- have their pay adjusted to reflect the poor decision making lead to the company shrinkage

- have a portion of their stock allowance taken back and have to be re-earned based on performance

- have their other benefits and expense account cut and have to be re-earned based on performance

Basically have literally anything they benefit from have to be justified in any way as a reflection of the holistic performance of the company.

I think the bitterness comes from the big payoffs that CEOs get when the company does well. There's something upsetting about leadership taking the upside reward for the big wins but leaving the downside risk for everyone else.

A somewhat common way for CEOs to take responsibility used to be to forgo their bonuses or to take a pay cut, which while still not too meaningful, does at least involve some more responsibility than just plain PR speak.

> I will whip myself once for every employee I had to layoff

I like the sound of that! Joking aside, while physical harm may not fly I can imagine a scenario where it hits the CEOs' wallets either by losing stock options/grants or actual salary based on the number of employees they had to layoff. Because seriously, what does it even mean for the CEO to take responsibility when there are no actual consequences for them? If they're doing it to save the business (which they are) then just say that instead of saying they take responsibility as the latter is just virtue signaling.

If the CEO says they'll resign, people will say they're taking the easy way out, and anyway, it's no skin off their back because golden parachute (if they were a good negotiator when they were hired) or anyway their salary was probably high, etc.

It's an unwinnable game in the court of public opinion, so why do it? Because it signals to the underlings that the CEO is not expecting resignations from them.

Being CEO means making difficult decisions, and it isn't realistic to expect a CEO to only serve during good times. That said, I think it would go a long way towards appeasement if the messaging was more along the lines of "I will be withholding payment to myself until such time as we're in the black again" or something similar showing personal consequences beyond "mea culpa!" nonsense PR messaging.

Maybe it's reasonable to expect a CEO to resign when layoffs happen during a market upswing but... during a market downturn like this it's kind of inevitable to see layoffs in a services-based company when services are the some of the easiest things for consumers to scale back on when belt-tightening occurs. A change in leadership would only further hurt the people staying in the company, IMO.

Well, perception/observation bias. We never notice the companies that do grow sustainably and don't do layoffs.

Remember the CEO is also accountable to the board and investors who have certain expectations.

The morality here is hard because the end results are largely driven by the system. Sure, there are some leaders who are particularly ill-suited for their jobs from the employee POV. Unfortunately some of those leaders serve their investors quite well.

If you point one finger, you'll quickly realize you might need many more to follow the interconnected trail of power.

Also let's not forget that so much of Silicon Valley's advantageous job market is linked to investor behavior, good and bad. My point? Sure, criticize these feaux-emotional layoff letters, just don't forget to look back to see the reality distortion field already in place when you joined that job.