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Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

It’s great that they have set a March 1 termination date for those on visas. And the severance and stock vesting are also reasonable. Not to mention the fact that health insurance continues for quite a bit longer and then goes into Cobra.

The verbiage is standard PR pap but the actual actions are quite very considerate.

However, what actual responsibility are the CEOs taking after hiring like crazy knowing fully well that the pandemic exuberance and stimulus wasn’t going to keep the recession away, only delay it? I’m sure competitive pressure was part of the reason for the overhiring but it’s still not the whole story.

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In every HN thread about layoffs, there is some number of comments that are written as:

"It's good that the company paid [nearly unfathomable severance benefits], but what ACCOUNTABILITY is there?"

My brother in Christ, the accountability is that the company is paying unfathomable severance benefits, watching their stock price tank, and getting dragged in the public sphere.

What would you like the CEO to do? Quit?

> What would you like the CEO to do? Quit?

Yep

That's for the board to do. If they're taking their responsibility seriously and feel like the CEO is no longer capable. See also: AMC and Disney in the last 10 days.

If I understand DoorDash's corporate structure, the founders have dual-class stock and voting control, so board could not remove them.

If the CEO is taking responsibility upon himself for leading his company in such a poor way he has to fire large swaths of people then he should quit. He's the CHIEF, the buck stops with him. What, is he going to keep his job and then just be a better CEO next time? He gets to make a hundred million dollar mistake and keep his job?

I've seen peers fired for much less.

The real answer is he doesn't take responsibility for anything other than doing his job exactly as expected and prioritizing short term profits for stakeholders.

Either quit, because you're a bad CEO, or do away with this "I'm taking responsibility" facade. Just be upfront with it. "I fired you to make a quick buck." I can at least respect the honesty there.

Put it this way, if the company was wildly successful how much credit does the executive team take for itself? Now in a downturn, you take that much blame.

So if you took a huge bonus for all your leadership during the pandemic, I don't see why you shouldn't lose your job when your lack of leadership did the opposite. Either you were responsible or you weren't. You choose to "be in charge" only on the upside.

Why not? Is it very difficult to countenance a founder who has 'got his' leaving to make way for someone who has a little more ethics? Every single one of these CEOs hired an untold number of people full-time during the pandemic, and then discarded them just a year or so after said binge. They knew the game they were playing, only they pretend to be paragons of virtue and write meaningless blather about it.

Yeah actually, it used to be if a CEO did a shitty job they were fired.

Yes.

Yes. Or at least take zero pay/bonuses until they can turn the company around.

Should you give your compensation back if you fail to deliver on a big project?

> However, what actual responsibility are the CEOs taking after hiring like crazy knowing fully well that the pandemic exuberance and stimulus wasn’t going to keep the recession away, only delay it? I’m sure competitive pressure was part of the reason for the overhiring but it’s still not the whole story.

Why do you think Doordash/Shopify/Stripe "knew full well" that this boom wouldn't last?

The common thinking in SV and the world as a whole was that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online services by about 5 years due to lockdowns and WFH. Unfortunately, the world reverted to the mean with regards to online shopping and ordering food pretty quickly in 2022, but this idea of accelerated-online was a reasonable one held by many.

Hell, if you looked at the numbers during those quarters at all these companies, the boards and shareholders would have fired the CEOs if they hadn't staffed up.

> Why do you think Doordash/Shopify/Stripe "knew full well" that this boom wouldn't last?

In the Doordash case, it's pretty god damn obvious the boom wouldn't last. DoorDash shot up because restaurant dining rooms were closed. As soon as restaurants started opening back up, it only makes sense that DoorDash's popularity would sink. While certainly some people will have decided "Hey, this is pretty convenient" and keep using them, I think it's absolutely bone-headed to think it wasn't going to eventually dip.

> Unfortunately, the world reverted to the mean with regards to online shopping and ordering food pretty quickly in 2022

Again, completely bone-headed to have not expected this to happen.

If you are so confident that it was bone-headed to not foresee this - did you take a short position against these companies in Q4 2021? If not, why? You would have made an absolute fortune placing trades against these public companies.

Here's a different way to look at it - a whole lot of people started using DD that would have never tried it during lockdowns. If those users liked the experience and convenience, then they'd stuck with it. DoorDash bet that a lot more people would stick around than actually did. DD was wrong, but I would argue that it wasn't a dumb bet given the stickiness of their product, and their excellence in execution up until that point.

I'm sorry but this has to be the lamest attempt at a comeback i've ever read

Really? Lamest? Of all the comebacks you've read?

Wow, look at Mr. Nostradamus here.

There is only way to prove your credentials here. Show your returns in stock market from 2018 to 2022.

Else you are just a sad pathetic whiner who whines about CEOs all the time

What are they supposed to do? Demand ramped up significantly during covid - they needed staff to support it. They really had no choice but to hire that staff unless they wanted to have an undersupported platform with extremely long wait times for things like customer service or onboarding new restaurants. And with DD having a lot of competition (Uber Eats, Postmates, etc etc), someone else would pick up their slack and keep that business.

If I were a board member I wouldn’t really want an environment where CEOs were deathly afraid of making bets that made sense at the time. It just leads to stagnation.

What consequence do you think the CEO should face?

That is a fair point. However, my point is not that the CEO should face consequences, but voluntarily take responsibility in some meaningful way. "That's on me" in a corporate email != taking actual responsibility. The empty platitudes are the problem. The accommodations for employees who are being let go are above and beyond, which is the silver lining.

> but voluntarily take responsibility in some meaningful way

Nobody seems to be able to explain what they think this looks like. "You'll know it when you see it"?

Your last paragraph is a little ridiculous. Hindsight is 20/20. If you knew there was a recession coming, why didn’t you short the market and become rich? Nobody, including CEOs, knew for certain when the pandemic would end or how that would affect the markets.

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