A good skill execs have is to negotiate extremely lucrative severance terms and have it written in their employment agreements.

In the US a material perquisite of senior management roles are negotiable severance terms. Sad really.

So, if you are fired from enough workplaces for not working enough you get rich and don't have to work. :)

"If they are good at being ruthlessly selfish for themselves they might be good at being ruthlessly selfish for the company as well."

Makes me wonder if the opposite could become fashionable: "I trust myself to fly without the golden parachute, you might want to make that part of your consideration". At first glance that sounds quite compelling to me, but on the other hand, would I feel safer or would I feel less safe with a Taxi driver who does not bother putting on the seat belt? I think my answer would be less safe, event though a part of me wishes to be one who'd feel safer.

Speaking from personal experience, execs (most of them) are anything but risk takers. They are good wheeler-dealers, know how to navigate the land-mine filled org-chart to get things done. Not too different from civil servants. Those who develop risk appetite won't stay at such big orgs, they either go work at a startup or start on their own.

So over a period (FB has been around for like 15 years now) an org accumulates extremely risk averse execs.

"No one ever gets fired for buying IBM"

Let's extend the metaphor:

if the execs are pilots, and the employees are passengers, then having parachutes for the pilots but not the employees constitutes a moral hazard.

It's only a moral hazard if the execs are working for, and are accountable to the employees.

They don't, and they aren't. They work for, and answer to the owners.

footnote: for certain values of "moral"

(you are right though, the term "moral hazard" is surprisingly well defined and basically has nothing to do at all with the sum of its parts)

In that case, having parachutes for the execs is a moral hazard.

Yeah, but that's a problem for the owners. Who are big boys, and can figure this conflict of interest out without us.

Or if they want to keep pissing away their money, they can keep hiring clowns that ruin their company, and then pull the ripcord.

I believe they all got paid good. I was a bit surprised at the animosity but the old CEO certainly seemed to burn bridges (I note how above) and I also suspect took it really personal that he got beat by our main competitor.

I assumed something like that happened behind the scenes but I never knew any facts. It was a publicly traded company and it was a good offer based on the stock price so I doubt any efforts to resist the purchase would have succeeded.

I think more likely the new CEO's comment stemmed from that fact that 1. The old executive staff were in fact horrible at face value. 2. In between the time of the offer to buy the company and the closing the old CEO visited several locations presumably under the idea that he was there to keep everyone around / soothe the typical nerves about being acquired. But something else happened:

Instead he took snide shots at the acquiring CEO. He noted that he was surprised the new CEO hadn't visited our site yet.... when at that point the deal hadn't closed, they were still technically competitors. New CEO straight up couldn't visit.

I think old CEO was just a horrible person and salty he lost (mostly due to his own missteps) to his competitor.

But that was par for the course with old company executives. They seemed to operate thinking they were so smart and really were as transparent as could be, almost childish.

I generally feel disconnected / suspicious of executive staff... but these guys, they were human garbage as far as I was concerned, and I don't use that term lightly.

My Fav examples:

HR at one point sent out a series of long emails about a big change upcoming, but they didn't / would not say what the change was, it put a lot of people on edge. Then finally after the 5th or so email they announced that after HR spent thousands of hours in meetings and off site meetings ... they were renaming HR... that was it... it was like a joke, but they were serious. CEO and all the other executives of course had to reply all to congratulate them.

One of the last meetings with the OLD CEO had an open forum where people could ask questions about the acquisition. Old CEO seemed to give the impression he had some idea what he combined company would look like / could do. Someone asked where he saw the new company in six months/ what it might look like. He responded "I'll be in Banff sking." That was it, that was his response....

Wow, you’ve got some stories from this company. This could make for a really entertaining blog!

> HR at one point sent out a series of long emails about a big change upcoming, but they didn't / would not say what the change was, it put a lot of people on edge. Then finally after the 5th or so email they announced that after HR spent thousands of hours in meetings and off site meetings ... they were renaming HR... that was it... it was like a joke, but they were serious. CEO and all the other executives of course had to reply all to congratulate them.

Sounds like something else was planned, and they pulled out last minute.

Or they were trying to spook 5% into leaving -- and did -- so they make some trivial change that means nothing and can be undone later.