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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

The reason we don't automate CEOs is liability: the board of directors/shareholders want someone to hold accountable when bad decisions start getting made. If you pay $4000 for a brand new iCEO that lays off your entire staff, you can really only scream at whoever minted the software making that decision, which often comes with limited liability licenses.

Remember, corporate structure is about minimizing your own work and maximizing your leverage against your co-workers. None of these shareholders want to live in a world where something can't be fixed by shouting at someone over the phone.

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My new SAAS startup idea; scapegoat as a service.

For a few million dollars you can hire me, put all the blame on me, I say "I take full responsibility" and resign my position.

this niche is apparently quite packed with individual contractors.

Years ago, Nordstrom had an employee at the store that was to be fired when a customer got super angry. They would be hauled out from the back and fired. "Fred, this lady doesn't like her pants. I believe that is your department. You're fired. Please accept our apologies, ma'am. " Then Fred would go back to the break room and read the paper until it was time to be fired again.

Do you have a link where I can read more about this? Nothing came up from my googling.

See Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC. And then the second tier below that.

They also offer the lead-in service of making your idea into pretty slides with their logo, so it's clear later that they endorsed the idea from the get-go.

haha this.

This is exactly 'Scapegoat as a Service'.

Uh, I'm pretty sure BCG is in the first tier, and the others you mention are in the third tier, when it comes to the Scapegoat as a Service business.

I don't mean the tax/audit arm of those companies. They all do the generic management consulting. I left several off. Here's a market share chart: https://imgur.com/a/O1Urjkm

I wasn't going by market share but by pricing. MBB charges the most per amount of "value" /"intangibles" delivered.

https://hackingthecaseinterview.thinkific.com/pages/top-best...

https://youtu.be/yjfrJzdx7DA

I'd actually like to invest.

In italy a classic movie series "Fantozzi" has a scene dedicated to a "career" as scapegoat[1]. I really cannot suggest the first two movies (and the original book) enough.

[1] (partially NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EJ3VyM12qM

This exists and is called management consulting.

You jest but there are some real people like this. My spouse once worked at small (1-200 staff) but profitable SaaS/service firm in a niche market. Another firm bought it, the Founder/CEO and some other top execs cashed out. The new parent firm folded the software and book of business into its own operations, and brought in a new CEO for the subsidiary...who methodically ran it into the ground over the course of a year or two, basically wrecking it by stages so that staff could be laid off without violating employment laws.

Mystified by this apparent gross incompetence (my spouse had been an early hire and knew the firm's operations inside out; they still had a healthy client base in addition to the software portfolio), we looked into the background of the CEO and discovered the person had done the same thing at several other firms.

I can imagine a scenario where an approval board of 3 or 5 people paid 1/10th a CEO's cost must approve the actions that the iCEO is suggesting rather than give it full autonomy to act indiscriminately. They'd effectively become executive assistants with veto power. If there aren't many things for the iCEO to do, then the board doesn't even need to be employed full-time and perhaps it could even be offloaded entirely onto the company board with a rotating schedule. Though, I imagine many board members don't like the idea that their involvement would then become more involved and they wouldn't be able to sit on as many boards collecting some nice comp/benefits.

But I don't think they're suggesting getting rid of the entire executive team, or carte-blanche implementing whatever iCEO says to do. They're saying replace the most expensive position with some AI, and let the executive team debate that.

Seems like we could figure out a way to find accountability in that model by assigning it to whoever is best aligned with the decision - and could provide an interesting balance for the board to debate: Why did you decide to go against the machines recommendation?

There's a whole world of outsourcing shouting angrily at people over the phone. That's what call centres are. And their workers normally cost a lot less than CEOs.

That liability is already outsourced to consulting firm, unfortunately.

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