There is a huge cost for this either way (severance packages, yes, but also lost productivity, reduced team coherence, etc), but that unfortunately doesn’t necessarily translate to a political cost for the managers involved in pushing the dumb idea, particularly if the CEO was pressuring everyone for cost savings. They will escape by saying, “We did it because everyone else is doing it and we were told it was the right thing. How were we to know that it wouldn’t work?”

▲

thewebguyd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> We did it because everyone else is doing it and we were told it was the right thing. How were we to know that it wouldn’t work?”

And why does the board/shareholders allow a CEO to continue into their position by just following everyone else?

I'm sure things are different at massive scales, but I run my own side business (photography). I watch the local market, and I have the attitude of "Whatever everyone else is doing, I want to do the opposite." and it's worked for me so far. The area doesn't need yet another "dark and moody" photographer with boring sepia edits, blurry photos with a film preset, and the same exact font and colors on the website as everyone else.

You don't become a pioneer in your industry by just cargo culting everyone else. It's low effort leadership and if I were on the board it certainly would not inspire my confidence in their ability to run a company. You're telling me not a single person at the table asked "Do we have these engineers' institutional knowledge documented somewhere before we fire them all??"

▲

boredatoms 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Boards are usually filled with ex-CEOs who also thought these dumb bets were good

	▲	drob518 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		And the board is pulling down $300k per year or more for sitting in maybe 11 meetings per year and participating in a “comp committee” where they just review data and recommendations from comp consultants and agree to whatever the consultants tell them. So, why rock the boat?

▲

ffsm8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You don't become a pioneer in your industry by just cargo culting everyone else.

You usually don't become a CEO of a long established company by being a pioneer either though...

You may be able to argue this particular case though, as he is a marketing guy and he was a pioneer in marketing as few others capitalized on social media/YouTube when he did.

But I feel like that's completely unrelated to how adjacent that's to what I'd consider a pioneer in a CEO position. Hence me pushing back a lil

	▲	drob518 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sometimes you do get the CEO gig for being a pioneer, but then the whole organization thwarts whatever you want to do by repeatedly saying “we don’t do it that way here” and dragging their feet until you get fired.

▲

drob518 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Let’s be honest about how the incentives work at large companies. The CEO probably has a $10m/yr comp package. The EVPs under him are $3m-$5m each. Nobody is really interested in making the company wildly successful, because that would entail lots of risk. Better to just keep everything moving along at the market average, don’t get fired, and collect the package every year. If you’re lucky, you do this for 3-5 years and you collect another $10-$20m termination package when they fire you. Then you hire an executive headhunter to get you the next gig and you repeat it. So, your main goal is to play defense. Don’t do anything risky that would get you fired. Pay McKinsey to bless whatever you want to do and if it blows up, blame them and call Accenture or Deloitte next time. Rotate between management consultants as required. Buy your tech from IBM, because nobody gets fired for buying IBM. Yes, your whole career will be MEH, but you can vacation all the time at your multiple houses in the Hamptons and Italy.

▲

mukbangpervert 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's the added cost that the best people are the least likely to return after a layoff.

▲

shuwix 2 hours ago | parent [-]

And those which return will have zero loyalty to firm.

Once you were dumped for AI gamble, you will never do the extra work, because you will probably be dumped in year or so, when someone else will get same or different stupid idea.

But it's not stupid idea, it's more like desperate attempt to remain in game in competitive market by doing what everyone else does. Idea crafted to final decision by people paid to see a bigger picture ... which unfortunatelly stop seeing smaller things which matters.

	▲	drob518 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Absolutely. And why would you? Companies spend lots of time talking about loyalty and teamwork, but they show their colors when they do these layoffs. Smaller companies, often still run by the founder, can be much better. The only large company I ever saw command any employee loyalty was Hewlett-Packard when Bill and Dave were still running things. At one point, in the 1970s, they needed to cut payroll by 10%, so they asked the employees: we can cut 10% of the people, or everyone can take a 10% temporary pay cut. The employees voted for the pay cut. So, every other Friday, the company was shut down and everyone, all the way up to the CEO took a 10% pay cut. When times improved, they bumped everyone back up to full pay and moved on. That created huge loyalty. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Bill and Dave passed the reins to others and eventually HP became like all the other companies and fell apart.
	▲	civet_java 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Perhaps if the rank and file at a company see personal consequence for those in the topmost posistions (salary deductions, demotions, or firing) in response to such glaring fuck ups that might even help mitigate some of these morale issues.

▲

bijowo1676 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

its because CEOs hire mckinsey/deloitte/BCG types for couple millions that give them a 60 slide powerpoint to justify reductions in force.

the same consultants can be blamed if decision backfires

▲

hello4263 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do u even bother about lost productivity. Come on dude how many firings need to happen before one has to see the reality. Just do the minimum job required for the position and move on. Loyalty should be both ways. But that's not the case