> > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dicta

> > We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. > We have redefined competence, but we haven't redefined it to be measured in nebulous ways. Far from it. Nadella does one thing and he does it well: he makes number go up. And that's all that matters. I think Ziton would argue that this statement was supposed to be one level below "number going up". His argument seems to be not that number shouldn't go up, but that the number that goes up used to be based on "being good at stuff" but now isn't. His argument isn't that executives shouldn't focus on the money, but rather that the money has last track of what they were supposed to track. It's not the executive themselves, it's the economy. The executives would then be the outcome of skewed incentives by an economy that has disconnected from "useful stuff". This also happens to be my favorite take. So I may just be confirmation biased.