No, it's not like that. I write excoriating pieces in the Times Higher, completely damning the UK university system as "unfit for teaching and leaning" [0], and they still call me and ask "can you just cover this class?".

Amusing as that desperation is, in a way it's more terrifying how the machinery of blind capitalism works. The system isn't capable of sentiment like that. They don't care what I say. It's just business. They're not there keeping a score of 'friends' and 'enemies'.

Universities run on people like me who are of the "academic mindset", who can and will do things like teaching because we love it as a vocation even though the salary is a quarter or fifth of what is on offer privately.

In the end, the only solution is to say no, even when you'd really like to do it. It's a weird modern tragedy.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cyber-education/

> Universities run on people like me who are of the "academic mindset", who can and will do things like teaching because we love it as a vocation even though the salary is a quarter or fifth of what is on offer privately.

Everything runs like this. Jobs people want will pay less than jobs people don't want.

Does that mean everyone wants to be a waiter and nobody wants to be a CEO?

> Does that mean everyone wants to be a waiter and nobody wants to be a CEO?

Unironically, yes. Most people don't have enough exposure to actually understand what the job of a CEO is. I have had that exposure, and I don't ever want to be the CEO of any sizeable company. Once you become CEO, work/life balance utterly ceases to exist, because you are the person imbued as the corporation, meaning you are literally always working, always on call, always stuck with the most difficult or intractable decisions where maybe all the options are wrong, and no matter your choice everyone will hate you. It's a terrible job that people only do because it pays so well.

I am not the CEO but I'm much higher up the food chain today than I was when I started. I often reminisce fondly about my time working phone tech support, because I could work my queue and walk out without having to give any thought to anything that occurred that day. That's not the reality of being in any sort of management role, and the higher up you go the less that matches reality.

Senior exec positions (at large companies) pay really well for the most part--but I couldn't imagine doing that sort of thing for more than a few years with the mindset that I'm doing my time in purgatory so that I can retire early and have a sane life. (Some CEOs seem to have a better ability to carve off some me-time but it's still a job a lot of people wouldn't want for the long term.)

This is no worse than the demands beared by countless $12/hr general managers.

> This is no worse than the demands beared by countless $12/hr general managers.

That is grossly incorrect. Also, general managers don't make $12/hr. The average general manager in the US makes ~$87k/yr, and can be as high as $150k/yr, and depending on the specific industry you can end up with relatively sizeable compensation based on profit sharing and bonus structures. A general manager typically oversees a single location of a much larger business entity, with oversight for less than 500 staff, compared to a CEO that may have tens of thousands of people and their myriad workstreams that they are trying to weave into some unified vision/strategy plus dealing with the personnel challenges that go with that scale.

I realize you were trying to be pithy, but let's not do that on HN.

Your reply is incorrect and inaccurate. Consider this an opportunity to improve, not double down.

HN is not the place to be a troll. If you have nothing of substance to add, please exit the conversation.

I have yet to see a CEO choose to go back down the food chain, even though that is something they have the power to do.

Typically the way it works is the comp structure is such that after a few years in the role you can semi-retire. The goal of anyone who is a CEO is to try throw their hat in the ring, hopefully do a good job, and then step away to help other people who want to be CEOs. Generally they do this by taking on board seats or becoming an investor. The average CEO tenure is 7 years and the median is 5 years[1]. This is not a job you can do for a long time without it basically killing you due to the stress.

I'm sure you've seen all the before/after pictures they always do for POTUS. If you saw similar photos for folks becoming CEOs of a major company, you'd see a similar change. Being a CEO is a job that will literally run you ragged. It destroys your health, and is not something most people can tolerate for longer than a decade.

[1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/02/12/ceo-tenure-rates/

CEOs of large companies generally don't go back down the food chain because they don't need to. They retire/semi-retire (e.g. get a board seat or some other advisor type of position) instead.

The strongest factor in personal employment decisions is what we "need to". Of course a CEO doesn't need to continue pulling their weight when they have piles of cash to retire on.

As a CEO (or elite athlete, etc.) it can also be getting an even more prestigious role. But, yes, failing that it probably makes sense to drop the whole thing and just enjoy your piles of cash (which may or may not involve still doing some nominal work).

> The strongest factor in personal employment decisions is what we "need to".

Possibly, but once that's satisfied, or even the satisfaction of that is well in the rear view mirror, other things become important. E.g. company mission; prestige; moving in the right circles; pushing into politics.

Obligatory:

"You know, one day, my mother, she put me on her knee and she said to me, 'Gaston, my son, the world is a beautiful place. You must go into it and love everyone, try to make everyone happy, and bring peace and contentment everywhere you go,' and so, I became a waiter. Well, it's it's not much of a philosophy, I know... but, well,... fuck you. I can live my own life in my own way if I want to. Fuck off."

Replace waiter with CEO and I think it would still work. I mean, why do any of us do anything?

> Does that mean everyone wants to be a waiter and nobody wants to be a CEO?

You've committed the fallacy of the single cause. A reason doesn't mean the reason for lower salaries.

Is it me committing the fallacy or am I responding to the fallacy?

Committing.

Since I have to be explicit, I'm questioning the line of thinking that I'm responding to with my initial post in this thread. Perhaps you should go back and reread it.

You're not being explicit. Saying "Go and re-read the thing you wrote" isn't being explicit. Two messages later and you haven't really said anything, other than that you somehow disagree.

To be clear: where's the fallacy of the single cause in what I wrote earlier? It's clear in what you said: you misinterpreted my saying "desirable jobs pay less" as "jobs being desirable is the only cause of the market paying less for some jobs". A cause - from my message, vs the cause - the assumption in your response.

Your statement implies that whether or not someone wants a job is a large deciding factor in the scale of pay, my point is that it is not. I was being explicit where I was telling you that I am in fact questioning your line of logic because it doesn't hold.

Desirable jobs don't pay less than undesirable jobs. In a capitalist market things are set up so that there is a segment of the population who is desperate for money enough to do jobs that other people don't want regardless of pay. You have offered zero evidence for your original claim nor any supporting arguments that a job being less desirable somehow means it will pay more than a desirable job nor have you defined what makes jobs desirable or undesirable. Does high pay make a job desirable? Maybe to some people. You're applying a blanket statement to a heterogeneous population with nothing to back it up.