should be paid more than easy one ? There’s a bunch of position salaries to reevaluate in the world…

nlitened 2y ago
No, they mean that a job which few people want (and are qualified) to do tend to have higher compensation. Supply and demand