4 ms·

"catastrophically restrict the pool of applicants" This is amusing, but false. This is similar reasoning to why CEO's should make 10-20million dollars a year,

by 001sky 13y ago

"catastrophically restrict the pool of applicants" This is amusing, but false. This is similar reasoning to why CEO's should make 10-20million dollars a year, rather than say...$10MM/yr. There is actually no shortage of people to be the CEO of any company (or the top rank in any hierarchy) and truth be told, Boards of Directors could not tell the difference for 9/10 candidates. As the saying goes, "graveyards are filled with the people thought previously indispensible". And empirical examples abound. Just imagine Apple without Steve Jobs, or Yahoo without whoever the guy was before Marissa Mayer. The only thing keeping quality applicants out of the SEC is power, presitige, and respect. There are many jobs that people work for low pay (eg Academia) provided that their social status is secure.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
So when a company fails, the CEO deserves little/none of the blame?
ahomescu1 13y ago
> Just imagine Apple without Steve Jobs Ironically, Steve Jobs is the best counterexample, IMHO. He took a failing company and propelled it to market leader, launching several great products (the iPod, iPhone, iPad; disclaimer: I'm not a particular Apple fan and don't own any of these devices, but I have to give credit where it's due). We'll see where Apple is going from now on, but my bet is they're never going to have huge hits like the iPhone again; instead, they'll just keep doing incremental updates of their current products. Another good example is Bill Gates. Regardless of the man's moral qualities (or lack thereof), he was great at running Microsoft. After Gates left, Ballmer has only been dropping the ball on everything except consoles. Apple and Google are slowly but surely taking Microsoft down (how many people own Windows Phones, versus Android or iPhones?). It may seem easy to keep a profitable company going as usual, but it's really hard to take a failing one or a startup and make it succeed.

by 001sky 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

So when a company fails, the CEO deserves little/none of the blame?

ahomescu1 13y ago

> Just imagine Apple without Steve Jobs Ironically, Steve Jobs is the best counterexample, IMHO. He took a failing company and propelled it to market leader, launching several great products (the iPod, iPhone, iPad; disclaimer: I'm not a particular Apple fan and don't own any of these devices, but I have to give credit where it's due). We'll see where Apple is going from now on, but my bet is they're never going to have huge hits like the iPhone again; instead, they'll just keep doing incremental updates of their current products. Another good example is Bill Gates. Regardless of the man's moral qualities (or lack thereof), he was great at running Microsoft. After Gates left, Ballmer has only been dropping the ball on everything except consoles. Apple and Google are slowly but surely taking Microsoft down (how many people own Windows Phones, versus Android or iPhones?). It may seem easy to keep a profitable company going as usual, but it's really hard to take a failing one or a startup and make it succeed.