That truly means "taking ownership" of what happened.
The individuals leaving were not the ones who hired or authorized the hires without the evaluation of long-term viability for the organization. They were just doing their jobs.
There is a difference.
…and the stakes are even higher today if you count the number of people impacted by poor decisions.
Accountability means (from every definition I’ve found!) taking responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences.
Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves.
After all, no need to actually work hard making amends or doing better if you’re dead, eh?
And it can even make the person doing it somewhat of a martyr, even if they created the whole situation to begin with, as it can make it look like those calling for it or pushing for retribution were actually just looking for a scapegoat and the dead one is actually a victim.
My connotation has always been ritual suicide.
E.g. Seppuku in Japan, captains going down with the ship, ect.
The origin of the phrase in the west stems from the roman practice of military ritual suicide following defeat. It was more a matter of honor than seeking victimhood.
A captured general represented an embarrassment to the empire, provides the enemy with a hostage, and would likely be tortured to give up information. Suicide in defeat was honorable as it served the empire and denied the enemy leverage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Roman_militar...
That said, I think it is a huge stretch to translate this history to the context of CEO accountability.
If someone (going down the ship wise) doesn't get on a lifeboat when everyone else has already gotten off, then yeah it's probably more about avoiding actual accountability (aka having to stand and take responsibility/long term consequences).
Regarding Victimhood/Martyrdom, there are many apocryphal accounts and personal anecdotes one can throw out. You'll get stories anyone in senior leadership when a CEO gets pushed out, to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABshingura] (specifically Lord Asano), to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnaeus_Domitius_Corbulo], and many others.
Sometimes folks want blood, and they won't be satisfied until they get it. And often someone either stupidly volunteers (actually), or gets 'volunteered' by their boss.
Also, how is killing yourself quickly and (relatively) painlessly after a military failure NOT the relatively easy way out - instead of say, dying while fighting the enemy to the death (probably horribly disfigured and maimed in the process), or dying in torture while not giving anything up, or dying while trying to save the ship and the other crew, or returning in shame and being a social outcast, or dying after being shamed in trial followed by an execution, etc.
Literally all those other options can seem a whole lot harder than a gladius through the solar plexus at the moment. Also, notably, sometimes folks had 'help' on that last bit, though rarely was it featured prominently in the PR.
Seppuku - similar. Rather than 'living with dishonor' (aka being outcast from a insular and all encompassing society), or having to stand trial and defend yourself and getting shamed then executed anyway, etc. it's killing yourself 'with honor', so your family doesn't get their benefits taken and similarly outcast (as badly). Seppuku generally involves the second beheaded the person before they've had a chance to suffer much too, though there have been famous 'mistakes' made at times.
It also could be ordered by the Daimyo, Shogun, etc. and it was pretty common (from accounts at the time) for folks to be thrown under the bus and ordered to commit it if they didn't succeed at what the lord had ordered them to do or were just being inconvenient to the narrative. Including significant 'help' from seconds. Which is, well, pretty much the example of a scapegoat.
>Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves.
Yes there are differences in my examples. Captains are on boats, and Samurai are in Japan. I'm not trying to say they are identical in every way.
The common factor is that these actions are all seen as honorable positive within the context of the society where they took place.
I get that you might have your own personal take and values on these types of actions. People could have suffered more or made a more utilitarian Choice if their objective was the greater social good.
Yes, I'm sure many people have been made to fall on their sword as patsies. However, I don't think that changes the common understanding of the idiom, or how the practice was viewed in the historical context.
You may see it as the coward's way out to avoid living with shame or fixing your problems, which is fine. I just don't think it is an accurate depiction of how contemporaneous people viewed it. People did not look at a captain going down with the ship or a general falling on their Gladius as a coward dodging their responsibilities. I don't think most people today feel that way either, but obviously there are exceptions with you being one
Unless the Captain saw everyone off in lifeboats and then stayed on the ship (very unlikely), it’s far from what you are describing and I was clear on that.
I also pointed out that the actual reality on the ground is almost never what the mental image or PR is meant to instill, and is often (in reality) a way to take someone out somewhere and pin all the blame on them.
I very much doubt, for instance, in ANY of those examples I gave, they actually did what they were said to have done in the way and for the reasons they were said to have done it.
But there are situations where it definitely is the easier way out to do it that way literally.
Someone who gets into an obstinate fight with a boss over a minor issue, or who does something common and then when it turns out it’s a problem stands up and tries to defend it, and then gets fired, would be a common use of the idiom in my experience.
A Phyrric victory, ‘he picked that hill to die on’, he died tilting at windmills’, etc. could also be used.
I wonder if you hold this level of rigour towards your own failings and shortcomings, or if this desire is directed exclusively at everyone besides yourself.
People lost their livelihoods, and in the US, their access to affordable healthcare until they figure out a new solution or get a new job.
To be fair, it's only a pair of random internet forum posters who are complaining that this is not enough. There are plenty of people in this discussion arguing otherwise.
So, for those keeping track, Mr. Yuan is giving up about $300k in cash, but still receiving about $13M in stock. That's a 2.3% level of "accountability".
It also makes it hurt more when you are laid off and the illusion is broken.
You only ever work for yourself. A single employer means you have a single client. It also means you only have one source of income. That is always risky, because work done for others is always temporary. Honestly full time employment is way way -more- risky than being an independent contractor with a few small predictable retainer contracts.
Also key to remember is that no matter how rewarding and interesting the work is you will eventually lose access to that too unless you fought hard enough for it to be open source.
If you want a job where losing that job is tantamount to company failure, start your own business. When it fails (and statistically it probably will), your failure will also lead to your job loss. Congratulations.
If you "have a job", you're accepting being a cog in a machine that's primarily not about you. I make that trade-off, as do most people, but don't mislead yourself about what's going on.
That said, the swings tech stock over the last couple years have very little to do with his leadership. Yuan is not responsible for the tech bubble and its deflation. No human on the planet could have made zoom hold its peak stock price.
It doesn't make sense to accuse someone of not feeling the economic impact of a downturn at all while downplaying the fact that they actually lost $5billion.
If you were serious or had devoted any thought into the issue you wouldn't even consider the silliness of framing a $5billion loss as a lifestyle issue.
But at the end of the day, he won't work for nothing if you took all of his comp, so fair accountability is not really possible in this light.
Did the workers build the company? Did the capital build the company by providing the pay to pay the workers?
Did the workers take any risks? Or did they sign an employment contract, and get paid the same every month regardless of performance? Their only risk, that the contract will end, perhaps unexpectedly [1]?
In the case of small private businesses (which of course the vast majority of businesses are) did the "Capitalist" worry about making payroll this month, get short paid when cash is short, try and predict the future, make tough decisions when things go wrong, and somehow be a human?
Of course the socialists believe the capitalists should keep those people hired forever (or better yet, not hire them to begin with?) - ironically that's what the capitalists want as well. But life happens and hard decisions have to be made.
[1] risk costs money. If you have one employer you are at risk. As much as you can, hedge this risk with liquid savings. This has been good advice for thousands of years. Most workers live so close to poverty that this is unattainable. However folks at (big tech whoever) have the means to do this AND get decent severance, so I'm not crying for them just yet.
Except, lately anyway, those people were probably already living close to paycheck-to-paycheck, as many low six figure earners are in this horrible economy. Whereas, the CEO and other execs will likely not even miss the money.
The cynic in me suspects that this is going to trickle down - there will be 20% salary reductions for everybody, and this will become a trend just like the layoffs did.
"Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this makes everyone feel vindicated and that the scales of justice remain balanced. God Bless."
A team does terrible for awhile -- should the coach be removed? A company does terrible -- should the CEO be removed? This is what accountability means. Just this year I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150 people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision making. When I gave my report to the Board Of Directors, the Board responded by firing both the CTO and the CEO. This seems normal to me.
All laying people off means is that there are items that the company will not be executing against in the future. It may or may not mean that they're in a bad spot, but very often - and the case with many of the current tech giants laying off that we're seeing - it simply means they grew more than they needed for the road ahead.
Whether or not that's good or bad is a fair question. It was asked on a previous thread whether we as a society should be comfortable with companies gabling with the jobs of their employees, and I think that's a worthwhile question. But it most certainly does not mean that a company is "doing terrible."
If you're hiring in bulk to tie up talent your competitors might want during a boom, and then promptly firing thousands in the bust, you're bad people and should feel bad.
But then, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get an executive to understand the impacts of their decision when their compensation package depends upon them not understanding it.
If the Board fails to do its job? What, then? Yep, shareholders have to intervene.
Which leads to what happens if the shareholders themselves don't figure out what to do or the right-decision to be made? Well, they lose a bunch of value as the company's value [eventually] plummets.
I have to assume it goes beyond just not following best practices, and perhaps into deep levels of pointless "not invented here syndrome" or some other massive waste of resources.
A BOD doesn’t hire someone to do this without there being some suspicion within the board that there is an issue. That board was likely divided on keeping one or both of those individuals and your results were used to sway votes.
For the bad PR you’ve created, if for nothing else.
1. Yuan should immediately terminate himself as CEO, and his salary/bonus should be divvied up among those who were [IMPACTED]. In fact, all 1,300 people should be named co-CEOs and together they shall lead the company to prosperity and avoid such a boneheaded misstep in the future.
2. He should have to give his life savings to those 1,300 people. His family should live in squalor going forward, effective immediately.
3. He should be imprisoned for fraud, for no fewer than 25 years —- or ideally sent to a North Korean prison camp, if such arrangements with DPRK can be secured.
That’s what true accountability looks like.
However your solution, as seen from outside that pain, is "worse than the disease".
Firstly it's worth pointing out that most (but not all) layoffs right now are a result of over-hiring during the pandemic. Now, granted, those jobs didn't last forever, but they did last a while and kept a lot of people working during a time when a lot of people couldn't work. It would likely have been very profitable to not make those hires in the first place.
Secondly, you are proposing penalties out of proportion to the mistake. Or put another way you are strongly disincentiving hiring in the first place.
The more penalties there are for failure, the lower the chance that people will try at all. Your suggestion that over-hiring leads to criminal fraud, or personal destitution, has out outcome - no one will ever hire anyone.
In a private company the decision makers are typically the owners. They're taking risks everyday, spending "their money" and working hard to keep everyone employed. It's a weighty responsibility. But life happens and things don't always work out as planned. Management-via-hindsight is easy.
The comment literal dripped sarcasm
I mean honestly…you thought the above (emphasis is mine) was serious?
I'm kidding, of course. Layoffs rarely represent failure, they're usually just a cost cutting measure to increase profitability and make shareholders happy. They're just framed as failure every time because people take more kindly to "we had to lay 15% of employees off because of the economy" than "we had to lay 15% of employees off to meet our quarterly growth goals".
Any CEO in his position is accountable by default. They lose a literal fortune when the company doesn't perform. This meme of "but how are you taking accountability" confuses the heck out of me given this context.
This is actually a pretty big step, but the move will need some benefit to the company for it to become more common-place.
They might roll these bonuses into subsequent bonuses, but that may actually end up being a motivator if these bonuses are truly forfeit until things are improved by the executives.