Big Company CEOs Just Aren’t Worth What We Pay Them
the research also suggests that we might not really be getting the brightest and best talent at the top because the tools and processes used to identify candidates are either limited or downright faulty. There is simply too much emphasis on past performance, personal recommendation, unstructured interviewing, an unwillingness to ask really difficult and searching questions and that more dangerous selection criterion of all – gut instinct. Worryingly, it seems that the headhunters and in-house recruiters charged with hiring occupants of the corner office may be relying too much on perception and too little on good, hard facts. The paper points out that CEOs who win prestigious industry awards constantly out-earn those that don’t. Yet the stocks of the companies the award winners head up consistently underperform in comparison to those of their less publicity hungry peers.
Genuinely out of curiosity here: what does a CEO of a company this big do in their day-to-day work? I can picture what a developer, a designer, a project manager, a writer, a QA tester, a marketer might do… But have absolutely no concept of what a CEO does here.
I’d say it’s like half meetings. and the other half is prepping for meetings. In office and out of office too, dinner, golf, etc. Small meetings like with the other C positions, mid level mgt, to large meetings like conferences. Pretty much from mid-size company and up, it’s all just meetings. And when shit hits the fan, they get to decide on which shit tastes better.
Types of meetings change too. Like if you want more cash, which companies usually do, you’re on constant hunt for investment meetings and networking. And generally the entire time, various companies will try to approach your company (or you) to setup a meeting so they can say how wonderfully helpful their company is for your company. Sometimes you agree to those meetings and sometimes you don’t. Again, even as a mid sized company, you likely get enough requests for meetings that you literally can’t book all of them. So you get more C levels to delegate some of those meetings for you and then you have meetings with your C levels. And as you grow, you try to weed out less important ones. And you do that through… networking.
Everything kinda keeps looping back to networking.
Imagine you’re playing CK3 or any grand strategy 4X game. Networking is like allies. You can just get whole bunch of allies to attacc other kingdoms even if you’re weak. That’s the power of networking. And every click of a button to do something is like a meeting. You want to build a fort? In CK3, click. In IRL, meeting.
Nothing. Even the most boot licking sycophants point out most of a CEO’s day is just pointless meetings that don’t need to happen. Occasionally a crisis comes up and a CEO will have to do something, or the odd CEO will give themselves actual duties, but that’s not a day to day thing.
As much as I want to agree with you, and for as much cynicism and general dislike I have towards manager-types… I find it hard to believe these freaks do nothing all day.
I just find it difficult to see that shareholders and investors would allow for these massive salaries for roles that do nothing.
And to be clear – I want to agree. I feel like you’re right. I definitely assume CEOs do nothing. But I just don’t think that can really be the case!
Which is why I asked, I suppose; I want to know whether I’m right in assuming that these guys are, in fact, as useless as they seem.
They’re not useless. They’re just there as a representative for shareholders and their job is to wring out the greatest value out of the company.
That means picking out the best moments to invest, hire more assets, fire the disposables etc.
They’re the gamblers using other people’s money to make more money.
I would be surprised if this didn’t hold true for many companies, especially when adjusting for inflation.
It’s a tale as old as time.
🏴☠️🫡
I’m not sure how that solves the problem.
Less income = EA goes out of business.
That can only be a net positive. Only good games I’ve bought from them are Fallen Order and Survivor.
EA is considered to be relatively okay place for devs to work at - no crunch, okay salary, predictable environment. It won’t be automatically replaced by a better one.
I do know that if I eat them, I will no longer be hungry.
he looks like a villain
the TALL version of the CEO Compensation history vs Worker compensation history chart they showed is the best way they could have laid that info out in order to really show the discrepancy lmao
