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Comment by pgodzin | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why a "good faith effort" requires taking such a crazy amount of personal risk. Yahoo was willing to pay millions to the exec they thought had the best chance to turn the company around. She should have declined that and and unnecessarily played on Extra Hard mode instead?

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That's why the responsibility was on the board to find somebody willing and capable of playing Extra Hard.

Obviously if finding good CEOs who would work for free at failing companies was easy, all boards would do that.

Turns out it's not.

I'm trying to imagine Jobs taking a 'free' turnaround role somewhere other than Apple. That was a labor of love, but it's pretty hard to import talent on those grounds - particularly if no one has significant affection for your brand.

Part of the power of startups (and Apple) is that they get some economically-irrational commitments from people who care deeply about them, and it's pretty unfair to expect that for other organizations.

The money they paid out to Meyer was not a problem for yahoo, even from a opportunity cost perspective. Deciding to only pay someone willing to work for close to nothing would have been really foolish. Not sure what you are proposing other than like bringing back Jerry Yang.

Sorry, my comment was too short. I said nothing about money. I simply pointed out that they should have done more due diligence when choosing the CEO. (Based on what I read at the time though, sounds like they didn't even try -- they went for short-term gains based on her name recognition).

You don't think that a public CEO's incentives should be aligned with their shareholders?

That's the only way you can have real change, instead of the moral hazard situation we have now.

Sure, in the form of stock, incentive bonuses, etc. Not the entire salary

Why not the entire salary? If you're already worth $100m, you're working for fun and prestige not because you need cash to pay your rent.

All the famous rich ceos have tiny salaries and make their money on capital gains. It's more tax efficient to boot!

You're worth $100m and are running in a crowd of high achievers worth a lot more, suddenly it doesn't feel like very much even when all of your basic needs are more than met.

The human condition is such that we want what we don't have and we can never have enough.

It's funny how many on the right (not you, mind you!) simultaneously hold that

- the rich are sensitive to incentives, and big option packages and low taxes are required to align them with the shareholder and make them work hard enough

- the rich are not sensitive to incentives, being so rich that they do not need any extra money, therefore are basically immune to corruption and not really in need of any legal oversight

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