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Comment by pantalaimon | Hacker News Reader

> Yes, of course you will be able to fill just about any c-role at just about any rate. But, somehow, just as with any other job, the good people – those you will actually want to fill that role – want to be paid what the market tells them they are worth.

How do you measure how good a CEO is? Is having to let go 25% of your staff, axing the security team and stopping new developments indicative of good performance?

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It's all bullshit. There's almost no measure by which particular CEOs are better than the average/random. Much like investors: almost no investors can be said to be consistently better than the average, i.e. the distribution follows what you would expect if everyone is doing decisions at random. Despite that, we still believe there are objectively good CEOs or investors (apart from a very small minority) who therefore deserve their outrageous compensation for their leadership and decision skills.

Just look at the amount of CEOs who got international industry awards or recognition, who some years later tanked their companies or were found to be engaged in criminal practices.

Maybe that’s why c level employees should be compensated on reaching certain targets, rather than getting at least a million a year. Because, if you are the captain of a schip, you should drown with it if it capsized.

No, they should not. Nobody should ever drown.

In isolation, no.

In context of mozillas goals, challenges that arise when leading a company, and limited influence on the movement of the world, maybe. I doubt that either of us is close enough to the ground to realistically be a judge of that.

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