Cutting bonuses, for example?

Zuck already doesn't get any salary or bonus.

He gets $1 in salary but his total comp is in the tens of millions.

Wouldn't that mostly impact just the executives and not Mark Zuckerberg himself? He did seem to get a 23 million dollar bonus last year, but that's peanuts compared to his net worth.

Compared with his net worth, or compared with the reduction in his net worth?

Both, I think. 23 million would be .023% or 100 billion and like .08% of 30 billion

Agreed. If I fuck up and fire people, I'm not taking home a bonus.

There was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions (like sinking billions into white whale VR projects), but no longer.

AFAIK Facebook ownership has been setup in a way that nobody can fire Zuck, and investors were fully aware of it when investing.

> There was a time when investors/the board could fire a CEO making terrible decisions

This is still by far the most common case, and in fact it is probably becoming more common because large index funds have recently increased requirements related to ownership share structuring (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/05/sp-and-ftse-russe...).

In this specific case though, the investors knew that Zuck had complete control and they decided to invest regardless, so I do not have any sympathy for their complaints.

Does this mean Facebook wouldn’t be allowed to list in this index if it tried today?

Taking responsibility would be putting himself on the chopping block. I don't blame him for not doing so, but that's what that word means to me.

Have you ever quit your job over a mistake you made - say a bug you introduced in your code? That would also be taking responsibility.

Life is a lot more nuanced than, "If bug in code, then lose job". Your hypothetical depends on the severity of the bug in the code.

Edit: In this instance, the "bug" led to 11,000 people losing their jobs.

If a mistake I made resulted in thousands of people losing their jobs who wouldn’t consider it? At the very least I wouldn’t lie about “taking responsibility” if I had no intention.

The only mistake was hiring too many people in the first place, way way beyond what was really necessary. I suppose that gave them false hopes of being forever employed by Fb, aka millionaires in the making. I know being fired stings like hell, but it just a job, a limited time contract. Hopefully some good startups will come out of this whole situation.

Ironically the only people who can hope to be forever employed are the execs running the ship into the ground.

What does zuck losing his job look like? He just stops collecting a salary? His stock stops vesting? Does he have to relinquish all his ownership? I can’t imagine anything short of that would affect him in any appreciable way, and that doesn’t seem like a reasonable result of “getting fired.” If I got fired today, all my stock would still belong to me.

Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship, or you don't know which direction to go, and then let someone else do it.

> Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the ship

This makes the assumption that the current path was the only, and best, path, and that the CEO doesn't see a better path in the distance, or some danger immediately ahead.

Most of the big tech companies were made by people who ignored the crowds yelling at them to keep going straight. And, many of the failed behemoths of today did just that.