Posted by boringops-dan 3 hours ago
CxO salary isn't the market clearing price for the labor these people perform, it's more like power-leveling your friends in an RPG so that they can quest with you. Owners want their managers' interests to be with capital, so they have to give them some.
That is not correct.
Owner's don't align top management's interests with the owner's interests by giving them 'insane levels of compensation', they do it by giving the managements compensation in the form of shares of the company. It's not the volume of the compensation that aligns their interests, it's the type. Otherwise the 'top management' could just invest in the competitor and torpedo their own company making multiples of the original cash compensation as clients leave for the competitor.
IMO, if incentivizing good performance was really the goal, then companies would hire CEOs who are not already wealthy, pay them only enough base salary that they accept the job and can focus on it without worrying about paying bills, and compensate them mainly using illiquid, very long-dated stock options, which become worth a fortune if and only if the company is still around and profitable far into the future. It turns out that this is basically how founders are compensated, and it's a wonder that shareholders allow public-traded companies to be run in any other way.
I mean, the shareholders would most likely sue them out of existence for doing something like that.
Workers have a job because their labour produces value
Both statements can be true.
Um no, this doesn't happen. Nobody is paying useless people just to "show growth".
Why is management paid so much? Because they can make the argument "give me more, or I'll destroy the company", and actually be believable.
THAT is why it's so critical for CxOs to be aligned with owners' interests.
In a capitalist society, corporations are owned and operated by the wealthy, and they have complete control over the people at their jobs (and often outside it, too). The workers have little say in how things should be run, and cannot leave without fear of losing necessities like healthcare.
Democracy gives the people a say in how their government should be run. Socialism gives the workers a say in how their company should be run. We've managed to no longer be exploited by our government (but not completely), but we still have to live with being exploited by the wealthy.
Democracy is to Feudalism as Socialism is to Capitalism.
Kind of stems from every CEO except this latest one has been a. Some sort of mental, and b. some sort of sociopath. We can see this with our big name CEOs of course, but even these small-time CEOs have the same problem. They're lacking something human, but that is also part of what drives them, and keeps them, CEOs, I suspect. It's a job that requires you to not have any qualms about taking a group of people on a ride and then screwing them over for your benefit.
I very much do not think everyone agrees here, and using the Block layoffs as an example is pretty poor reasoning. It's the same kind of blind, "believe and report exactly what the companies say about these things, regardless of their incentives in saying these things" type of breathless clickbait tech journalism that is becoming extremely exhausting to wade through.
There's probably a good discussion in here somewhere but the way these flimsy arguments are presented as absolute fact is a really annoying style to read, personally.
This author wrote basically the complete opposite view barely more than a few months ago which makes it read even more like clickbait slop:
If that "bait" caused you to stop reading despite the fact that you probably agree with the author's sentiment, it's not very good bait.
How good, non-slop writing usually works is - you lead with your main point, and break it down further throughout the main article. The fact he contradicts his leading hook indicates slop and bad writing, not failure for me to understand whatever the hell the point of this nonsense is (other than to get clicks).
Perhaps a lot of indie devs hate executive and managerial stuff, then what if AEO could lead the business execution while being fed with some minimal project outcome objectives from the technicaly focused dev.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104898432...
Even better still: why are companies and orgs hierarchical? Why is there always a - for lack of a better word - dictator in charge? AI CEO is still an AI dictator.
We are permitted to vote, but democracy in everyday life, that's a bridge too far, chaos, riots in the streets, cats and dogs living together.
Maybe there are too many 'temporary embarrassed billionaires' here on HN, but you have more in common with the average bum in the street than any of 'that' class.
It's time that we as a people extend democracy towards the workplace and operate like a cooperation, working on the base of consensus. This is not a new idea, but it won't give you a chance to become a billionaire, and that's exactly the point.
This doesn’t seem rare to me.
or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia (can't find any discussion related to their coop model - there is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37799973 without any comment )
Parliamentary systems do not always have a President per se, but generally have a similar role of an individual who can quickly make decisions in emergencies and crises.
So in practice I’m not sure democracies are all that different in practice.
I work for a cooperative in an upper management role. My goal is for us to sustainably produce great products that serve the needs of our community while being a great place to work for our employees. I couldn't possibly care less what our market capitalization is, other than from the perspective of wanting to serve the biggest slice of our community that I can. But if another co-op stepped in and did that instead, I'd be equally happy.