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This is by design. To quote Steve Jobs:

"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering."

"In other words,' (Jobs continued,) "when the employee becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say."

I've heard some economic analysis that indicates that this is why executives are paid so much. As an exec, you're responsible for company performance, and if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did. To get people who actually understand & respect the risks (you don't want anyone who doesn't in an exec position), you have to pay them enough that they're basically set for life after a few years in the job, because in a few years they may find themselves unemployed and unemployable.

(Of course, this creates another moral hazard issue, where once you've paid them all this money and given them this generous severance option, they have no incentive to actually do well, because they're already collecting their retirement plan. C'est la vie - this is why you get execs that make superficial changes while the company lumbers on to its demise, and then cache out with 9-figure parachutes when everything goes bankrupt.)

> if the company underperforms, you will get fired, and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did.

It's your job to do something effective. The outcome can't 'have nothing to do with anything you did.'

I'd guess that macroeconomic conditions could have nothing to do with what an executive did. I'm sure there are cases where you're held responsible for absolute, rather than relative performance, so even if you did some brilliant thing they minimized downside, if the stock went down you're still screwed.

This tangentially reminds me of the gas price stuff. I (while not a Democrat) see Biden et al getting a lot of flack for gas prices, while realistically there is not some magic lever that the US could throw that would change the overall economic conditions - I'm sure they could do better or worse, but prices would still be higher. The subtlety either gets lost on people, or they just use it for political gain and pretend its because of something the government did.

Same for executives, you're presumably constantly fighting back attempts to take your spot, and any perceived problem will be leveraged to try and push you aside.

In business, if you can't succeed in the current climate, you shouldn't have the job. The job is to succeed in the current climate.

Of course, it's not intended as a logical extreme. People make adjustments in their expectations based on circumstances. But ultimately, you are responsible, especially at that high level (VP of Apple). If you can't deliver the results, why should people pay you?

Government is different: A businessperson controls a business, someone governing can't control reality. But they also can't throw up their hands - again, if they can't do the job, they shouldn't take it.

> in a few years they may find themselves unemployed and unemployable.

Are they really though? To take just one example, Sheryl Sandberg would still make a perfectly good senior product manager or something. Lots of places would hire her and it has great wages and benefits (by the standards of us mere mortals).

A lot of companies won't hire former execs that have been the center of the world, because they figure anything they could offer them is a step down and the exec will be bitter and demoralized about their loss of status. It's not necessarily an accurate perception - I know plenty of people who don't care about status and are just looking for interesting things to do - but it tends to be more accurate among the population that gets to the exec level in the first place.

Marissa Mayer is running a startup lab now, Amit Singhal is doing philanthropy, Travis Kalanick is starting ghost kitchens, Eric Schmidt is also doing philanthropy plus venturing into politics & punditry, Andy Rubin is a venture capitalist, Chris Sacca retired to Montana and occasionally appears on Shark Tank. While they may have the skills to take lower-level corporate jobs, the folks who reach those levels generally don't have the personality or inclination for it.

Didn’t Eric Schmidt buy Cypriot passports for his whole family and peace out of America?

Cypriot passports yes, peace out of America no. Just yesterday it came out that he funds a lot of technology and national-security offices within the government:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/6/9/23160588/eric-schmidt-am...

When you're that rich you buy insurance policies so that if any one state goes down, you don't go down with it.

I had a negative reaction when I heard about this, but I’m also coming from a privileged position of having more than one developed-world passport (immigrant parents) so I really can’t criticize. If I was in his position maybe I’d do the same.

She would most definitely not make for a good pm, I'll tell you that much. Her org was a carnival of poor management and lackadaisical attention to detail. She never struck me as someone that sweats the details.

That’s hilarious. She was COO of a company with 80K employees. She’s worth $1.6B. You think anyone is going to pay her an amount she’d care about to be a senior PM? You think she cares about benefits?

Fidji Simo (who was 1-2 levels under Sheryl on the org chart) is now the CEO of Instacart.

People in this thread are dramatically underestimating the position and compensation she just left.

You misunderstood me. I was responding to a comment that execs must be paid enough money to never need to work again because they may be "unemployable" if they are fired. I was making the case that this isn't literally true, and even if they have to go back to the job they were doing before becoming an exec (and I don't know if Sandberg was ever a PM), it's not some terrible situation. Obviously Sandberg isn't going to become a PM. But she might have if she was only worth 1.6m and for some reason really unhireable for another CXO position.

Unless an exec is fired for financial fraud or serious misconduct (and even the latter isn't always a barrier, there are many counterexamples) they'll pretty much always find another role of equal status, if maybe not equal comp, if they want it.

> ...and this could be for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did.

My father used to captain ships, and once explained to me that if the ship runs aground, it doesn't matter that the captain was asleep in his bunk at the time. He was responsible and would be court martialled for it. That meant he made damn sure his XO standing the night watch was competent and sober.

It doesn't matter if you didn't do anything. You should have done something. That's the job. You're responsible.

Yearly pay for an O-6 is between $87,984 and $155,754, by the way: https://www.federalpay.org/military/coast-guard/captain

In recognition of their absolute blame for any collision, Navy captains are reported[0] to joke with their ship-steering subordinates:

  "In case anything goes wrong, call me so that I can see the end of my career."

---

[0] As reported in the ProPublica article linked to in this HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094762

Yeah the pay isn't great for what that is, but there's tons of benefits and you're keeping the American shitshow going STRONG.

There's off ramps from that career with bigger money if you want that, there is such a thing.

It's just a cool thing to do. Like flying a spaceship.

A lot of jobs pay in social status… whether you’re a university professor, or a destroyer captain, an airline pilot, or even something really highly-compensated like a doctor, a large part of the compensation is that even complete strangers clearly understand how you fit into society. They will respect you beyond what you get from mere salary.

While the above approach works.. I'd argue that it leads to a highly conservative attitude amongst senior management. At some point, everyone wants to be well known enough to be respected - but not so well known as to be tied to any initiative.

Smart managers seem to understand this dynamic and simply "hide" extra head count to allow for the "high risk" projects without external scrutiny.

> you have to pay them enough that they're basically set for life after a few years in the job, because in a few years they may find themselves unemployed and unemployable

IMO these people always fail upward.

> I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships

Can you expand on this? I’m sure I’ve made mistakes in the past that had I had some mentorship or was more receptive I would’ve faired better.

I’m reading it more as ‘Don’t get too close to the help, or your hand will waver when you need to start chopping’.

Not ‘don’t get too close to your boss’.

> In my time at Amazon, I was actually trained and coached on removing myself from certain situations and not interfering or establishing certain relationships because it would help me ultimately do better whatever is right for the company.

Can you please elaborate on this with some concrete examples, if possible?

"You always have some boss, if you don’t deliver and meet their expectations, you’ll get thrown under the bus pretty rapidly."

It's almost like you live in a hierarchy or something. Like every other person in history.

Dave Clark left to become CEO of Flexport. Maybe the retail conditions influenced this decision, but CEO of Flexport seems like an obvious fit for him.

Dave Clark upgraded to CEO of Flexport. This is pareidolia.