You have a pretty one-dimensional view of a company's goal. Well, many have, especially the higher-ups in the US, of course, making those vision statements more of a joke than they ever were. But for some, companies have a responsibility towards their employees, customers and environment as well.

In your hyper-financialized viewpoint, the CEO's job should be to make as much money for him/herself as possible.

> In your hyper-financialized viewpoint, the CEO's job should be to make as much money for him/herself as possible.

No, the CEO is meant to optimize not for themselves, but for the owners of the company. If the CEO didn't do that, the board should fire them.

But what if the board are optimizing for themselves as well?

Then the board is breaking their fiduciary duty and the shareholders will sue them into oblivion.

How would you prove it? "We thought that these stock buybacks we put on the company credit card were for the good of the shareholders long term, it's a coinsidance that it happened to increase our compensation as well, sorry it didn't work out as we thought."

If you're curious to learn more then instead of debating in the abstract, it is worth learning more about:

a) how board members are compensated

b) what type of people are appointed to boards

A good start is https://www.investopedia.com/articles/wealth-management/0404...

I think you should get your sarcasm detector checked. He was referring to the recent surge of empty CEO statements built around the "full responsibility" cliche.

Sure, but when you look at the history of comments around this theme (CEO, layoffs), it seems pretty clear that people want a CEO to take responsibility in some other way that laying off staff.

I can't speak for everyone else but a lot of what I've seen is mockery of a meaningless statement that would have been better left unsaid.

Perhaps, but scanning the conversation thread here again, I see most people wanting to punish the CEO for steering the ship for a new reality in a way that includes layoffs.

"Reducing comp as punishment would also not make sense, for obvious reasons."

If leadership is financially incentivized for positive outcomes, why shouldn't they carry downside financial risk as well?

If a leader makes poor decision after another, they will be penalized (either in job prospects, having this job, or compensation).

Ultimately, the comp for the CEO is set by the board and that is determined by supply/demand (which inputes performance of the CEO). Penalizing someone for one mistake in anticipating the future would make a company so risk averse that returns would be very low - not a good outcome for the owners.

If that leader is a founder of a company with a dual-class stock, they won't

In that case, there's a natural incentive for the leader to do things that make the business successful long-term. It is in their best interest.

leadership's financial incentive is basically stocks which does carry the downside of losing value when the stock price goes down. The problem for us normals is that leadership gets paid life changing amounts of money every year, so losing a couple of millions is not that big of a deal.

> If your comment ("CEO takes full responsibility") is suggesting s/he should be fired or compensation reduced because of their misread of the future, that would be quite silly.

If he suffers no negative consequences then in what way is he taking responsibility? This is just meaningless psychobabble. He could not say it and it would be no different.

It's a reference to the Google CEO's statement about their layoffs and I think the point is that it's an empty platitude.

Only an empty platitude if one interprets it as meant for those laid off. But if you think about it as a message to remaining employees, the board, and to shareholders, it isn't an empty platitude at all.

Perhaps but even then it's still pointless. Over-hiring was a strategy to take advantage of easy money and layoffs are a strategy to clean it up when the well runs dry. The very act of laying people off indicates that you are taking responsibility for changing direction.

That said, when someone says they're taking full responsibility there's an implication that they're going to take on pain or consequences. I don't say I'm taking full responsibility for washing my car when it gets dirty. Not saying he should be fired or take a pay cut, just that he said something dumb and did a terrible job of reading the room.